Despite FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly’s calls for the U.S. to take on a bigger leadership role at the ITU, industry officials said the best the U.S. can hope for next year when the ITU holds elections is leadership of one of the three sectors: Radiocommunication (ITU-R), Telecommunication Standards (ITU-T) or Telecommunication Development (ITU-D). Doreen Bogdan-Martin, from the U.S., has been mounting a campaign to head ITU-D. Bogdan-Martin, an ITU employee since 1994, is already the highest-ranking woman at the ITU, as chief-strategic planning and membership.
Russia export controls and sanctions
The use of export controls and sanctions on Russia has surged since the country's invasion of Crimea in 2014, and especially its invasion of Ukraine in in February 2022. Similar export controls and sanctions have been imposed by U.S. allies, including the EU, U.K. and Japan. The following is a listing of recent articles in Export Compliance Daily on export controls and sanctions imposed on Russia:
Chinese smartphone maker Vivo, nudged out of the top five global brands in Q2 by Xiaomi, according to IDC (see 1708020031 or 1708020038), entered the Hong Kong market Friday with the launch of the X20 handset. The company plans to expand to Taiwan, Singapore, Russia and Africa markets, it said. Vivo phones are also sold in Thailand, the Philippines, Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Cambodia and Bangladesh.
ITU lacks capacity or expertise to address privacy, as some governments proposed, said Access Now, Article 19 and Public Knowledge in a joint statement Monday. Instead, nations should use bilateral or multilateral agreements, national laws and other frameworks, the groups said. Brazil, Mexico, a regional group of Arab states and one formed by Russia and former Soviet republics suggested at the World Telecommunications Development Conference this month that ITU should expand its mandate into privacy-related issues, the groups said. They argued that ITU is vulnerable to "harmful types of politicization, as states and regional coalitions seek to leverage this forum to grab greater control over Internet policy and standards development." The groups said ITU's main goal is to facilitate interoperability of telecom infrastructure and therefore is limited in its expertise.
The MPAA identified close to two dozen linking and streaming websites, direct download cyberlockers and streaming video hosting services, website portals for piracy apps, peer-to-peer networks, advertising networks and hosting providers that it says represent the scope and nature of online content theft. A letter to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative spelling out "notorious markets" outside the U.S. made public Tuesday said streaming piracy enabled by piracy devices preloaded with software for viewing of movie and TV programming is "an emerging global threat." It said the most popular such software is Kodi, and the growth of such piracy is "startling," with 6 percent of North American households having a Kodi device configured to access pirated content. Kodi didn't comment Wednesday. Streaming sites named include Sweden's Fmovies.is and Russia's Movie4k.tv, and direct download cyberlocker sites named include Ukraine's Nowvideos.sx. Website portals singled out in the MPAA letter include Thailand's IpPlayBox.tv and related sites, P2P networks include ThePirateBay.org and Switzerland's 1337x.to, hosting providers include Netbrella, and ad networks include Canada's WWWPromoter.
Requiring social media companies to disclose who sponsors political ads would be feasible and wouldn't pose free-speech problems, experts told us last week. Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Mark Warner, D-Va., want to require companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter to publicly file such reports, similar to FCC requirements on broadcasters and cable and satellite providers. Facebook recently revealed at least 3,000 political advertisements were linked to Russian interests seeking to influence the U.S. presidential election.
House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, is seeking information from Alphabet, Facebook and Twitter about online anti-fracking and anti-fossil fuel advertisements or promotions bought by Russian entities, said a committee news release Wednesday. Facebook disclosed Russian entities bought more than $100,000 in social media ads to influence U.S. politics. In letters to the CEOs of each company, Smith wrote Russia "likely" took a similar effort to use social media to influence the U.S. energy market. Such sites can "serve as an effective propaganda arm conveying specific messages to geographically targeted audiences," wrote Smith.
Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and the two top House Commerce Committee Democrats urged FCC Chairman Ajit Pai Monday to investigate media reports that Russian government-owned radio network Sputnik has broadcast propaganda over U.S. airwaves in a bid to influence elections, including the 2016 presidential contest. House Commerce ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., and House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Michael Doyle, D-Pa., also signed. Doyle and Eshoo previously asked the FCC about concerns about Russian government-owned TV outlet Russia Today’s role in influencing the 2016 election (see 1703150066). Washington, D.C.-area residents “need only tune their radios to 105.5 FM [Sputnik’s only terrestrial U.S. transmitter] to hear the Russian government’s effort to influence U.S. policy,” the Democratic lawmakers wrote. “Disturbingly, this means the Kremlin’s propaganda messages are being broadcast over a license granted by the FCC.” If Sputnik “is in fact being used as a tool by the Russian government to undermine” the integrity of U.S. elections, the outlet “is directly violating the public interest standard of the Communications Act,” the lawmakers said. They asked whether the FCC is investigating any broadcast licensees for retransmitting Russian government propaganda aimed at influencing U.S. elections and if not, whether the agency will investigate now and “commit to enforcing the public interest standard on stations that broadcast Sputnik.” Reston Translator, which owns 105.5 FM, leased the frequency to Sputnik through the end of 2019, said Womble Carlyle radio attorney John Garziglia, who co-owns Reston. Sputnik began broadcasting on 105.5 FM this year. The decision to lease 105.5 FM to Sputnik was entirely a “business deal” for Reston and if the FCC decides Sputnik’s content isn’t suitable for broadcast, “I’m going to abide by that,” Garziglia told us: Such a government action would appear to “impact our First Amendment rights.” Sputnik represents one viewpoint and the airwaves have broadcasters that espouse views across the political spectrum, Garziglia said. The FCC and Sputnik didn’t comment.
A shortage of experienced broadcast tower crews to do the work required for the post-incentive auction repacking likely means the FCC's deadline won't be met, tower company executives and broadcast equipment manufacturers told us. Though equipment manufacturers such as Dielectric and GatesAir told us they were able to ramp up production to be ready to meet the heavy demands of repacking broadcasters, there’s no practical way to create more experienced tower workers required to install that equipment on the tallest TV towers, they said. Combined with challenges of upgrading existing towers and concerns about the weather, industry officials are skeptical the repacking can be accomplished in the 39-month time frame laid out by the FCC. “I think it will take more like five to seven years,” said Kevin Barber, CEO of Texas-based tower company Tower King II.
The commercial space universe is still awaiting its own "devil's rope" -- also known as barbed wire, the invention of which allowed the homesteading and settling of the American West -- to drive more space utilization, said Space Foundation Director-Research and Analytics Micah Walter-Range at a foundation event Tuesday. He said NASA technology development and transfer of that tech to the commercial sphere could be a key policy for helping drive the domestic space industry. He said challenges facing the Russian launch industry could extend for some time, with Russia -- which usually dominates the space launch market -- accounting for 17 launches last year, vs. 22 each in China and the U.S. That loss of market share continued into 2017, he said, with Russia facing possibly its smallest number of launches since the early 1960s. But the Russian launch industry took a nose dive after the fall of the Soviet Union and eventually rebounded, Walter-Range said. He said talk of an emerging Chinese commercial launch industry will likely follow similar models some other nations have followed, with government-supplied vehicles and a commercial marketing arm. Meanwhile, the U.S. workforce dedicated to space is seemingly declining -- compared with employment growth in Europe and Japan -- likely due more to the sector becoming increasingly integrated with other industries so counting jobs that are purely space becomes more problematic, Walter-Range said. He said Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, with the $1 billion in company stock he's cashing out annually for Blue Origin operations, gives him the 10th or 12th largest space budget on the planet, depending on how U.S. agency spending is counted. Walter-Range said the 232 satellites launched in 2016 marked the second consecutive year of declines, mostly due not to a particular downturn in the market but nanosatellite constellations causing a statistical blip.
With nearly 10 million net neutrality docket comments before the FCC, it’s unclear what exactly the agency plans to do with them. Those on both sides of the debate agree the FCC should act quickly to toss junk comments, they said in interviews this week. Replies were due Monday night.