A high-ranking House Republican spurned the net neutrality bill introduced by her Democratic colleagues (CD Feb 4 p1). The bicameral legislation would restore, at least until the agency acts on a court remand, the net neutrality rules that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck down in a mid-January decision. “If the FCC follows through on President [Barack] Obama’s wishes they will be constructing an Internet Iron Curtain that will restrict our online freedom and serve as an industry job-killer,” House Commerce Committee Vice Chairman Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said in a statement Monday night. “It’s more than ironic that the same Administration that can’t figure out how to make Healthcare.Gov work now thinks that regulating the Internet like China and Russia will make things better for American consumers.” The bill, introduced Monday, is expected to be widely opposed by Republicans.
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:
Apple results in Q1 ended Dec. 28 were a mixed bag in which revenue grew from a year ago and iPad sales were strong, but profit was flat and iPhone sales, despite growing from a year ago, were weaker than some analysts had expected. Its North American business also “contracted somewhat” from Q1 last year and that “weighed” on its results, said CEO Tim Cook on an earnings call Monday. Apple shares closed 8 percent lower Tuesday at $506.50.
International Launch Services signed a contract with Gazprom Space Systems of Russia to launch the Yamal-601 satellite. The launch is scheduled for 2016, ILS said in a news release (http://bit.ly/1aN5y7a). The satellite will be built by Thales Alenia and will replace Yamal-202 to provide fixed communications and transmission services in C band over Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and Southeast Asia, it said. Positioned at 49 degrees east, Yamal-601 also is designed for development of business in Ku and Ka bands in the Russian market, ILS said.
Akamai Technologies will provide online video streaming delivery, site performance and security services to NBC during the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, it said. Akamai’s cloud-based digital media, site performance and security products “help make the entire online experience faster, scalable and more secure,” it said in a news release (http://bit.ly/19esuxE). NBC also will deliver video through NBCOlympics.com and the “NBC Sports Live Extra” mobile app, Akamai said. “These experiences are automatically optimized for viewing devices and network variability while enjoying protection against malicious traffic."
Britain’s communications sector compares favorably with that of 16 other nations around the world, the Office of Communications (Ofcom) said in its 2012 international communications report (http://xrl.us/bqaaxs). The study benchmarks the U.K. communications sector against other countries to see how it’s doing -- France, Germany, Italy, the U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland, Poland, Brazil, Russia, India and China. The survey found that the sector’s total global revenue, including telecom, TV, radio and post, was around $2 trillion last year, up 2.5 percent from 2011, it said. TV subscriptions generated the biggest and fastest-growing proportion of the total revenue, it said. Fixed-line connections continued to fall, but were most resilient in the U.K., where many customers still get broadband services over fixed lines, it said. Mobile takeup continued to exceed population size in all the countries surveyed except China, it said. Excluding Japan, which has a very high takeup of advanced feature phones not readily available in other countries, the U.S. was the only one to report a smartphone adoption level of less than 50 percent in Ofcom’s online survey, it said. People in the U.K. are most likely to trust online retailers than those in the other countries, it said. In the TV and audiovisual area, Brazil, Russia, India and China continued to have the largest annual growth, it said. The U.K. leads the way in digital conversion and was one of only three countries to have 100 percent of all main TV sets switched to digital in 2012, it said. U.K. consumers are embracing value-added services, with HDTV and digital video recording penetration the highest among the European nations included in the research, Ofcom said. British consumers are more likely to watch catch-up TV on smart TVs, mobile phones and tablets, but scheduled linear TV is also still popular, with Britons watching four hours per day, the regulator said. Other findings included: (1) U.K. residents are the most frequent online shoppers and the most likely to access TV content over the Internet. (2) Social networks are still among the most searched-for terms on the Internet, with Facebook the most searched-for term for 14 of the 17 comparison countries. (3) Mobile Internet users in the U.S. and U.K. are the most active social networkers. (4) Radio revenue was up for the third consecutive year in the 17 countries analyzed. (5) The U.K. had the second-lowest proportion of total telecom revenue generated by data services in 2012, with Japan leading the way.
The Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)’s formation of a panel on the future of global Internet cooperation in mid-November came in the midst of an increasingly important debate over the future of multistakeholder Internet governance, said stakeholders in interviews last week. “The future of Internet freedom really is at a crossroads,” said former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, a member of the new panel. Although ICANN was a catalyst for the group’s formation, the group is independent of ICANN (CD Nov 19 p17).
The FCC granted Global Data Systems 60-day special temporary authority to operate its very small aperture terminal network “with a relocated existing hub and new 9.4-meter and 7.2-meter hub antennas” in the 14.0-14.5 GHz and 11.7-12.2 GHz bands, said the International Bureau in a public notice (http://bit.ly/1fn4GcP). It granted SES’s application for a 30-day STA to communicate with a Netherlands-licensed satellite, NSS-806, at 47.5 degrees west location, it said. The STA is “for the limited purpose of characterizing the C-band interference environment” in the 6050-6258 MHz and 3825-4033 MHz bands, it said. Gogo requested special temporary authority to allow up to 15 earth stations aboard aircraft to communicate with Intelsat 904 and Eutelsat 172A satellites for coverage of Russia, said an application to the bureau (http://bit.ly/IiqUOt).
The controversial National Security Agency surveillance programs have created a “serious perception issue” for the U.S. as it tries to defend multistakeholder Internet governance on the international stage, State Department officials said during a news conference Wednesday. The NSA surveillance controversy was “the elephant in the room” last month at the International Governance Forum in Bali, Indonesia (CD Oct 28 p9). IGF participants raised “lots of questions” about the surveillance programs, said Scott Busby, deputy assistant secretary of state-democracy, human rights and labor. Part of the U.S. mission at the conference was to listen to international input as the White House reviews those programs, he said.
The ITU is set to approve two new recommendations on the future coordinated use of 401-403 MHz spectrum and revisions to four other recommendations that deal with space research earth station parameters for use in interference calculations and coordination procedures, data relay satellite systems, and on the importance of the radio quiet zone of the L2 Lagrange point for future space-based radio-astronomy missions, said the ITU Radiocommunication Bureau director in a letter to administrations. Comments are due Dec. 10. The new recommendations provide information on the current and future use of non-geostationary data collection systems (DCS) in 401-403 MHz, including “portioning” to allow all DCS systems equal access to the spectrum, it said. One new recommendation provides protection criteria for non-geosynchronous orbit data collection platforms in 401-403 MHz, it said. The second provides basic partitioning and sharing conditions for future long-term coordinated use of data collection systems on geostationary and non-geostationary systems in the meteorological satellite service and the Earth exploration satellite service. Protection criteria were proposed on the operation of data relay satellite systems, the letter said. Draft changes account for protection criteria parameter values used by the U.S., China and Russia, and for system users, for operation of data relay satellite systems, it said. Another draft change provides information on use of the radio-quiet environment and stable orbits at the L2 Lagrange point, and reiterates the importance of preserving the environment for future space-based radioastronomy missions, it said.
As World Trade Organization talks lurch forward in the lead-up to the WTO Bali ministerial summit in December, participant nations may deliver an Information Technology Agreement expansion deal that will eliminate ITA tariffs on a host of new information technology products, said industry officials. The Chinese aim to table a new product list that would fall under the agreement during the next ITA negotiation round in Geneva, the week of Oct. 21, said speakers at a National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC) event Tuesday and an Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) official in a blog post that day. The agreement hasn’t expanded since its inception in 1996 despite many IT industry developments.