NASHVILLE -- The FCC should give states clear jurisdiction to set rates for unbundled network elements provided under section 271 of the Telecom Act, state regulators said on a CompTel panel Tuesday. States are the “most capable government entities to protect consumers,” said Arizona Corporation Commissioner Kris Mayes. States are closer to the people and know the competitive environment within their boundaries better than the FCC, agreed Tennessee Regulatory Authority Chairman Eddie Roberson. “I understand the justification for [federal] preemption, and maybe in some cases it’s appropriate, but I think that we need to go very slowly in that area.”
Adam Bender
Adam Bender, Senior Editor, is the state and local telecommunications reporter for Communications Daily, where he also has covered Congress and the Federal Communications Commission. He has won awards for his Warren Communications News reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists, Specialized Information Publishers Association and the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. Bender studied print journalism at American University and is the author of dystopian science-fiction novels. You can follow Bender at WatchAdam.blog and @WatchAdam on Twitter.
NASHVILLE -- It will be “tough” for Verizon to win an appeal of last year’s FCC decision denying it forbearance in six cities but nothing is certain, speakers at a CompTel forbearance roundtable said Tuesday. Verizon will likely “go right down the middle,” arguing that the FCC had enough data on facilities-based competition to justify granting forbearance and so it was “arbitrary and capricious” to deny, said lawyer Thomas Jones. Verizon likely will also reference a previous FCC decision to grant-in-part forbearance in Omaha and Anchorage, he said.
NASHVILLE -- CLECs must stay active on regulatory issues, executives told a CompTel panel late Monday. “Nothing could be more damaging to the Wall Street perspective of this industry” than a negative regulatory action, said Deltacom CEO Randy Curran. CIMCO CEO Bill Capraro agreed: “I love the saying, ‘Only the paranoid survive.'”
A federal court denied an AT&T motion to invalidate a patent ring-back tone developer Ring Plus said AT&T infringed, Ring Plus said Friday. The court denied the motion Feb. 13, saying AT&T didn’t provide clear and convincing evidence the patent wasn’t properly authenticated, the company said in a news release. The court also denied a Ring Plus cross-motion for summary judgement. Ring Plus failed to prove that no reasonable jury could find that Ring Plus’s patent included all elements of the allegedly infringing AT&T patent. Ring Plus filed the original complaint against Cingular in U.S. District Court in Marshall, Texas, in 2006. “We continue to believe the patent is invalid, and that will be an issue at trial,” an AT&T spokesman said. A Ring Plus motion to disqualify an AT&T lawyer is pending (CD Jan 7 p10). That motion “lacks merit,” the AT&T spokesman said.
The economy is slowing, but telecom still will “see a healthy uptick at home and abroad” the next three years, said Telecommunications Industry Association president Grant Seiffert as TIA released its 2008 Telecommunications Market Review & Forecast. TIA expects the global telecom market to grow 9.2 percent yearly, hitting $4.9 trillion in 2011, said Seiffert. Of that, the U.S. will contribute $1.3 trillion, with revenue growing 7.2 percent annually between now and then, he said.
Tight budgets, fewer federal workers and more resistance to supplementing staffs with contractors constrain federal network decision makers, Suss Consulting President Warren Suss said Wednesday at the Telemetrics Federal Networks conference. But service-oriented architecture and other cost-saving new technologies could provide a solution, he said in a keynote.
Major U.S. carriers are adding unlimited wireless minutes to their set of plan options. Hours after a Verizon Wireless announcement this morning saying such a plan was available yesterday (Tuesday), AT&T said it would match the offer starting Friday. About two hours later, T-Mobile said it too would sell unlimited minutes, but raised the $99.99 deal to include SMS. Sprint Nextel and Alltel are likely to follow, analysts said.
A national broadband strategy would fix many U.S. problems, even some that seem unrelated to telecom, FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein told an Alliance for Public Technology forum Friday. Broadband deployment may have greater unintended benefits than phone rollout did, he said: “The profits [carriers] get don’t capture all the benefits to a broader society.” Adelstein suggested a national broadband summit involving the executive and legislative branches, state and local governments and the private sector. Such a meeting would “elevate the debate” and “make it clear how much of a national priority this is.”
Limits may be needed on police searches and seizures as more people use iPhones and other smart electronic devices, Adam Gershowitz, professor at the South Texas College of Law, said in a paper. The doctrine of search incident to arrest - - intended to keep police and evidence safe -- can be read as allowing police to sift an iPhone’s e-mails, Internet browser history and other private data, all without a warrant, the paper said. Legal experts we talked with said the opportunity for abusing Fourth Amendment protections is real, but changing the law could be an uphill battle.
The next generation of the Internet is here, and federal agencies required to adopt IPv6 shouldn’t hesitate, panelists from Verizon, the General Services Administration and the Defense Department told an IPv6 conference Wednesday. Agencies must adopt IPv6 by June under a 2005 government mandate. “All the component parts necessary are in place -- virtual circuits, virtual routers, virtual apps, the identity management, security systems,” said Charles Lee, Verizon Business chief technology officer. “You know what’s missing? IPv6.” Without IPv6, “you can not achieve secure, mobile, peer-to-peer, global communications,” he said.