The FCC Communication Systems Analysis Division called in cybersecurity experts from USTelecom, AT&T, Qwest and Verizon for a meeting Oct. 22, a USTelecom ex parte filing said. They discussed cybersecurity and the commission’s “broader goals of collecting information on the resiliency of networks to withstand cyber attacks,” USTelecom said. The FCC is looking to “broaden its role” in cybersecurity, and it called the industry providers in to get their opinions, a USTelecom spokesman said.
Adam Bender
Adam Bender, Deputy Managing Editor for Privacy Daily. Bender leads a team of journalists and reports on state privacy legislation, rulemaking and litigation. In previous roles at Communications Daily, he covered telecom and internet policy in the states, Congress and at the FCC. He has won awards for his reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), Specialized Information Publishers Association (SIPA) and the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW). Bender studied print journalism at American University and is the author of multiple dystopian sci-fi novels. Keep up to date with Bender by reading his blog and following him on social media including Bluesky, Mastodon and LinkedIn.
Supercomm organizers hoped to bring “stability” to the annual trade show this year, Managing Director Jan Maciejewski said in an interview. Supercomm has had a complicated history -- “owned by one association, owned by another, joined together, split,” he acknowledged. “We wanted to give it a clear direction,” including by ending the annual guessing game on what the name and location of the show will be, he said. The management has already announced that next year’s show will be back in Chicago, Oct. 26-28. Final numbers on 2009 attendance and exhibit rentals haven’t been released, Maciejewski said. “Before we opened we were tracking ahead of our expectations,” he said. If the trend held up, “we should all be satisfied with what we've done.” Maciejewski said “some people have challenged me about which companies are here and which are not, and my response is very straightforward: The industry changes and therefore people choose to be in or not depending on how we drive the show and what’s in vogue and where developments are.” He predicted that a growing number of applications and services companies will participate “as we develop the show.” Supercomm staff held focus groups throughout the three days, but the results have yet to be released. “Every piece of feedback that I've had has been outstanding” on the keynote speakers and other show content, Maciejewski said. A meeting after the show is planned with exhibitors to get their comments about the show, he said: “We will listen to them and develop it from there.”
U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra called for a “commonwealth” approach in which government and businesses come together on friendly terms to advance the “common good.” Under this approach, laws aren’t always needed to effect positive change, he said in a keynote at Supercomm. In another keynote, Cox President Patrick Esser advocated a public-private approach to spur broadband adoption. Meanwhile, an AT&T executive warned that regulatory uncertainty could undermine investment by the telecom industry.
CHICAGO -- The need for a long-term and “holistic” commitment to spurring broadband is the most important lesson to be learned from international broadband comparisons, FCC broadband plan coordinator Blair Levin said at Supercomm Wednesday afternoon. “If this is just kind of a one-shot deal, five years from now it will just be like an infinite number of other things” that people talked a lot about but never accomplished, he said.
CHICAGO -- The FCC’s National Broadband Plan presents an opportunity to take on long-awaited revamps for the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation, said industry executives on a panel Thursday at Supercomm. But analysts said they were skeptical. “The realist in me doesn’t think it’s going to happen,” said Moody’s analyst Gerald Granovsky.
Several telephone companies that serve prisons are facing a lawsuit by Millicorp, parent company of ConsCallHome.com, a controversial call routing service that reduces the cost of prisoner phone calls. Securus Technologies, one of the prison telcos named in the suit, has petitioned the FCC to ban such call routing services, which the company said threaten security and public safety (CD Sept 2 p5). The Millicorp suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida sought $75,000 in damages, plus declaratory and injunctive relief. Millicorp alleged that Securus, Global Tel Link, T-Netix and Evercom Systems committed common law tortious interference and civil conspiracy to commit tortious interference when they blocked calls to ConsCallHome. The telcos’ actions violate the 1934 Communications Act and 1996 Telecom Act, as well as various state unfair and deceptive trade practices acts and consumer protection laws, Millicorp said. “What we are trying to do is provide a cost effective solution for family members whose loved ones are incarcerated,” President Timothy Meade said. “Paying upwards of $20 for a 15 minute phone call is a burden that our customers just cannot afford. The prison telephone providers are, as our lawsuit explains, simply put, not only inappropriately blocking these calls but they are also taking outrageous advantage of this targeted group of people with their monopolistic practices.” Stephanie Joyce, an Arent Fox attorney representing Securus, said the lawsuit is “wholly without merit.”
FCC Commissioner Michael Copps said he has grown increasingly convinced that disabilities access must be a critical part of the National Broadband Plan. He said the FCC commissioners have been invited to a commission hearing Nov. 6 at Gallaudet University on disability issues. Copps spoke at a daylong broadband staff workshop Tuesday on the topic, the second the commission has held on disability matters as it develops the plan.
Attendance at the fall CompTel show was “slightly down” from previous shows, CEO Jerry James said in an interview. The show had about 1,500 pre-registrations, like last year, but didn’t get as many on-site registrations as at previous conferences, he said. About 2,100 people attended the show in the spring. Exhibitors this fall rented nearly 115 booths, James said. That’s down from 142 in the spring and 150 last fall. CompTel’s numbers have been dropping since spring 2005, when 2,715 visited the show, with its 220 booths. But the CompTel show’s decline hasn’t been nearly as dramatic as that of Supercomm, a far bigger show centered on wireline that opens next week. That show’s attendance dropped by more than half from 2005 to 2008 (CD Sept 29 p1). Travel costs may have been a deterrent in the rough economy, but many companies came to CompTel anyway for the chance to meet several new customers in one place, James said. He added that he has heard that many deals were made at the conference. To keep members informed when they can’t make it to CompTel events, the association has started using new communications platforms, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, James said. “Any way we can communicate with our members what’s going on, we think that has value.”
ORLANDO -- The FCC broadband team has a “data problem” that’s making it more difficult to create a comprehensive cost model for the National Broadband Plan, deployment director Rob Curtis said at a regulatory workshop at the CompTel show Wednesday. He pleaded for his listeners to send the FCC the information that their companies use to make business decisions. That information is “fundamentally lacking in transparency at the FCC,” Curtis said. Meanwhile, an NTIA official provided new details on what worked and what didn’t in the first round of broadband stimulus funding.
ORLANDO, Fla. -- U.S. economic growth “is threatened by a regulatory structure that remains firmly planted in the past,” Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse said in a keynote Monday at the CompTel show. He urged policymakers to “correct regulations that direct money away from mobile broadband providers in order to protect incumbents and … preserve antiquated technologies.” Hesse also cautioned the FCC to avoid “unintended consequences” as it writes network neutrality rules.