Jimm Phillips

​Delegates to the World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum (WTPF) Thursday adopted by consensus a non-binding report by ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré and six opinions from the ITU-initiated Informal Experts Group (IEG) on Internet-related issues. That ended the conference after extensive debate on governments’ role in Internet governance. Delegates chose not to act during the conference on a seventh opinion, introduced by Brazil but also containing controversial Internet governance language from an earlier Russian Federation contribution, because they couldn’t reach a consensus in the allotted time. Touré told delegates at the end of the conference that he would send that opinion to the ITU Council Working Group on international Internet-related public policy issues (CWG-Internet), which will decide on the best forum for continuing the debate.

The FCC’s upcoming incentive auctions will continue to be one of the Office of Engineering and Technology’s top priorities during the agency’s leadership transition, said OET Chief Julius Knapp Wednesday during a National Spectrum Management Association (NSMA) conference. The FCC would work on the incentive auctions “no matter who the chairman is” because the auction preparatory process involves statutory requirements, he said. The FCC and OET will remain as dedicated as ever to making more spectrum available for use, and there is “every reason to expect” that will continue under new leadership, Knapp said. The Obama administration is also hoping to make additional spectrum available by freeing up a total of 500 MHz of federal spectrum by 2020.

The U.S. patent system is not entirely broken, but reforms beyond the America Invents Act (AIA) are needed to fix issues the system continues to face, a group of current and former federal judges said Tuesday at an event sponsored by the Federalist Society and George Mason University School of Law’s Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property. The judges credited AIA, which Congress passed in 2011, with helping improve conditions at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO).

The U.S. and ITU hope to return to a more consensus-based approach to international telecom and Internet policy Tuesday when the ITU convenes the World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum (WTPF), industry and government officials told us. WTPF is the ITU’s first major telecom summit since the controversial World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), which met in Dubai in December. The WCIT, convened to update the treaty-level International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), resulted in a series of fractious votes and a revised treaty that only 89 ITU member nations signed. The U.S. was among the 55 nations that did not sign the ITRs, citing the existence of Internet governance-related language within the ITRs and in an attached non-binding resolution. The U.S. remains a signatory of the original ITRs adopted in 1988 (CD Dec 17 p1). WTPF will also tackle Internet-related topics, but industry insiders told us it will be a far different conference than WCIT.

Rapid growth in the Chinese telecom equipment manufacturing sector is a threat to U.S. national security because it’s a possible source of cyberattacks on U.S. communications infrastructure, said retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. John Adams in a report released Wednesday, commissioned by the lobbying and policy group Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM). The report said U.S. national security and the nation’s defense-industrial base are threatened by an over-reliance on foreign suppliers for “critical defense materials,” including telecom equipment (http://bit.ly/144fqnC). The AAM report follows the release earlier this week of a Defense Department report to Congress that said at least some cyberattacks on U.S. government and civilian computer networks “appear to be attributable directly to the Chinese government and military.” China is waging these attacks to gather information on U.S. defense, diplomatic and economic interests “that support U.S. national defense programs,” the Defense Department said in its report (http://1.usa.gov/13ecTZb). The Defense Department report makes it “all the more urgent” that the U.S. restore domestic production of telecom equipment and other equipment needed for military use, Adams said at a news conference Wednesday.

The FTC and the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division will continue to devote significant resources to examining competition issues in the technology sector, officials from both agencies said Tuesday during a Practising Law Institute seminar. FTC Chairman Edith Ramirez has been “very explicit” about her expectation that her agency will continue to focus on the high-tech sector, as well as the healthcare and energy markets, said Richard Feinstein, director of the FTC Competition Bureau. Those are areas where the agency has devoted most of its resources over the last decade, and no one should “expect that to change in the near term,” he said.

T-Mobile US emerged from last week’s merger of T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS having achieved its main goal in that deal -- gaining access to additional spectrum to expand its LTE network and other services to make it more competitive against Verizon Wireless, AT&T and Sprint Nextel. The merger, which closed Tuesday, increased T-Mobile’s average spectrum holdings in the top 25 U.S. markets from 63 MHz to 76 MHz (CD May 2 p9). The addition of MetroPCS’s spectrum, along with other recent spectrum deals, means T-Mobile is in a good position to meet its burgeoning spectrum requirements in the near-term. But industry experts told us the carrier is highly likely to be an active participant in upcoming auctions for additional spectrum, if the FCC implements acceptably pro-competitive rules.

The privacy and civil liberties protections being included in the White House’s Cybersecurity Framework are still in the early stages of development, but policy experts at leading privacy groups tell us they do not believe the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is likely to be a factor. Privacy groups criticized CISPA when the House passed it earlier this month because of what they saw as insufficient privacy protections (CD April 19 p6) . But those groups also see the Senate as unlikely to take up the bill, scuttling its chances of affecting the framework. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said Tuesday that he views CISPA as a “sort of useless bill” that “can’t guide us at all” (CD April 24 p12) . The committee did not respond to a request for further comment. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are collaborating to lead development of the Cybersecurity Framework, a set of standards and best practices, in response to President Barack Obama’s February cybersecurity order (CD Feb 14 p1) .

Sprint Nextel lost a net 560,000 subscribers during Q1, in part because of the continued exodus of subscribers from its Nextel platform. About 1.3 million subscribers remain on the Nextel platform, which Sprint still expects to shut down June 30, said Sprint CEO Dan Hesse Wednesday during a Q1 investor earnings call. Sprint added 12,000 subscribers to its own platform, well below analyst estimates of 110,000 to 275,000 additions. Sprint Chief Financial Officer Joseph Eutenauer attributed the losses partially to exiting business clients on the Nextel network who chose to also cancel related subscriptions on the Sprint platform. The carrier will remain focused on recapturing as many of the remaining 1.3 million subscribers on the Nextel platform as it can, though Eutenauer said earlier the carrier still expects it will only be able to recapture about 40 percent of those subscribers. Costs related to the shutdown will reach $500 million to $600 million during Q2, Sprint said.

If President Barack Obama appoints FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn as the agency’s interim chair upon FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s departure, addressing interoperability in the 700 MHz lower B block will be one of her “higher policy priorities,” said Louis Peraertz, Clyburn’s aide, during an FCBA event Tuesday. Earlier this month, the FCC Wireless Bureau extended the deadline for smaller carriers to build out on the band (CD April 9 p1). Clyburn is hoping to resolve interoperability “fairly quickly,” because it will give options to customers in urban and rural areas, Peraertz said. Interoperability is an important part of the agency’s band plan, but it’s also complicated, said Renee Gregory, Genachowski’s aide. Genachowski’s office continues to be engaged on the issue, she said. FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel believes issues with interoperability on the band demonstrate that the agency needs to ensure similar problems do not arise when they address the 600 MHz band, said David Goldman, Rosenworcel’s aide.