Providers are scrambling to meet a Nov. 28 deadline by which interconnected VoIP providers must offer E-911 services, panelists said Thurs. at the VoIP E-911 Solution Summit in D.C. “Because only 33.6% of American counties have phase 2 wireless,” providers will need a lot of time and money to meet the deadline, said Rick Jones of the National Emergency Numbers Assn. (NENA). The FCC order said interconnected VoIP services must transmit all 911 calls with caller location and call-back number to a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), “even if through a third party or CLEC.” Many VoIP providers said they consider the FCC’s decision “aggressive.”
Tim Warren
Timothy Warren, Executive Managing Editor, Communications Daily. He previously led the International Trade Today editorial team from the time it was purchased by Warren Communications News in 2012 through the launch of Export Compliance Daily and Trade Law Daily. Tim is a 2005 graduate of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts and lives in Maryland with his wife and three kids.
A 3-judge panel of the U.S. Appeals Court, Chicago, dismissed a Dreamscape Designs claim that telecom company Affinity Network had overcharged its customers. In the Tues. ruling, the court said “federal tax law preempted Dreamscape’s claims.”
The FCC plans for Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) band allocation are unduly skewed toward broad channel blocks and larger geographic areas, MetroPCS told the FCC, according to a recent ex parte. The ex parte was one of several filed with the FCC on the issue, including by CTIA, which supports the FCC plan.
“Municipality-run broadband wireless systems are not necessary,” said Robert Griffen, vp and assoc. gen. counsel for strategic wireless projects at Verizon, during a panel discussion at the Wireless Communications Assn. (WCA) meeting Thurs. “Fierce competition will drive down the costs of broadband services,” he said.
By 2011, a billion more people will have access to telecommunications, due mainly to wireless industry expansion, said Ambassador David Gross, State Dept. international communications and information policy coordinator, at the Wireless Communications Assn. (WCA) conference. The rapid spread of wireless communications has had “significant political and cultural effects, and not just here,” Gross said. Internationally, the wireless boom has lent momentum to regions once decades behind the U.S. technologically, he said. Today more than 100 countries offer WiFi, with some 65,000 hot spots. To facilitate growth, it’s important to “promote competition and prevent excess regulation in other countries,” said Gross.
Municipalities should leave broadband networks to the private sector when competition is healthy, said financial and regulatory consultant Michael Balhoff in a debate at the Chamber of Commerce Wed. Although the Chamber had speakers on both sides of the issue, many in the business audience clearly seemed to oppose municipal networks. Introducing municipal networks would take significant amounts of business away from ILECs as well as CLECs, slowing or halting competition in the community, Balhoff said.
A focus on fiber-based collocation understates the abilities of competitors without unbundled network elements (UNE) access to transport, Verizon said in the latest round of comments on the petitions for reconsideration of UNE rules. Several commenters, however, defended the earlier FCC decision.
The proposed SBC-AT&T and Verizon-MCI mergers would hurt competition and business in general, the Alliance for Competition in Telecom (ACTel) said Tues. ACTel, made up of smaller telecom competitors, was created solely to prevent the deals from happening and has petitioned the FCC to stop them. ACTel also plans to take its case to the Justice Dept.