Enterprise satellite communications are becoming more intertwined with terrestrial services, said Spacenet CEO Andreas Georgiou. “As alternative technology companies provide more competitive technologies for the enterprise world” the satellite-based market “has to contract,” he said on a panel at Satcon in New York. Very small aperture terminal network deployment has fallen as a result and Spacenet has started combining services, he said. The company uses hybrid networks to accommodate the terrestrial and satellite needs for customers.
The Open Internet Coalition (OIC) said the time has come for the FCC to finalize net neutrality rules and provide certainty for industry. OIC was one of the main parties during failed negotiations on net neutrality rules hosted by the FCC (CD Aug 6 p1). The comments came in response to a Sept. 1 FCC public notice seeking input on “two underdeveloped” issues -- application of the rules to mobile wireless and the impact of emerging specialized services offered by carriers.
The Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security made an agreement to let the two agencies share staff and intelligence to protect U.S. cyber networks. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said they signed a memorandum of agreement that will send Pentagon analysts to Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center. DHS, in turn, will send a full-time executive and a support team to the National Security Agency.
Wireless “bill shock” is not a small matter and many consumers have been hit with massive charges they didn’t expect when they opened their monthly bills, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said at a Center for American Progress event Wednesday. On the eve of an FCC vote on a rulemaking notice on whether the FCC should impose warning requirements on carriers, Genachowski took the agency’s stand against bill surprises directly to the public.
A group of Arab and other countries are pushing to extend ITU work on ways to apportion revenue for providing international telecommunication services into the Internet. The U.S. and Europe want the work stopped. Arab countries want ITU to put on seminars to highlight the problems they're encountering. The proposals were made during a quadrennial ITU policy setting conference.
The FCC gave interested parties until Thursday to comment on two separate appeals, each of which challenge the commission’s decision in the Corr Wireless Order (CD Sept 7 p1). Both SouthernLINC and Allied Wireless Communications asked the commission to review the Corr decision. Oppositions to SouthernLINC’s petition were due Tuesday but oppositions on Allied’s petition aren’t due until Friday. The commission changed the comment deadline for both petitions to Thursday.
In developing a national cybersecurity strategy, Microsoft said the public and private sectors should look to the public health system as model. Executives met with the FCC Public Safety Bureau and the Office of Engineering and Technology. A cyber policy framework should focus on practices limiting the spread of botnets and maintaining the health of consumer devices, Microsoft said. While a public health approach can be applied to the health of information technology, other measures are needed and privacy can be impacted, some technology experts said.
A proposal by FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell for broadcasters to come up with their own standards on indecency has drawn some early interest from the TV industry but no pledges of the dialogue sought. FCC enforcement of its own indecency rules is restricted by a recent appeals court loss. The plan floated at the NAB radio show (CD Oct 1 p1) by McDowell, a Republican, hasn’t led to serious talks between the commission and industry, and neither side appears to have made an entreaty to the other to begin a conversation, commission and industry officials said. Some broadcasters are skeptical of McDowell’s plan -- which drew some support from one former FCC chairman even as another said it’s unworkable -- while others may be interested, executives and government officials said.
The European Commission, in the final version of guidelines for standards-setting activity, due by year-end, may loosen requirements for safe-harbor protection from competition laws and make clearer that it isn’t the only way to avoid legal trouble, a commission official said Wednesday. The changes will respond to criticisms of the commission’s draft guidelines on standard-setting, issued in May, said the official, Per Hellstrom, the head of the EC’s antitrust unit on information technology, the Internet and consumer electronics. A large number of comments were filed before a June 25 deadline, Hellstrom said.
Successful government partnerships with commercial satellite operators for hosted payloads will require the government to step back and let the commercial processes move forward effectively, said CEO Tip Osterhaler of SES World Skies Government Solutions. Governmental oversight procedures can slow the efficiency, he told the Satcon conference in New York. For example, the Wideband Global SATCOM system, which is being built by Boeing, has allowed around 500 government employees access at the facility, Osterhaler said. “That’s a lot of oversight."