The FCC could resume fining broadcasters for airing a single obscenity or indecent scene under a bill introduced Tuesday. The Protecting Children from Indecent Programming Act (HR-3559) is sponsored by Reps. Chip Pickering, R-Miss., Jim Matheson, D-Utah, Mike McIntyre, D-N.C., and Joseph Pitt, R-Pa. It resembles legislation passed by the Senate Commerce Committee that also would effectively void a ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York remanding the fleeting expletive policy to the FCC. That bill, S-1780, “awaits action on the Senate floor,” said a press release from Pickering’s office. Broadcasters have fretted that the measure would have a “chilling effect” on creativity (CD July 19 p8). The ACLU said Wednesday that the House bill “treads on the First Amendment.” But the Parents TV Council praised the legislation. No vote has been set in the House Commerce Committee, but Pickering believes his bill will get “strong support,” his spokeswoman said.
SAN FRANCISCO -- Intel wants to put “the whole Internet in your pocket,” said Anand Chandrasekher, the company’s senior vice president for its ultra mobility group. “It requires some major, major innovation,” he said. “It is not possible today.” To help get there, Intel plans by 2009 or 2010 to halve its component size and power use and to cut idle power use 90 percent, Chandrasekher said Wednesday at the Intel Developer Forum. The Moorestown technology platform delivering that will bring portable devices great improvement in graphics, video and memory, he said.
A bill to make federal do-not-call listings permanent was introduced formally Monday by Reps. Mike Doyle, D-Pa., and Chip Pickering, R-Miss. Doyle, vice chairman of the House Telecom Subcommittee, said “over 50 million phone numbers will be purged from the Do Not Call registry” if Congress doesn’t act. Listings last five years, and many people who signed up when the registry debuted again may be inundated with unwanted calls, Doyle said. The Senate Commerce Committee in early August approved S-781, requiring the Federal Trade Commission to renew the registry, which expires in summer 2008. The FTC promised at the Senate markup of S-781 to run an education campaign encouraging people to reregister. A permanent extension “makes more sense” than requiring people to keep signing up, he said.
Cellphone manufacturers are increasingly being asked to pack more features into smaller handsets, and regulators must keep in mind the technical issues raised by the orders they hand down, Steve Sharkey, director of spectrum and standards strategy at Motorola said Tuesday at the Washington spectrum management conference sponsored by Law Seminars International.
A precedent-setting court order staying the International Trade Commission Qualcomm chip ban for third parties is “very good news” for T-Mobile but a long term “concern” for the ITC and patent holders, officials told Communications Daily Thursday. Late Wednesday, the U.S. Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit ordered a partial stay of the ITC limited exclusion order against Qualcomm chips that infringe Broadcom patents. The ruling could be a “harbinger for a favorable final decision” for Qualcomm, a Stifel Nicolaus analyst said.
GENEVA -- Voice revenue is crucial to getting Next Generation Networks into developing countries, as regulators, operators and consumers watch to see whether new technology can deliver lower prices while attracting required investment. NGNs in developing countries are likely to be built new, not overlaid on existing networks, said Tim Kelly, head of the ITU’s Telecom Standardization Policy Division. Doubts persist over NGN business models, he said during a workshop Monday and Tuesday on multimedia and NGN. “The business case is not yet proven,” he added.
Atheros Xspan chips infringe ArrayComm patents, ArrayComm alleged in a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas. ArrayComm wants the court to award damages, an injunction and attorney’s fees for “willful” infringement of three patents related to multiantenna signal processing, it said. “ArrayComm’s intellectual property is being “knowingly, willfully, and unfairly exploited,” said ArrayComm President Stephen Sifferman. His company said it had tried to resolve the dispute “amicably.” Company representatives met in January to discuss ArrayComm’s patents, the complaint said. ArrayComm said it “specifically advised Atheros” of the three patents and “focused on particular claims of those patents.” The companies again met Aug. 20 to discuss licensing of ArrayComm patents, but Atheros asserted that there was no infringement, ArrayComm said. When ArrayComm asked for evidence, Atheros “refused to provide any explanation,” it said. Going to court was ArrayComm’s only option, the complaint said: “ArrayComm is not aware of any further practical or reasonable testing that would definitively confirm” the infringement, it said. An Atheros spokesman downplayed the suit: “Though we have not yet had adequate opportunity to fully digest the complaint, we have reviewed the claims during our previous discussions with ArrayComm and we believe those claims are totally without merit.”
A program access rift between Cablevision and AT&T over whether AT&T’s U-verse service can carry the cable operator’s regional sports networks in Connecticut highlights a tension between IPTV providers and TV programmers in regard to video compression technologies. Among Cablevision’s main gripes about U-verse is the low bitrate at which AT&T delivers content, a recent FCC filing shows. Cablevision’s Rainbow programming unit provides programming to distributors in MPEG-2 format, long the cable industry standard. It worries that if AT&T decodes that signal, re-encoding in the more- advanced MPEG-4 format, too much data will be lost, degrading picture quality. AT&T has claimed that Cablevision is withholding its programming available to squelch competition. Vendors said the dispute also raises network management issues that IPTV service providers face.
The International Trade Commission voted to investigate whether Nokia’s 3G WCDMA handsets infringe InterDigital patents. The commission has “not yet made any decisions on the merits of the case,” it said in its announcement late Wednesday. A Nokia spokeswoman said the company would defend its rights, products and integrity. Regardless of the outcome, the investigation could hurt Nokia’s effort to persuade the commission to investigate Qualcomm, said Jay Sandvos, a lawyer with Bromberg and Sunstein.
DirecTV joined the HomePlug Powerline Alliance, a broadband-over-power line standards body. The satellite provider said it uses Intellon chips to enable customers to connect broadband services and home computers to its HD DVRs.