April 2012

The Federal Communications Commission today launched a new ‘bill shock’ website, an online tool to help consumers track implementation of recent commitments by wireless carriers to provide usage alerts before and after consumers exceed their plan limits.

Bill shock is a sudden and unexpected increase in monthly wireless bills that happens when consumers’ unknowingly exceeding plan limits for voice, data and text. Bill shock can also happen when consumers travel abroad and get hit with unexpected international roaming charges. A recent FCC survey found that 30 million Americans – or one in six wireless users – have experienced bill shock.

An attorney and some top broadcast group execs met with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski and Media Bureau staffers earlier this week to make a last-ditch pitch for their proposal to put aggregated political ad totals from candidates online, rather than individual ad buys.

The proposal was pitched earlier this year by Barrington Broadcasting Co., Belo Corp, Cox Media Group, Dispatch Broadcast Group, The E.W. Scripps Company, Gannett Broadcasting, Hearst Television, Meredith Broadcasting Group, Post-Newsweek, Stations, Raycom Media and Schurz Communications, as a win-win alternative to the FCC's proposal of putting individual spot prices online, which broadcasters strongly oppose. Attorney Jonathan Blake, representing the broadcasters, told the commission other broadcast groups had signaled they would be willing to support the compromise proposal.

With the House poised to consider a range of cybersecurity bills, a markup in the House Homeland Security Committee clearly showed that the panel's leaders fear they are just along for the ride.

Sponsors of the Homeland Security’s contribution to the cybersecurity debate, the Promoting and Enhancing Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Effectiveness Act of 2011, or the PrECISE Act, spent nearly five hours at the April 18 markup walking back proposals included in earlier versions of the bill. The bill was the product of more than a year of work and it cleared the Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies Subcommittee by a voice vote in February. On April 17, however, lead sponsor Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) introduced a substitute that significantly reduced the scope of the bill. The panel approved the amended bill 16-13.

As approved by the subcommittee, the PrECISE Act would have encouraged information sharing among businesses and government; give Homeland Security officials more oversight over some critical infrastructure networks; and provide for stricter privacy protections. But in response to pressure from House Republican leadership and members of the House Intelligence Committee, which has its own information-sharing bill, Rep Lungren dropped many of the critical infrastructure and DHS provisions. If those provisions hadn’t been trimmed, a visibly resigned Rep Lungren told disgruntled committee members, the bill would never make it to the floor and the Homeland Security Committee would have been sidelined. “That’s a fact of life,” he said.

Dish Network chairman Charlie Ergen wants to launch a stand-alone wireless business that would offer mobile broadband, text and voice services to compete against telecom giants AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

Ergen, who stepped down as Dish chief executive in June to focus on the mobile strategy, revealed details of that plan during a discussion at the Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "We have to start the wireless business outside of Dish Network, then we'll fold it in," he said. He said that, personally, he wants a phone that can be used for talking, texting and surfing the Web at the same time, and with a bill that he can understand. "I signed up for a plan from one of the carriers — it was $59, but my bill is $164.28 and it's like 18 pages long," he said. "I don't think the wireless business has to be that way. I think you can actually have a phone that works, and I think you can have a bill that you understand."