July 2015

Vandals keep snipping fiber optic cables in California with impunity

Vandals snipped another fiber optic cable line in the San Francisco Bay area, the 12th incident of its kind in the region over the past year. The latest attack occurred in the San Joaquin Valley town of Stockton (CA), disrupting Internet, mobile phone, and 911 service for tens of thousands of AT&T and Verizon customers in three counties east of San Francisco. Service was restored about a day after the incident on July 14. The FBI, which is investigating the attacks, has not stated a motive, but it said the attacks usually occur in remote areas where there are no surveillance cameras.

The initial attacks on California telecommunications lines began in July 2014. Whoever is responsible appears, for the moment, to be operating with impunity. AT&T said that the damage occurred to "1,200 feet of a fiber run that required 192 pairs of fiber to be re-fused. That's a ton of capacity. So this was a major trunk and 1,200 feet of it was damaged." The cable is about as thick as a finger and is encased in a hard, flexible conduit. The FBI said that whoever is responsible may appear as telecom maintenance workers or "possess tools consistent with that job role."

Comcast's Cohen: Netflix is ‘Ultimate Frenemy’

While the rest of the industry frets about the addition of more than 3 million Netflix subscriptions in the second quarter, Comcast senior executive vice president David Cohen said the streaming service has actually helped drive two of cable’s most profitable business lines -- broadband and content licensing. “Netflix is the ultimate frenemy,” Cohen said. Cohen added while some fear that more Netflix customers means less cable customers, he reminded the audience that reliable broadband is a crucial element of the streaming service. “Remember, you can’t get Netflix without broadband service,” Cohen said. “Those are 3 million customers of our broadband service.”

He added that Netflix also has contributed to the content side of the business, providing another significant stream of revenue for library content for both television series and films. While Cohen sees Netflix as a complement to Comcast’s cable offering, he acknowledges that streaming services, especially those that offer slimmer video packages like Sling TV and Sony PlayStation Vue, could potentially be more attractive to price-conscious consumers. “Part of this is a self-inflicted wound,” Cohen said. “We have made video too expensive.”

New Haven to Pursue Citywide Fiber-Optic Cable Network

The City Plan Commission gave the go-ahead to the Board of Alders to take the first steps toward bringing fiber-optic cable to every household in New Haven (CT). William Vallee Jr., the broadband project coordinator for the state, told the members that having access to a state-of-the-art open fiber-optic network that would reach every home and business is as important as building roads and bringing water and electricity to residents. A collaboration of municipalities put out a request for proposals for a private investor to work with cities to accomplish this and Macquarie Capital was selected to do it. Macquarie requires, as a condition to participate in what is the called CTgig Project, an interlocal agreement be signed among towns interesting in working with them.

New Haven would be the first to enter into an agreement for Macquarie to develop a citywide feasibility study to determine the baseline engineering data and design criteria and establish the probable costs of a fiber network in the city. The resolution states that despite the demand for gigabit-level access speeds, the current supply is either unavailable or prohibitively expensive. It states that it is up to the towns to work together to go around the current providers “who have largely ceased investing in advanced technologies due to huge sunk costs in legacy copper and coaxial cable infrastructure, leading these companies to merely harvest profits from their historical investments.” Vallee said New Haven is a prime city to get involved in this and get a feasibility study underway, and he credited Mayor Toni Harp’s interest in it.

EU Court Reins In Legal Battles Over Mobile-Phone Patents

The European Union’s top court set limits on the ability of mobile-phone makers owning key industry patents to use court injunctions to thwart competitors seeking to use the technology in their own equipment. Huawei Technologies Co. and other mobile-phone makers that own a so-called standard-essential patent can go to court seeking to bar rivals from using it -- or to ban their products -- only if they have met strict conditions, the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg ruled on July 16. Owners of such key patents that previously committed “to grant third parties a license on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms” can only seek an injunction if first they present to the alleged infringer “a specific written offer for a license,” the court said. The European Commission, the EU’s antitrust watchdog, has also sought to rein in patent abuses as Motorola Mobility, Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. trade victories in courts across the world on intellectual property. Industry-standard technology helps ensure products such as mobile-phone antennas and global-positioning system software can operate together when made by different manufacturers.

“This is the most important decision of the year in the field of patent enforcement and intellectual property,” said Axel Walz, a Munich-based lawyer specializing in IP and competition law with law firm King & Wood Mallesons. “It provides clear, useful guidelines for how the patent user and holder should behave” in disputes related to standard-essential patents, said Walz. “But the devil is in the details.”

FCC Reaches $17.5 Million Settlement with T-Mobile for Nationwide 911 Outages

The Federal Communications Commission's Enforcement Bureau has reached a $17.5 million settlement with T-Mobile, resolving an investigation into two 911 service outages that occurred on the company's national network in 2014. The separate but related outages, which together lasted approximately three hours, prevented T-Mobile customers from reaching first responders when making wireless 911 calls. As part of the settlement, T-Mobile has agreed to strengthen its 911 service procedures and to adopt robust compliance measures to ensure that it adheres to the FCC's 911 service reliability and outage notification rules in the future.

T-Mobile's networks suffered two 911 outages on August 8, 2014. Both T-Mobile outages were nationwide outages, affecting almost all of T-Mobile's then 50 million customers. Simply put, a T-Mobile customer dialing 911 during these outages would not have reached first responders. In its investigation, the Enforcement Bureau found that T-Mobile did not provide timely notification of the August 8, 2014, outages to all affected 911 call centers, as required by FCC rules. The investigation also found that the outages would have been avoided if T-Mobile had implemented appropriate safeguards in its 911 network architecture.

Remarks of FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai Before the Churchill Club

When some in our nation’s capital look at the over-the-top video business, they see companies that have somehow escaped their regulatory clutches. Even though online video has thrived precisely because of the government's hands-off approach, they view the Internet as too important not to regulate. And so they want to do for online video what many governments have done for -- or more accurately, to -- Uber or Airbnb.

In particular, the Federal Communications Commission's leadership has announced that this fall, the agency will consider classifying certain online video providers as multichannnel video programming distributors (MVPDs). I would like to make clear that I strongly oppose this proposal. Given the remarkable success of the over-the-top video industry, the burden should be on those who favor new regulations to prove what's wrong and explain why we should change. That case just hasn't been made. Amazon put it well when it told the FCC, "there has been no indication that additional regulation is needed to enable this new industry to grow and bring consumers even more benefits."

What the Heck Is The “Duplex Gap” And Why Has It Blown Up The July FCC Meeting?

[Commentary] Difficult as it is to believe, there are times in policy when issues do not break down simply by partisan interest or into neat categories like incumbents v. competitors or broadcasters v. wireless carriers. Sometimes -- and I know people are not gonna believe me on this -- issues break down on pure substance and require lots of really hard choices. So it is with the question of whether to put broadcasters in the duplex gap as part of the repacking plan in the incentive auction. Did your eyes glaze over yet? Heck, for most people, it’s gonna take a paragraph or two of explanation just to understand what that sentence means. But even if you don’t know what it means, you can understand enough for this basic summary:

Just about every stakeholder in the auction -- wireless carriers, broadcasters, wireless microphone users, tech company supporters of using unlicensed spectrum in the broadcast bands, public interest groups -- all told the Federal Communications Commission not to put broadcasters in the duplex gap.
Nevertheless, the Auction Team proposed putting broadcasters in the duplex gap, based on a set of simulation that suggested that the FCC would only get back 50-60 MHz of spectrum to auction if they protected the duplex gap. The Chairman circulated a draft order adopting the Auction Team’s proposal.
Everybody freaked out. The Chairman found he did not have 3 votes, or possibly not even 2 votes, to adopt his proposal on duplex gap. The freak out is so intense and so bad that the FCC actually waived the Sunshine Period for this items so that interested parties can continue to talk to FCC staff and commissioners until the night before the meeting. The FCC also released additional data showing the impact would be limited to a relatively small number of cities.
That helped some, but not enough. Despite progress on negotiations, the FCC clearly did not have time to get to the right solution in the 5 days between the release of the new data and the actual vote. Also, a bunch of people were pissed that the Auction Team hadn’t released the data sooner, and hadn’t provided more explanation of the underlying model and the assumptions behind it.

In Policyland, this passes for high drama. It is, to say the least, highly unusual.

These senators wanted an FCC probe of Internet prices. They’re going to be disappointed.

If you were hoping the Federal Communications Commission would probe what Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has called the "ridiculous" prices charged by Internet providers to consumers, don't hold your breath. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said his agency lacks the kind of granular price data that Sen Sanders and three other Democratic senators asked for in a letter they sent to the FCC. In the letter, Sen Sanders -- along with Sens Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ed Markey (D-MA) and Al Franken (D-MN) said low competition and hard-to-understand fees were driving up the cost of Internet access for Americans. "Lack of choice has resulted in huge price increases and often poor service," the senators wrote. "There are now de facto communications monopolies throughout the United States."

To address the issue, they asked the FCC to investigate how much cable and Internet services go for in various markets around the country and requested the agency break down the numbers by speed tier, state, provider and urban and rural categories. But the FCC will have a problem giving the senators what they want. That's because the agency collects some data on cable pricing, but not at the level of granularity the senators asked for. And it doesn't collect any information whatsoever on broadband pricing. Telecommunication policy analysts say that what the FCC might do is simply send one of these prepared reports to Congress rather than supply the raw data, which would be difficult and expensive to pass along (and not completely responsive to the senators' request, for that matter).

Cutting the cable cord and embracing a digital media world

[Commentary] I have seen the future, and it doesn't have cable TV. Our house is undergoing some repairs, so we've been staying elsewhere. I've been using my tablet computer for online access to HBO, Showtime and the other premium networks that make up the bulk of my TV viewing. And you know what? It hasn't been the eye-straining, no-fun experience I'd been expecting. In fact, watching movies and shows while kicked back on the couch, my tablet resting on my tummy, has been rather pleasant.

That's bad news for Time Warner Cable, my service provider. If the company can't adapt to changing times and stop making me pay for hundreds of channels I never watch, it'll count me among the growing number of cord-cutters embracing a digital media world. "You have more control than ever before," acknowledged Mike Ananny, a professor at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. "I have to think Time Warner is aware of that."

Remarks of FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler For the LUS Fiber Ten Year Xtravaganza

I wish I could be with you today to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the public vote that established your community broadband network. I want to send special congratulations to Mayor Joey Durel and LUS Director Terry Huval, who had the foresight to understand the importance of this network to the future of Lafayette (LA) to survive and thrive in the emerging information-based global economy, and what the incumbents repeatedly declined.

As one of the nation's first community broadband networks, Lafayette has served as an example to other communities seeking to bring super-fast broadband to their citizens. So congratulations LUS Fiber on a hard earned 10th anniversary. We at the Federal Communications Commission wish you continued success for many years to come.

Benton

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