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  2. September 2016

September 2016

House Science Committee
Tuesday, September 13, 2016
10:00am
https://science.house.gov/legislation/hearings/full-committee-hearing-pr...
Also see: https://science.house.gov/sites/republicans.science.house.gov/files/docu...

The purpose of the hearing is to review the current voluntary guidelines for protecting voting and election systems, and whether such guidelines and protections are being effectively implemented in advance of the upcoming elections. This review will include the security of the election system in its entirety, including the security of: electronic voting machines, votes transmitted over the internet through email or e-fax, voter registration databases, and vote tally databases. In addition, the hearing will address the research and development that is underway to protect future voting and election systems.

Witnesses

  • Dr. Charles H. Romine, Director, Information Technology Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology
  • Hon. Tom Schedler, Secretary of State, State of Louisiana
  • Mr. David Becker, Executive Director, The Center for Election Innovation & Research
  • Dr. Dan S. Wallach, Professor, Department of Computer Science and Rice Scholar, Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice University

President Obama Nominates David Arroyo for CPB Board

President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate David J. Arroyo to be a member of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Board of Directors.

Arroyo is Senior Vice President and Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer at Scripps Networks Interactive, where he has worked since 2004. Arroyo was an Associate at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher from 2000 to 2004. He served as a Law Clerk for Judge James G. Carr in the United States District Court from 1999 to 2000 and as an Associate at Kirkland & Ellis from 1996 to 1999. Arroyo was Chairman of the Board of Latino Justice from 2008 to 2012 and received the Luminary Award from the National Association of Multi-Ethnicity in Communications in 2010. He was first appointed to the Board of Directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 2014. Arroyo received a B.A. from Duke University and a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School.

Laboring Away: FCC Proposes TV Set-Top Rules and Lawmakers Feud Over Internet Transition

Washington is back in full-swing after the Labor Day holiday. Congress is in session, elections are heating up, and the Federal Communications Commission released its “robust and diverse agenda” for its September 29 open meeting. Headlining the FCC meeting are proposed rules to unlock the TV set-top box marketplace, rules that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler unveiled on Thursday. In Congress, several lawmakers called for a reconsideration of the ICANN Internet transition. One Member even launched a website with a countdown until “Obama gives away the Internet.” It’s good to be back, right?

Remarks of Angela Simpson at Fostering the Advancement of the Internet of Things Workshop

One of the things we tried to do at this event was to drill down deeper into the potential policy issues by exploring specific recommendations and discussing what types of government engagement might be beneficial. I think we have advanced the discussion on these issues so I want to thank all of the speakers, presenters, and audience participants for helping us do that. We plan to incorporate the valuable information we received from today’s discussion as we finalize a Department of Commerce policy green paper on Internet of Things (IoT), which will identify next steps for the Department and recommendations for the next Administration.

In addition, we are also actively addressing cybersecurity related to IoT, which we discussed here today and was one of the top issues identified by commenters in the RFC. Earlier this summer, we announced that we plan to launch a new multistakeholder process to support better consumer understanding of IoT products that support security upgrades. We are looking at the third week of October, most likely outside of the beltway, to launch that initiative. Stay tuned for more info on that. Also, stakeholders involved in NTIA’s process aimed at developing guidelines related to the disclosure of cybersecurity vulnerabilities are making good progress and appear on track to wrap up their work before the end of the year.

[Angela Simpson is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information at the US Patent and Trademark Office.]

Dycom: AT&T, CenturyLink’s FTTX plans are driven by customer demand, not Google Fiber

Google Fiber may have lit the fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) fire, but network construction company Dycom said that AT&T and CenturyLink’s ambitious FTTH expansion plans represent the consumer and business customer’s demand for higher speed bandwidth. Steven Nielsen, CEO of Dycom, told investors during this week’s DA Davidson 15th Annual Engineering & Construction Conference that AT&T and CenturyLink’s FTTH aren’t directly linked to Google Fiber’s actions. “Google Fiber is responding to the same factors for consumer demand for high bandwidth that the incumbents are,” Nielsen said. “They are the effect of the consumer demand and not the cause of other people spending because they are all reacting to the same environment.”

Nielsen added how a number of Canada’s key incumbent telecommunication and cable operators – a list that includes Bell, Telus, Shaw and Rogers – all stated they will enhance their fiber and broadband footprints. “In Canada where Google Fiber is not present, you have the exact same dynamic as you have here in the U.S.,” Nielsen said. AT&T and CenturyLink have set some ambitious targets for their FTTH deployments, a process that will represent potential new revenue streams for Dycom. During the second quarter, AT&T had only 2.2 million homes passed with fiber, a figure the telecommunication company expects to ramp to 2.6 million by the end of 2016.

Google Fiber’s tiny pay-TV subscriber numbers may explain why service is reportedly scaling back buildout

Delivering some hard subscriber data to indicate why Google Fiber is reportedly considering a pause, MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett said that the service had only 68,715 video subscribers at the end of June. “For those keeping score at home, that’s a little less than seven one hundredths of 1 percent of the US video market,” Moffett said.

The numbers come via a filing with the US Copyright Office – necessary for maintenance of a compulsory license for broadcast signals. With Google Fiber eschewing the release of customer metrics, the tiny market share in pay-TV services hints at the diminutive size of the overall business, and explains why the division has laid off half its staff and has stopped deploying its lines in new markets. Using a conservative estimate that only around 15 percent of Google Fiber subscribers also take video, Moffett estimated that the service would have had 453,000 broadband customers as of the end of June, representing less than one half of 1 percent of total US ISP customers.

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