press release

The Federal Communications Commission announces that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has approved, for a period of three years, the information collection requirements contained in the regulations in the .

The information collection requirements were approved on June 9, 2014 by OMB.

The Subcommittees on Communications and Technology and Health, chaired by Reps Greg Walden (R-OR) and Joe Pitts (R-PA), respectively, have scheduled a joint hearing for July 17, 2014.

The hearing is entitled “21st Century Technology for 21st Century Cures.” Witnesses to be announced.

“Remarkable advancements in technology are transforming health care as we know it. Companies embracing telemedicine and mHealth solutions can bring patients, researchers, and doctors together in ways we never could have imagined just a decade ago. Learning how we can update our laws to foster new technologies and harness the power of these innovations to accelerate and strengthen the discovery, development, and delivery cycle of new cures and treatments is exactly what our #CommActUpdate and 21st Century Cures initiatives are all about,” said full committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI). “The collaboration of the Health and Communications and Technology Subcommittees allows for an exciting conversation about what’s next and how we can best leverage our nation’s technological leadership to improve our health care system.”

Today, higher education and library organizations representing thousands of colleges, universities, and libraries nationwide released a joint set of Net Neutrality Principles they recommend form the basis of an upcoming Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decision to protect the openness of the Internet.

The groups -- which include the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), and the American Council on Education (ACE), among others -- believe network neutrality protections are essential to protecting freedom of speech, educational achievement, and economic growth. Libraries and institutions of higher education are leaders in creating, fostering, using, extending, and maximizing the potential of the Internet for research, education, and the public good.

These groups are extremely concerned that the recent court decision vacating two of the key “open Internet” rules creates an opportunity for Internet providers to block or degrade (e.g., arbitrarily slow) certain Internet traffic, or prioritize certain services, while relegating public interest services to the “slow lane.” At its best, the Internet is a platform for learning, collaboration, and interaction among students, faculty, library patrons, local communities, and the world.

Libraries and institutions of higher education make an enormous amount of Internet content available to the general public -- from basic distance learning classes to multimedia instruction, cloud computing, digitized historical databases, research around “big data,” and many other educational and civic resources -- all of which require an open Internet.

These groups support strong, enforceable rules to ensure that higher education and libraries can continue to deliver online educational and public interest content at a level of speed and quality on par with commercial providers.

The proposed principles call upon the FCC to ban blocking, degradation, and “paid prioritization”; ensure that the same rules apply to fixed and mobile broadband providers; promote greater transparency of broadband services; and prevent providers from treating similar customers in significantly different ways. The organizations support the FCC’s adoption of “net neutrality” policies to ensure that the Internet remains open to free speech, research, education and innovation.

The Federal Communications Commission 's Accessibility and Innovation Initiative will host a public event, "Accessing Social Media," on July 17, 2014, at FCC Headquarters, 445 12th Street, SW, Washington (DC).

The purpose of the event is to facilitate a collaborative, cross-sector exchange of information about making social media tools and content accessible to people with disabilities, including information about authoring tools, client apps and best practices. Among speakers in attendance will include representatives of the US Department of Labor, General Services Administration, and the American Association of People with Disabilities.

The American Library Association (ALA) and the Information Policy & Access Center (iPAC) at the University of Maryland College Park will gauge the quality of public access to the Internet in our nation’s public libraries in the summer of 2014.

The speed test study is a supplement to a three-year National Leadership Grant to the ALA Office for Research & Statistics from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and is supported by the Association of Rural and Small Libraries, the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies, the Public Library Association, and the Urban Libraries Council.

As part of its E-rate Program modernization effort, the Federal Communications Commission is gathering a range of data to inform changes in the program and better understand library and school broadband needs. ALA and other library organizations are sharing researched gathered from libraries nationwide, but the quality of broadband access inside library and school buildings has emerged as a leading concern that demands attention.

NTCA -- The Rural Broadband Association has unveiled a new advertising campaign touting rural telecommunications providers’ long and successful history of solving the challenges of distance and density in deploying networks and delivering quality, affordable services to the country’s most rural and remote communities.

The Washington, DC-focused advertising campaign includes digital, print and radio ads and extends through the end of 2014. Ad placements have begun with digital ads in the Technology Policy section of Politico.com and a print placement in Politico. Additional ads will appear in TheHill.com throughout the months of July and September.

For a look at the first ad in the series, visit the NTCA website. NTCA is launching the campaign to build awareness of rural broadband providers’ extraordinary efforts to deploy advanced networks that make rural markets vibrant places to live, work, raise a family and educate rural children.

As solution providers and entrepreneurs serving areas long ago left behind by larger providers, rural broadband providers have been and remain singularly focused on ensuring that millions of households and businesses in the most sparsely populated pockets of the country benefit and share in the prosperity that comes with modern telecommunications technology.

Key trends in the US smartphone industry for May 2014: Apple ranked as the top smartphone manufacturer with 41.9 percent original equipment manufacturer (OEM) market share, while Google Android led as the #1 smartphone platform with 52.1 percent platform market share. Facebook ranked as the top individual smartphone app.

169 million people in the US owned smartphones (70 percent mobile market penetration) during the three months ending in May, up 4 percent since February. Apple ranked as the top OEM with 41.9 percent of US smartphone subscribers (up 0.6 percentage points from February). Samsung ranked second with 27.8 percent market share (up 0.8 percentage points), followed by LG with 6.5 percent, Motorola with 6.3 percent and HTC with 5.1 percent.

Android ranked as the top smartphone platform in May with 52.1 percent market share, followed by Apple with 41.9 percent (up 0.6 percentage points from February), Microsoft with 3.4 percent, BlackBerry with 2.3 percent and Symbian with 0.1 percent.

The Federal Communications Commission’s Enforcement Bureau announced that Katherine Winfree has joined the Bureau as Chief of Staff. Winfree previously served as the Chief Deputy Attorney General for the State of Maryland -- the second highest law enforcement officer in the state.

Winfree is a nationally recognized leader in the area of prosecution and law enforcement. During her time as Chief Deputy Attorney General, Winfree supervised the 32 divisions of the Maryland Attorney General’s Office. In 2013, she successfully represented the state before the US Supreme Court in Maryland v. King, in which the Court upheld the constitutionality of the Maryland DNA Collection Act.

Before joining the Maryland Attorney General’s office, Winfree served for nearly two decades as a federal and state prosecutor, trying high-profile cases including federal public-corruption cases and the prosecution of the Beltway snipers, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo.

Among other roles with the US Department of Justice, she has worked in the Appellate Section of the Criminal Division and has served as Chief of the Economic Crime and Public Corruption Sections in the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.

Public Knowledge, its partners in the global Our Fair Deal coalition, and a diverse international network of businesses, creators, innovators, start-ups, educators, libraries, archives, and users have released two new open letters to negotiators of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

The TPP is a highly secretive, supranational agreement reported to include copyright provisions that could significantly constrain access to information, impede legitimate online activity and innovation, and impair freedom of expression online. Members of the Our Fair Deal coalition are especially concerned that rules proposed in the intellectual property (IP) chapter of the TPP would reduce the ability of ordinary people to access information - seriously hindering innovation both on and offline.

Copyright provisions remain a major sticking point for the negotiations, and the coalition has warned negotiators about the negative impacts these provisions would have on their respective countries.

The National Association of Broadcasters announced that Robert Weller, the Federal Communications Commission's Chief of Technical Analysis, will join NAB as Vice President, Spectrum Policy on July 28, 2014.

He will report to Rick Kaplan, Executive Vice President of Strategic Planning.

Since 2008, Weller has led the FCC's group tasked with rulemaking and analysis of spectrum policy areas, including radio propagation, interference, RF safety, frequency allotments and new technologies. He has also served as the technical lead on broadcast coverage and interference issues during the Commission's broadcast spectrum incentive auction proceeding.

Weller first joined the FCC in 1984 as a radio inspector in its San Francisco Field Office before departing in 1993 as director of its Denver District Office. Prior to rejoining the FCC's Office of Engineering and Technology in 2007, Weller spent 14 years with the consulting firm of Hammett & Edison, where he did work on broadcast systems engineering, emerging technologies, due diligence, and FCC rule-makings and applications.