Friday, November 22, 2019
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USDA Invests $4.3 Million in Rural Broadband for New York Families
Alphabet's Loon Signs Deal to Bring Balloon-Powered Internet to Amazon Rainforest Region in Peru
FCC Commissioner Starks Report of the Find It, Fix It, Fund It Workshop
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Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the items below are tentatively on the agenda for the Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Thursday, Dec 12, 2019:
988: Suicide Prevention Hotline Number – The FCC will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would propose to designate 988 as the 3-digit number for a national suicide prevention and mental health crisis hotline. (WC Docket No. 18-336)
5.9 GHz Band Spectrum Use – The FCC will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would take a fresh and comprehensive look at the rules for the 5.9 GHz band and propose, among other things, to make the lower 45 MHz of the band available for unlicensed operations and to permit Cellular Vehicle to Everything (C-V2X) operations in the upper 20 megahertz of the band. (ET Docket No. 19-138)
Facilitating Shared Use in the 3.1-3.55 GHz Band – The FCC will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would seek comment on removing the existing non-federal allocations in the 3.3-3.55 GHz band as a step towards potential future shared use between federal incumbents and commercial users. (WT Docket No. 19-348)
VoIP Symmetry – The FCC will consider an Order on Remand and Declaratory Ruling that would promote continued investment in IP-based networks by clarifying that a local exchange carrier partnering with a VoIP provider may assess end office switched access charges only if the carrier or its VoIP partner provides a physical connection to the last-mile facilities used to serve the end user. (WC Docket No. 10-90, CC Docket No. 01-92)
Cable Service Change Notifications – The FCC will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would seek comment on modernizing requirements for notices cable operators must provide consumers and local franchise authorities. (MB Docket Nos. 19-347, 17-105)
Noncommercial & Low Power FM Station Licensing – The FCC will consider a Report and Order that would revise the Commission’s Noncommercial Educational Broadcast Station and Low Power FM Station comparative processing and licensing rules. (MB DocketNo. 19-3)
The FCC will also consider three enforcement actions.
US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Deputy Under Secretary for Rural Development Donald “DJ” LaVoy announced USDA has invested $4.3 million in high-speed broadband infrastructure that will create or improve rural e-Connectivity for more than 1,000 rural households on the Seneca Nation’s Cattaraugus Territory in western NY. This is one of many funding announcements in the first round of USDA’s ReConnect Pilot Program investments.
The Seneca Nation, through Seneca Telecommunications, will use a ReConnect Program grant to deploy a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband network capable of simultaneous transmission rates of 100 megabits per second (Mbps) or greater. The funded service area includes more than 1,000 households, 58 businesses, 25 farms, three educational facilities, one health care center and one critical community facility. The project will facilitate more access to services and information for local residents, and it will improve the overall quality of life for people on the Cattaraugus Territory and in the local community.
Loon and Internet Para Todos Perú (IpT) have reached an agreement to use high-altitude balloons to expand mobile internet access to parts of the Peruvian Amazonia. The companies aim to provide service to Telefónica customers in Peru in 2020. Loon is a subsidiary of Alphabet, the parent company of Google. IpT Perú is an open access wholesale rural mobile infrastructure operator owned by Telefónica, Facebook, IDB Invest and CAF which aims to help bridge the digital divide bringing mobile internet to remote populations where conventional telecom infrastructure deployment is not yet economically feasible. Loon and IpT will work together to serve parts of the Loreto Region (Peruvian Amazonia), one of the largest and most remote regions in the country, providing Telefónica customers with mobile internet coverage. According to Osiptel, the Peruvian telecom regulator, Internet penetration in Loreto is 100 times lower than in Lima. Loon and IpT will initially provide service in certain locations that make up around 15 percent of Loreto’s area and where nearly 200,000 people live. About a quarter of them lack 3G or better service, and many others lack any reliable mobile service at all outside of populated areas. The deployment of Loon in Peru will make it the first country in Latin America to use this innovative connectivity solution on a sustained, non-emergency basis.
On June 27, 2019, I convened a workshop at the Federal Communications Commission to consider security threats that stem from the presence of certain Chinese communications equipment in US networks and from the related services these companies provide. This workshop gathered the views of many stakeholders, particularly in the wireless communications ecosystem, including carriers, trade associations, manufacturers, and academics. Workshop participants shared their perspectives on network security issues and evaluated my proposal that we need to find untrustworthy and insecure communications equipment currently located in U.S. communications networks, fix the problems posed by this equipment, and help fund the process. Find it. Fix it. Fund it.
Thanks to participation of a wide variety of industry experts, this workshop helped to define the nature of threats to our communications networks posed by China and Chinese-manufactured communications equipment. They also point the way forward: finding and replacing untrustworthy equipment is a national problem that requires a national solution. I look forward to working with these stakeholders, leaders in government, and the communications industry as whole toward a comprehensive solution.
US Chief Technology Office Michael Kratsios has tapped Federal Communications Commission veteran Eric Burger to a top network security post. Burger, former Chief Technology Officer at the FCC, has been named assistant director for telecom and cybersecurity at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), where he will focus on 5G, broadband, and telecom. Before joining the FCC in Oct 2017, Burger was director of the Georgetown site of the NSF Security and Software Engineering Research Center in Washington, which deals with issues including robocalls, network deployment and network security and stability. Burger is also a former CTO at various public and private internet and telecom companies, including Nuestar, MCI, Texas Instruments, and Cable & Wireless.
Benton (www.benton.org) provides the only free, reliable, and non-partisan daily digest that curates and distributes news related to universal broadband, while connecting communications, democracy, and public interest issues. Posted Monday through Friday, this service provides updates on important industry developments, policy issues, and other related news events. While the summaries are factually accurate, their sometimes informal tone may not always represent the tone of the original articles. Headlines are compiled by Kevin Taglang (headlines AT benton DOT org) and Robbie McBeath (rmcbeath AT benton DOT org) — we welcome your comments.
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