Wireless companies should “get past” political friction in spectrum dealings with the FCC, and “get together from a national perspective,” Northrop Grumman Vp/CTO Robert Brammer said at the WCA conference. Wireless network security is a major safety and homeland security issue, and requires involvement beyond the govt.’s, he said: “We need much higher awareness of security issues. Don’t underestimate these security threats.”
Adam Bender
Adam Bender, Senior Editor, is the state and local telecommunications reporter for Communications Daily, where he also has covered Congress and the Federal Communications Commission. He has won awards for his Warren Communications News reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists, Specialized Information Publishers Association and the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. Bender studied print journalism at American University and is the author of dystopian science-fiction novels. You can follow Bender at WatchAdam.blog and @WatchAdam on Twitter.
AT&T will go after content pirates with new technology it’s developing with Viacom and other Hollywood companies, AT&T Senior Exec. Vp-External & Legislative Affairs James Cicconi told the L.A. Times. AT&T and the entertainment companies met last week to discuss the weapon, he said. “We are pleased that AT&T has decided to take such a strong, proactive position in protecting copyrights,” Viacom said: “AT&T’s support of strong anti-piracy efforts will be instrumental in developing a growing and vibrant digital marketplace and will help ensure that they have a steady stream of great creative content to deliver to their consumers.” Others voiced fear that such a mechanism would throttle users’ freedom of access to Internet content. Plans for copyright screens “fly in the face of the expectations of consumers to use their material more flexibly,” said Public Knowledge Pres. Gigi Sohn: “By attempting to act as the copyright police, the company is going to make its customers angry, even in a market in which customers have little choice of providers for high-speed Internet service.” Critics shouldn’t make assumptions about what the technology will be, an AT&T spokeswoman told Communications Daily; it doesn’t exist yet and last week’s meeting was “just discussion,” she said. In developing the screen, AT&T aims to balance Viacom and other companies’ needs to guard copyrighted data against consumers’ right to get legal material, she said.
AT&T’s “pure IP” backbone upgrade will be a “great platform for integrated, converged services,” Group Pres.- Operations Support John Stankey said Mon. at the Bear Stearns Conference in N.Y.C. And the wireless network is due for an upgrade, he said, predicting 3G coverage in “nearly all 100 top markets” by year-end.
The competitiveness of Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless will be hurt by the need to develop workarounds if the ITC’s Qualcomm ban isn’t overturned, Stifel Nicolaus analyst Rebecca Arbogast told Communications Daily. Investors say substitute devices could be created in 2 quarters, but carriers say it could take 1-2 years, Arbogast said. The reality is “probably somewhere in the middle,” she said.
Court costs, inefficiency and “degraded” marketing have dogged Vonage the last 12 months, Vonage CFO John Rego said Mon. at the Bear-Stearns Conference in N.Y.C. The company hopes new ads and services, coupled with a possible 4th Circuit overturn of the Verizon patent infringement decision, will make Vonage profitable, he said.
Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) judges Mon. denied all motions for rehearing by webcasters hoping to reverse a March 2 ruling to raise fees they pay to stream music online. The decision came as webcasters, musicians and independent record labels announced formation of a SaveNetRadio Coalition to rally support.
Campaigning to mobilize musicians for net neutrality, the Future of Music Coalition (FMC) Tues. announced a Rock The Net campaign and website, FutureOfMusic.org/RockTheNet. Rock The Net -- endorsed by House Telecom & Internet Subcommittee Chmn. Markey (D-Mass.), 26 bands and others -- maintains that indie musicians will suffer unless Congress stops AT&T, Verizon and other ISPs from charging websites for extra bandwidth. The campaign is “big, powerful and going to rock,” Markey said.
YouTube and other video websites are in multiple deals to bring new content online. Meanwhile, MySpace licensed content protection company Audible Magic to provide a filter that will keep users from uploading that content to their MySpace pages.