Privacy is too complicated for California to understand, mobile industry panel says

28 October 2019 by Steve Blum
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Flashers

California’s consumer data privacy law will be the default privacy standard across the U.S., at least for the coming year, and that’s upsetting the Washington, D.C. crowd. A panel discussion on privacy legislation at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Los Angeles last week featured three industry lobbyists, the head of an industry front organisation and a Federal Trade Commission lawyer. All of them are based in D.C., and shared Beltway-centric advice on who should be calling the shots.… More

DISH matters, so CPUC’s T-Mobile/Sprint merger review expands, and extends into 2020

25 October 2019 by Steve Blum
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Dish kangaroos ces 5jan2015

T-Mobile was ordered yesterday to provide more details about how its proposed acquisition of Sprint and its spin off of subscribers, employees, stores, cell sites and spectrum to DISH will affect customers and communities in California. In a ruling, CPUC commissioner Clifford Rechtschaffen rejected T-Mobile’s insistent requests for immediate approval of the Sprint merger, and instead expanded the “scope” of the California Public Utilities Commission’s review to include a look at commitments the companies made to federal officials, including the side deal with DISH.… More

Samsung’s 5G small cell in a box solves aesthetics problems, for some people and some applications

24 October 2019 by Steve Blum
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Samsung 5g 28ghz unit 22oct2019

The most interesting thing on the exhibit floor at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Los Angeles might have been the dullest. Because it was so dull.

Samsung introduced a 28 GHz 5G small cell unit that packs antennas and electronics into a small, anonymous box that can be strapped to, say, a streetlight pole. According to a Samsung rep at the show, Verizon has already signed up to buy it.

As small cell facilities go, the box is tiny – two-thirds of a cubic foot, or about the size and shape of a toolbox.… More

FCC chair Pai makes the case for rural 5G and basic broadband infrastructure subsidies

23 October 2019 by Steve Blum
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Pai mwc la 2019 22oct2019

Ajit Pai was at his geeky best yesterday as he played the big room at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Los Angeles. The Federal Communications Commission chair focused on topics he knows well – spectrum, network security, infrastructure deployment, service access – and mostly steered clear of weaknesses that have rightly drawn down a deluge of criticism on him: local government operations, common carrier/net neutrality policy and a taste for industry cheerleading.… More

Mobile video viewing outruns desktops, is network capacity the next casualty?

22 October 2019 by Steve Blum
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Brightcove 2q2019 global video index

Demand for mobile bandwidth continues to boom, as mobile devices overtake desktop computers as the streaming video device of choice for the first time, according to a study by Brightcove, a maker of online video tools and platform services which also makes a habit of tracking such things.

Their Global Video Index for the second quarter of 2019 shows that more than half of global video viewing they can monitor is done on a smartphone (mostly) or tablet (not so much).… More

Study spots “third wave” of community broadband enthusiasm, but no swell of cash

21 October 2019 by Steve Blum
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Wipeout

A “third wave” of community broadband initiatives is developing in the United States, but before it’s surfable, state and federal policy changes are needed. That’s the conclusion of a paper written by Sharon Strover, Martin Riedl and Selena Dickey, of the University of Texas at Austin.

They identify barriers deliberately created by lobbyists working for major incumbents and their capture of policy making machinery – such as the Federal Communication Commission’s industry-dominated broadband deployment advisory committee which offered legislative recommendations that would “eliminate municipal broadband”.… More

Comcast games expiring VoIP regulation ban to win CPUC permission to cherry pick suburbs

18 October 2019 by Steve Blum
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Tesoro viejo 25aug2019

Comcast’s sideways pleading for permission to compete against a subsidised rural telephone company demonstrates why it was wise to allow California’s ban on voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) service regulation to expire. And why Comcast, along with Charter Communications, AT&T and Frontier Communications, handed so much cash offered highly intellectual arguments to California legislators in their failed (so far) attempt to extend the ban.

Ponderosa Telephone Company offers service in the foothills and the Sierra generally north and east of Fresno.… More

T-Mobile tells CPUC it does not “intend to address DISH’s fitness” in Sprint merger review

17 October 2019 by Steve Blum
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The Federal Communications Commission formally approved T-Mobile’s takeover of Sprint on Wednesday, but California’s blessing (or not) will almost certainly wait until sometime next year. How far into next year the California Public Utilities Commission’s review of the merger goes will depend on whether T-Mobile’s plan to transfer people, spectrum, stores and cell sites to DISH, to create a new U.S. mobile carrier to replace Sprint as a fourth competitor in the market, is deemed relevant.… More

Draft rules for businesses add enforcement detail to California’s consumer privacy law

16 October 2019 by Steve Blum
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Gagged by privacy

California’s tough consumer privacy law technically takes effect in January, but enforcement won’t begin until next July. The California attorney general has the job of writing the detailed rules that businesses will have to follow, and then enforcing those rules.

The first draft of those new rules was posted for public review and comment. They apply to businesses with more than $25 million in “annual gross revenues”, or collects or deals in “the personal information of 50,000 or more consumers, households, or devices”, or that deal in people’s personal information for a living.… More

Newsom vetoes California broadband development bills

15 October 2019 by Steve Blum
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Governor Gavin Newsom killed the only two bills on his desk that might have improved broadband infrastructure and service in California. The bills would have given broadband development mandates, of a sort, to three key state agencies: Caltrans, the department of water resources (DWR) and the department of food and agriculture (DFA). Newsom vetoed assembly bill 1212 last week, and AB 417 was one of dozens that died as he cleared his desk this weekend, ahead of the 30 day deadline for acting on this year’s legislation.… More