TheNewsGuru

Tag: FCC

  • Trump moves to block China Mobile’s U.S. entry on security concerns

    The United States Government has moved to block China Mobile from offering services to the U.S. telecommunications market, recommending its application be rejected because the firm posed national security risks.

    “The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should deny the state-owned China Mobile’s 2011 application.

    “The application is to offer telecommunication services between the United States and other countries, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) said in a statement posted on its website.

    “After significant engagement with China Mobile, concerns about increased risks to U.S. law enforcement and national security interests were unable to be resolved,’’ said the statement.

    It quoted David Redl, Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information at the U.S. Department of Commerce, which NTIA is part of.

    China Mobile, the world’s largest telecom carrier with 899 million subscribers, did not immediately respond to media request for comment on Tuesday.

    However, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Lu Kang, in response to a question about China Mobile at a daily briefing, said: “We urge the relevant side in the United States to abandon Cold War thinking and zero-sum games’’.

    China always encourages its companies to operate in accordance with market rules and to respect the laws of the countries it operates in, he said.

    He added that the United States should stop putting “unreasonable pressure” on Chinese firms.

    The move by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to block China Mobile comes amid growing trade frictions between the two countries.

    The United States is set to impose tariffs on $34 billion worth of goods from China on July 6, which Beijing is expected to respond to with tariffs of its own.

     

  • Federal Character: Obaseki tasks commission on compliance

    The Governor of Edo State, Mr Godwin Obaseki, has urged the Federal Character Commission (FCC) to set up a compliance unit that will monitor the distribution of federal government appointments and infrastructural facilities across the country, in line with the principle of federal character.

    Obaseki made the call on Thursday, at the commission’s seminar for South-South Zone, with the theme: The Spread of Socio-economic and Infrastructural Facilities – Need for Strategic Partnership with Stakeholders,” in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital.

    According to the governor, “we must constantly project a national outlook in the appointments of Nigerians into federal ministries and agencies and ensure that infrastructural facilities are evenly spread across the country. We must reinforce the principles of fairness, equity, justice, which form the tripod upon which the Federal Character Commission rests.

    “To ensure harmony in our polity, I will suggest that the Federal Character Commission establish a compliance monitoring department that will scrutinise federal government appointments and the distribution of infrastructural projects across the country. The compliance monitoring department should raise the red flag when the provisions of the Federal Character are abused or flouted.”

    Obaseki who was represented at the event by the Special Adviser on Special Duties, Yakubu Gowon, advised that “If appointments and infrastructures are skewed or tilted in favour of one part of the country or state, those from other parts of the country will feel short-changed and become agitated.”

    He said “stories abound of how some people abuse the provisions of the Federal Character. We learnt that some people fraudulently change their states of origin and take over appointment slots reserved for other states. This is condemnable.”

    On synergy, Obaseki told the commission “to strengthen synergy with the state governments and publicise its activities by advertising appointment slots regularly, so that the various state governments can utilise their respective slots. I recommend that similar strategy should be adopted in the allocation of infrastructural facilities.”

    He said: “There is a raging debate about whether the Federal Character Commission has outlived its usefulness and therefore should be scrapped. Some argue that the principle of federal character negates meritocracy, industry and creativity. My position is that, everything in life is dynamic. The only institutions that die with time, are those that refuse to modify their ways to keep steps with changing times and trends.

    “My recommendation is that the commission should be ready to reinvent its systems from time to time so that it is not left behind.

     

  • FCC approves SpaceX application for 4,425 broadband satellite network

    The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved an application by Space Exploration Holdings, doing business as SpaceX, to provide broadband services using satellite technology in the United States and around the world.

    This is as contained in FCC documents, and with this action, the Commission takes another step to increase high-speed broadband availability and competition in the United States.

    This is the first approval of a U.S.-licensed satellite constellation to provide broadband services using a new generation of low-Earth orbit satellite technologies.

    TheNewsGuru reports SpaceX proposed a satellite system comprised of 4,425 satellites and was granted authority to use frequencies in the Ka (20/30 GHz) and Ku (11/14 GHz) bands to provide global Internet connectivity.

    The Memorandum Opinion, Order and Authorization yesterday outlines the conditions under which SpaceX is authorized to provide service using its proposed NGSO FSS satellite constellation.

    Specifically, the Order specifies the conditions to ensure compliance with Commission rules, and to protect other operations in the requested frequency bands.

    Over the past year, the FCC has approved requests by OneWeb, Space Norway, and Telesat to access the United States market to provide broadband services using satellite technology that holds promise to expand Internet access, particularly in remote and rural areas across the country.

    These approvals are the first of their kind for a new generation of large, non-geostationary satellite orbit, fixed-satellite service systems, and the Commission continues to process other, similar requests.

     

  • FCC Chairman wants synergy with NASS

    The Acting Chairman, Federal Character Commission (FCC), Dr Shettima Abba, has called for close synergy between the commission, governors, National Assembly members and other stakeholders.

    This is contained in a statement issued on Monday by Mr Dipo Akinsola, Director, Public Affairs and Communication, FCC, Abuja.

    The acting chairman made the call at an engagement with the Senate Committee public hearing on FCC’s 2018 budget defence.

    Abba said this synergy was necessary in order to ensure that all anomalies in terms of under-representations are adequately addressed.

    He solicited for the assistance of the senators particularly from the states where the commission had no state officers to interface with the governors of those states.

    He said such collaboration would help the commission secure land to build its state offices, enable it meet its mandate of monitoring manpower, and even distribution of amenities and infrastructural facilities.

    The statement also quoted Abba debunking some media reports on Jan. 12 as telling the Senate Committee that Commissioners indulge in job racketeering.

    “The report was not true and did not represent what transpired at the Senate Committee hearing on the Federal Character Commission’s 2018 budget defence,’’ it said.

    It therefore advised the media to always seek for clarification before going to press, assuring that “our doors are always open’’.

     

  • US FCC website hit by attacks after Net Neutrality proposal

    US FCC website hit by attacks after Net Neutrality proposal

    The US Federal Communications Commission said Monday that its website was hit by deliberate denial of service attacks after the telecommunications regulator was criticized by comedian John Oliver for its plan to reverse net neutrality rules, according to a Reuters report.

    The attacks came soon after Oliver on Sunday urged viewers to file electronic comments with the FCC opposing the plan unveiled by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to reverse rules implemented under President Barack Obama that boosted government regulatory powers over internet service providers.

    According to NDTV, Pai’s plan faces an initial vote on May 18.

    Oliver in his HBO show Last Week Tonight owned by Time Warner urged viewers to use a website purchased by the show that takes visitors directly to an FCC page to file comments.

    The proposal has received more than 100,000 comments since Sunday, a sign of intense interest in a proposal that could reshape the future of the Internet.

    The FCC said it “was subject to multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks. These were deliberate attempts by external actors to bombard the FCC’s comment system with a high amount of traffic to our commercial cloud host.”

    The FCC added the attacks “made it difficult for legitimate commenters to access and file with the FCC.”

    The net neutrality rules, which the FCC put in place in 2015, prohibit broadband providers from giving or selling access to speedy internet, essentially a “fast lane,” to certain internet services over others. Pai wants comment on whether the FCC should retain rules governing provider conduct.

    The rules reclassified providers much like utilities. They were favoured by websites who said they guarantee equal Internet access but opposed by internet providers, who said they could eventually result in rate regulation, inhibit innovation and make it harder to manage traffic. Pai said he believed the rules depressed investment by providers and cost jobs.

    Oliver in 2014 helped galvanize support for net neutrality. The FCC then received more than 4 million comments, most in favour of the rules.

    On Sunday, Oliver harshly criticized Pai, saying he “plays dumb” about why Internet providers do not want net neutrality rules and called him “deeply disingenuous.”

    An FCC spokesman did not comment on Oliver’s remarks.

    One Internet provider, AT&T, which opposed the Obama rules, in October agreed to buy Time Warner for $85.4 billion.

  • US Appeals Court will not rehear Net Neutrality challenge

    US Appeals Court will not rehear Net Neutrality challenge

    A federal appeals court on Monday declined to rehear a challenge to the Obama administration’s landmark net neutrality rules requiring Internet providers to guarantee equal access to all websites.

    The decision by the full appeals court in Washington not to reconsider a three-judge panel’s decision that upheld the ruling comes days after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai proposed to undo the 2015 net neutrality that reclassified Internet providers like public utilities.

    The 2015 order bars Internet providers from blocking, throttling or giving “fast lanes” to some websites.

    Pai has proposed reversing the reclassification and scrapping Internet conduct standards, and has asked for comment on whether the FCC can or should retain any of the rules barring blocking, throttling or “fast lanes”.

    Judge Sri Srinivasan said in a written opinion reviewing the decision “would be particularly unwarranted at this point in light of the uncertainty surrounding the fate of the FCC’s order”.

    The FCC is set to hold an initial vote on May 18 on Pai’s proposal but Srinivasan questioned why the full court should review “the validity of a rule that the agency had already slated for replacement”.

    US Telecom, the trade group representing major telephone companies that sued the FCC in 2015 over the rules, said Monday it will “review our legal options going forward to fully protect our open Internet”.

    Two dissenting opinions said the 2015 order was unlawful because Congress did not grant the FCC authority to reclassify Internet providers.

    Judge Janice Rogers Brown said the order “shows signs of a government having grown beyond the consent of the governed”.

    Judge Brett Kavanagh wrote that the order violates the First Amendment rights of internet providers.

    “The government must keep its hands off the editorial decisions of Internet service providers,” he wrote, suggesting the government cannot force a bookstore or Amazon.com Inc “to feature and promote all books in the same manner”.

    In a statement Monday, Pai said the decision not to rehear the decision was expected and he praised points raised in the dissents.

    Websites like Facebook, Alphabet Inc and others back the rules, saying they guarantee equal access to the Internet.

    Internet providers such as AT&T, Verizon Communications and Comcast opposed the Obama order, saying it made it harder to manage Internet traffic and discouraged investment.

    Chip Pickering, head of the trade group INCOMPAS that includes Amazon, Facebook and Netflix, said the decision was a “blow to those who want to take away open Internet protections, raise prices and cut off the streaming revolution”.

     

     

     

    Source: NDTV