Posted by: AT&T Blog Team on February 20, 2013 at 12:35 pm
Attribute the following to an AT&T spokesperson:
“AT&T is pleased that the FCC has adopted technical standards designed to protect our customers from interference caused by signal boosters while allowing well-designed boosters to remain in the marketplace. For these standards to be most effective, however, it is important that they are coupled with appropriate enforcement and consumer outreach.”
Posted by: AT&T Blog Team on February 20, 2013 at 12:35 pm
Attribute the following to an AT&T spokesperson:
“Clearing and auctioning spectrum below 3 GHz for exclusive, licensed use must remain a priority for the U.S. Government as we continue to seek ways to address the growing spectrum crunch and the ever growing demand for mobile broadband services. However, freeing up spectrum for unlicensed uses can also play an important role in more fully utilizing spectrum that is not ideal for mobile broadband use.
“AT&T has long recognized the value of unlicensed spectrum technologies, such as Wi-Fi, and we have built the nation’s largest Wi-Fi network. We fully support efforts to explore new unlicensed technologies that can play an important role in driving incremental network efficiency. Today’s action by the Commission is designed to do just that by making more unlicensed spectrum available in the 5 GHz band. It’s a step in the right direction, as is the Commission’s recent proposal to allow spectrum sharing in the 3.5 GHz band, as the industry tackles the insatiable demand for wireless services.”
Posted by: Bob Quinn on February 14, 2013 at 5:30 am
For anyone who thought that we didn’t need a comprehensive, focused inquiry on how to clear the path for communications to move from a TDM-based circuit switched world to an all-IP, broadband future, you must have noticed a ripple in the force last week (I won’t name names, but if you attended NARUC you heard from a few of them. That ripple, of course, was caused by the failure of the FCC to meet the statutory one-year deadline to decide a US Telecom petition that seeks forbearance from, among other things, rules which apply to carriers engaged in furnishing “radio-telegraph, wire-telegraph, or ocean-cable service,” and requires such carriers to maintain “separate files for each damage claim of a traffic nature.”
That’s right. One year was not enough time to determine whether we could finish making the move from the telegraph-era to the telephone-era. Apparently, this is tricky stuff.
But fear not, under the statute, the Commission is only allowed to extend the due date on this request for three more months, and I am confident that, given that extra time, the Commission will see the light and grant this relief. I mean, the telegraph part of US Telecom’s request was un-opposed. And Commission Staff has been recommending the revocation of that rule for 10 years, so the result should not be in doubt, right?? (I’ll keep knocking on wood just to be safe). But what the FCC ultimately does with telegraph rules is not the reason I am writing. It is the fact that regulations have a tendency to persist long after they outlived any usefulness and it takes real focus and effort to ultimately remove them from the books even when everyone agrees that it is the common sense thing to do.
