NCS NEARS PAS PILOT ROLLOUT, EXAMINES BROADER NETWORK SYSTEMS

Beyond PAS, Greene said NCS was examining wide array of security issues that included: (1) Working with FCC, NTIA and others on land mobile radio interoperability for emergency responder radios. (2) Assessing whether IP-based emergency notification systems were needed in light of homeland security advisory system announced by Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge 2 weeks ago. (3) Developing network security management issues such as simple network management protocol. (4) Achieving ability to get secure, rather than just closed, system in place for Signaling System-7, which Greene called “central nervous system” of phone system backbone. Point would be to create secure system “so the telephone backbone in the country couldn’t be taken down.” (5) Enabling domain name servers to communicate with one another. Routers that control traffic on Internet need to be secured so that traffic can’t be “corrupted and taken away,” he said. (6) Making last-mile systems “robust.” Greene said also under examination was “open source availability of data that could be utilized to identify critical nodes in our country.” NCS is mulling whether there’s need to find ways to “limit the access to some of that information and doing that in a balanced way so that people who need access to that information can get it.” NCS also is eyeing 802.11 technology.

FCC Chief of Staff Marsha MacBride, who is heading agency’s Homeland Security Policy Council, cited “post-911 conflict that we have between the many advantages of competitive markets and some of the challenges that they pose to us.” Clear benefit of competitive market is significant redundancy, she said. “That way, if you have a problem where you have problems with lines going down or other kinds of physical attacks, there are other people that can step in and fix it,” she said. To that end, MacBride said, recently revamped Network Reliability & Interoperability Council is looking at how to establish how certain types of equipment will be used in emergencies and how carriers can interface with competitors that have infrastructure. Challenge of increased competition is that those coordination issues become more complicated, she said. In N.Y., Verizon had “tremendous advantage” because it “owned enough pieces that it could sit at the top and put it all together,” with help of CLECs, she said. MacBride said that despite press coverage of new security issues raised by colocation facilities at LEC facilities, “we are relatively comfortable that that is not a huge issue at this point.”

On challenges involving broadband deployment, Victory said NTIA would work on creating best practices or identifying “valuable lessons” to help federal and state govts. administer public rights-of-way and other regulations. In discussing broadband demand and supply issues, similar perspective on public rights-of-way and tower siting was shared by Bell companies, CLECs, cable providers, cable overbuilders, wireless providers. “The view was that constraints on accessing public rights-of-way and tower sites may be inhibiting or at least delaying broadband network construction,” Victory said. “While most of the concerns were voiced about municipal and county activities in this area, federal agencies that own public lands were also identified as posing potential roadblocks to access.” Victory said rights-of-way regulatory issues raised by broadband providers included: (1) Delays, particularly in jurisdictions with “lengthy or unclear application processes.” (2) “Unreasonable fees,” particularly by jurisdictions that charged based on non-cost measures such as revenue. Victory cited as example jurisdictions that conditioned rights-of-way on carrier contribution of free network capacity. (3) 3rd tiers of regulation in local ordinances that replicated state procedures by requiring extensive disclosure of corporate plans, ownership, service plans. (4) Discriminatory treatment, in which certain jurisdictions may favor some competitors over others.

NCTA Senior Vp-Law & Regulatory Policy Daniel Brenner said during an earlier panel that cable companies weren’t capable of acting as Internet gatekeepers, as industry’s critics allege. He said some cable companies were beginning to offer their customers a choice of ISPs, but acknowledged that didn’t represent same choice as consumers who used dial- up connections have. However, he said that diversity in access plans had “nothing to do” with diversity of content because, once people were on Internet, they could click their way to any content they wanted. “If anything, cable modem service permits faster, ‘always on’ access to all Internet sites,” Brenner said. Only exception, he said, was situation in which provider had walled garden, but it typically was “a very short wall and it’s easy to jump over” to get to other content. Brenner also denied cable would act as “cyberspace sheriff” on content. However, CompTel Pres. Russell Frisby said unfettered access to content once on Internet didn’t justify restricting ISP access. “You can’t say that these restrictions won’t ultimately limit content, particularly given cable’s involvement in content,” he said.