Jimm Phillips

President Barack Obama signed a cybersecurity executive order Friday to encourage cyberthreat information sharing between the private sector and the government and to effectively concentrate that sharing at the Department of Homeland Security. “There’s only one way to defend America from these cyber threats, and that is through government and industry working together, sharing appropriate information as true partners,” he said. The order represents an important step on improving cybersecurity, but isn't as far-reaching as a 2013 executive order that resulted in the production of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Cybersecurity Framework, industry executives and lawyers told us.

Emergency communications, the IP transition and net neutrality are expected to be the main telecom issues discussed at NARUC’s meeting in Washington, state officials and industry observers told us. The meeting is to unofficially begin Friday and run through Wednesday, with Telecom Committee sessions to begin Monday. The Telecom Committee is considering two resolutions, including one that would urge the FCC to continue collaborating with state utility regulators on issues included in the commission’s November IP transition NPRM. The other telecom resolution would seek expedited FCC approval of a 2009 petition from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) for state regulators to get state-specific access to the commission’s Network Outage Reporting System (NORS) (see 1502050039).

Verizon’s proposed sale of its wireline assets in California, Florida and Texas to Frontier Communications will face scrutiny from the FCC and two state utility regulators. The $10.54 billion deal, announced last week, is expected to double Frontier’s customer base (see 1502060059). The FCC didn’t comment. Verizon plans “to file at the appropriate regulatory agencies in due course, and we expect to close the transaction in the first half of 2016,” a spokesman said.

Local governments need to continue closely following changes to the cable franchising model that are likely to accelerate with continued growth in over-the-top services, NATOA President Tony Perez said Monday during a webinar. Recent OTT developments like the HBO Go service and Dish Network’s Sling TV service (see 1502090025) show that long-forestalled changes to the cable franchising model are beginning to take hold, and that “the pace of change is likely to accelerate over the next couple of months,” said Perez, director of Seattle’s Office of Cable Communications. A 2014 Seattle survey indicated cable subscribership in the city had dropped 13 percent in the preceding four years, with the rise in OTT options being seen as a primary factor, he said.

Verizon’s proposed sale of wireline assets in California, Florida and Texas and its plan to lease or sell more than 11,400 cell towers show the telco is continuing to increase its focus on its wireless business, industry analysts said Friday. Verizon said Thursday that it would sell its wireline assets in three states to Frontier Communications for $10.54 billion. The deal would add 3.7 million voice connections, 2.2 million broadband connections and 1.2 million FiOS video connections to Frontier, essentially doubling the company’s size. Verizon said it reached a deal with American Tower to lease the rights to 11,300 of Verizon’s towers and sell 165 more. The telco also announced a $5 billion accelerated share-repurchasing program (see 1502050059).

Washington, D.C., safety officials and Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Interim General Manager Jack Requa said their agencies are working to increase testing of public safety radios in the wake of a Jan. 12 incident near WMATA’s L’Enfant Plaza Metrorail station in which first responders found their radios didn’t work properly during the rescue of passengers from a smoke-filled tunnel. D.C. Councilmen Jack Evans and Kenyan McDuffie, both Democrats, said during a D.C. Council hearing Thursday that they're seeking further answers on the incident, in which one passenger died and 84 others went to area hospitals. The incident has also attracted scrutiny from Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., and other D.C. area members of Congress (see 1501230066 and 1502030055). All area public safety agencies have radio infrastructure throughout the Metrorail system independent of WMATA’s infrastructure and are responsible for testing their own equipment, Requa said. WMATA is working with local agencies and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments to “put in place formal protocols and procedures for regular radio testing with sharing of results and prompt action to correct deficiencies,” he said. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration also is taking immediate steps to improve radio communication connectivity, said Acting Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Kevin Donahue. Bowser has directed the city’s Office of Unified Communications, which is responsible for maintaining all of D.C.’s public safety radios, to conduct weekly radio tests in all Metrorail stations within city limits. Tests during the week of Jan. 19 found radios failed in nine Metrorail stations, while testing the following week found a failure in one station, Donahue said. The city’s Fire and Emergency Medical Services (FEMS) Department also issued improved protocols for communication between first responders when radios aren’t working properly, he said. Representatives for unions associated with WMATA and public safety agencies indicated that public safety radio connectivity is often intermittent in the Metrorail system, with D.C. Firefighters Association President Ed Smith saying it “remains to be seen” if FEMS’ recent encryption of its radio channels played a role in the communications failures at L’Enfant Plaza but noting the union has continually opposed encryption. First responders routinely encounter problems with radio connectivity in many large facilities in D.C., including federal buildings, Smith said. D.C. Councilwoman Mary Cheh, a Democrat, said she believes the radio problem in federal buildings “needs to be corrected” quickly.

Senate Commerce Committee members used a hearing Wednesday on the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Cybersecurity Framework to call for further cyber legislation, including cybersecurity information sharing and data breach notification. NIST released its “Version 1.0” framework almost a year ago (see report in the Feb. 13, 2014, issue) and continually has emphasized that private sector use of the framework is entirely voluntary. NIST Information Technology Laboratory Director Charles Romine told Senate Commerce that the Cybersecurity Framework needed to remain voluntary for NIST to continue receiving active participation from industry stakeholders in developing the framework. NIST is set to lead a technical workshop on the framework at Stanford University Feb. 12, the day before a planned White House-sponsored cybersecurity summit. President Barack Obama is expected to outline executive actions at the summit that will facilitate cyber information sharing via the Department of Homeland Security, an industry lobbyist told us.

Smartphones will become the majority type of cellphone globally by 2018, driving continued growth in smart device technology that's predicted to account for 97 percent of global mobile data usage by 2019, Cisco said Tuesday in its annual mobile data forecast. Smart devices like smartphones and tablets currently account for 88 percent of mobile data usage, Cisco said. The number of smartphones is expected to be 4.6 billion by 2019, at which point there will be 3.1 billion feature phones, the company said. Cisco forecasts that mobile data usage will grow to 292 exabytes -- 292 billion gigabytes -- annually by 2019, up from the 30 exabytes of data transmitted during 2014.

The North Carolina and Tennessee state governments are likely to take the lead on any legal challenge to expected FCC pre-emption of their states’ municipal broadband laws, with North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper and Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery initiating the lawsuits, industry lawyers told us Monday. FCC officials said Monday that Chairman Tom Wheeler would circulate a draft order this week approving petitions from the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga and Wilson, North Carolina. The draft order would directly address only the Chattanooga and Wilson petitions but is likely to set a precedent for FCC handling of future petitions (see 1502020037).

The Senate Homeland Security Committee’s Wednesday hearing on cybersecurity information sharing is the clearest sign yet that the committee and its House counterpart are seeking a significant role in writing information sharing legislation, but it remains unclear whether they or the Intelligence committees will take the lead role, industry executives and lobbyists told us. Senate Homeland Security members said Wednesday that they will write their info sharing bill based on the White House proposal released earlier this month, along with two controversial bills from last Congress -- the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) and its Senate counterpart, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) (see 1501280060).