&t North Country Consulting: August 2008

Friday, August 29, 2008

This is the last week to file petitions for reconsideration of the Verizon/Rural Cellular (Unicel) ruling from the FCC. So far, one has been filed, and a letter in opposition has also been filed. Brief excerpts follow.

Chatham Avalon Park Community Council CAPCC) objects primarily on the issue of partial foreign ownership of Verizon.

CAPCC is a community based organization based in and around Chicago, Illinois, with hundreds of members who are consumers of telecommunications services, some of which are offered by Verizon Wireless. Our group has a long and proud history of advocating for our local citizens and we have a special interest in promoting the growth and economic development of the African-American and small business communities. ... Petitions and its members are disserved by the increasing consolidation in the telecommunications industry that threatens to produce fewer competitive services at higher consumer prices. While Petitioner is concerned about industry consolidation in general, in light of its interest in economic development and business activity, Petitions is particularly concerned when large entities have access to [foreign] sources of capital that are unavailable to smaller businesses and socially disadvantaged businesses that seek to compete with them.


Response from Nancy J, Victory and Thomas R. McCarthy, counsel to Verizon Wireless (excerpts):

I. Chatham lacks standing to maintain its petitions for reconsideration of the Commission's order. II. Chatham's failure to participate previously in this proceeding is also fatal to consideratin of its petition for reconsideration. III. Chatham's petition for reconsideration is meritless.


On to the next act of the drama...

posted by Jesse at 8/29/2008 7 Comments

Friday, August 8, 2008

Verizon Sale Completed

Thanks to Beemer for noticing the press release that the sale has been completed. As noted previously, the settlement proposed by Verizon (and accepted by the FCC) described placing the Vermont and northern New York licenses in a trust until they are sold, and that has happened.

Presumably the trust will sell the licenses to AT&T.

No new documents have been filed with the FCC since approval on August 1.

posted by Jesse at 8/08/2008 5 Comments

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

We know that the amount of spam sloshing around the Internet is enormous, but anyone who has a good spam filter can examine what is caught and see how much doesn't get through (but uses up bandwidth). Many of us have multiple layers of filtering: the basic level is done at the ISP, often behind the scenes. In my case, for my main account, the company hosting the mail account uses Postini and I can see what is trapped there. I rarely bother to check it--the settings are good and what it catches--spam and viruses--is clearly bad stuff.

What gets through is then screened again by my spam rules in my email program--which is what most people do. At that level, I sort it automatically into two categories--the first is automatically deleted, and the second I look at manually. About half of it is not spam.

It's in that last category that I find examples of the new breed of spam about once a month. This is semi-bulk email sent not in the millions but in the scores or hundreds. It flies below the filtering radar in many cases, but it's still spam and it's still insidious.

I'm sure Plattsburgh is far from being the only place where the local Chamber of Commerce email list is circulated--legally or not. This week, I got an email message from a local hotel banquet manager invited me (and 904 other people on the list) to a tasting of their new hors d'oeuvres menu. The Chamber mailing list would be a likely set of prospects, but this was not marked as spam, and although there was information about RSVPs, there was no opt-out button--the usual violations of the CANSPAM Act.

But the icing on the hors d'oeuvres cake as the fact that the email was sent TO all 905 people. Yes, no BCC addressing, just TO 905 people. That's obviously how this list circulates.

I've seen these before, and I don't know how to stop it. The problem is that in a small community, these are not evil spammers, they're people you know (or who know people you know), and they're not so much evil and inexperienced. If you're sending millions of spam messages a day, you know how to do it. If you send one bulk email message a year--or ever--you are likely to do it wrong (such as by distributing the email addresses).

The FTC has enough to do going after the big guns, so this type of spam just falls through the cracks. How do we raise awareness of how to comply with the CANSPAM Act and of how wrong it is to distribute email addresses in this way?

Comments and suggestions needed.

posted by Jesse at 8/05/2008 1 Comments

Friday, August 1, 2008

The FCC (a/k/a The Fat Lady) Sings

In a press release issued today, the FCC announces that it has agreed to the transfer of assets from Rural Cellular (Unicel) to Verizon. The FCC attached a condition to its order: "based on a case-by-case analysis which determined that there was a potential for competitive harm in the six markets listed below, the FCC is requiring that one of the two companies divest the licenses and related operational and network assets in those markets."

These include two markets in the State of Washington as well as the three in Vermont and one in New York (Plattsburgh/Franklin area). So either Rural Cellular (Unicel) or Verizon has to get rid of them--presumably to AT&T.

The order is effective today (August 1, 2008). Petitions for reconsideration can be filed within 30 days.

posted by Jesse at 8/01/2008 7 Comments

Verizon/Unicel FCC Update

From this morning's document :
The following [the Verizon/Unicel issue] has been deleted from the list of Agenda items scheduled for consideration at the August 1, 2008, Open Meeting and previously listed in the Commission’s Notice of July 25, 2008. This item has been adopted by the Commission.

posted by Jesse at 8/01/2008 1 Comments

Border Policies for Laptops, etc.

An article on the front page of today's Washington Post describes the policies announced two weeks ago that allow Federal agents at the border to take electronic devices (including laptops) away for "an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing."

The policies do seem rather broad (!), and the front page article is likely to generate more discussion, which is all to the good.

From a technology standpoint, this is just another reminder that we need up to date external backups at all times because in addition to theft and damage, we now have to worry about being relieved of our electronic devices at the border.

posted by Jesse at 8/01/2008 1 Comments