International
U.S. Interests Find Satisfaction At A Price In China
     China apparently has no taste for the "Brown Sugar" served up by The Rolling Stones. That and four other songs from the band's play list were banned before the government approved the first-ever Rolling Stones concert in Shanghai last week. But like many enterprises, the rock group saw the ban as a cost of doing business there. U.S. companies often are confronted with barriers to market access, an inconsistent rule of law with regard to intellectual property rights and discriminatory policies against foreign investors in China. With China's 1.3 billion people and rapid economic growth, however, U.S. companies realize the cost of not doing business there may be too great. So as industry looks to strengthen its business ties with China, some U.S. policymakers want trade protections. That issue will be on the agenda next week when Chinese President Hu Jintao meets with President Bush. This week, Technology Daily began a series of stories that will examine tech policy issues related to China. Other stories covered tech standards, piracy and education.

Spectrum
FCC Creates Option For Blind Airwaves Auction
     Wireless carriers seeking to bid in one of the biggest auctions ever for radio frequencies may have their identities shielded from one another as a means to thwart potential collusion, the FCC decided this week. By a vote of 4-0, with one commissioner concurring, the agency enacted procedures to auction airwaves for advanced wireless services beginning June 29. The 90 megahertz of spectrum that will be available is expected to fetch $8 billion to $15 billion or more for the government. The blind or anonymous bidding procedures will only take effect if the average number of companies seeking to bid on all 1,122 licenses is less than three. Blind auctions have not been done at the FCC for about 12 years. Most wireless carriers opposed the move. Verizon Wireless, consumer groups, the antitrust division of the Justice Department and the FTC favor anonymous bidding.

Telecom
FCC Views Mandate On 'Enhanced 911' As Success
     The FCC's mandate last year that Internet telephone providers connect to traditional phone lines to deploy location-based 911 services has been a success, an agency official said. "Enhanced 911" technology, or E911, enables emergency personnel to pinpoint the locations of people who call 911 from nontraditional phone services. In May, the FCC's ruling gave Internet phone providers until Nov. 28 to offer E911, but many Internet telephone firms could not comply. Nuvio and at least three other companies sued to halt the FCC order. Their complaints also reached legislators' ears. The Senate Commerce Committee passed E911 legislation to grant some relief. But FCC Wireline Competition Bureau Deputy Chief Julie Veach said the agency is seeing "a tremendous uptake in provision of 911 over VoIP service."

Security
Immigration Bills Include Various Tech Provisions
     Several technology-related provisions in pending immigration measures have largely escaped the wrath of partisan warfare in that debate. The House bill passed in December calls for the deployment of surveillance and radiation-detection equipment at U.S. entry points, and it would require security officials to upgrade their information-sharing capacity and communications infrastructure along borders. The legislation further would require enhanced connectivity between biometric databases at several government agencies to streamline the screening processes for visitors. Full deployment of the exit portion of the US-VISIT immigrant-tracking program also would be mandated. Many of the provisions of the Senate bill that stalled on the floor last week mirror those of the House counterpart. The Senate measure also would direct security officials to build a "virtual fence" along the southern border, with unmanned aerial vehicles, cameras, poles sensors and other high-tech applications as the links of that fence.

Privacy
Mandatory Employment Verification Seen As Threat
     Privacy advocates are wary of provisions in federal immigration proposals to mandate an electronic system for employment verification. A House-passed measure would require all employers to participate in a test program that has been online since 1996. The system lets employers screen the personal information of job applicants against federal databases to determine whether they are eligible to work in the United States. Senate immigration proposals have included similar mandates. A lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union said the pilot program has been a disaster, and none of the current proposals would provide adequate privacy safeguards for a national system. But a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute said a nationwide employment-verification system is necessary for effective immigration reform.

Telecom
Bluegrass State Picks Deregulation For Phone Market
     Kentucky lawmakers cleared a comprehensive proposal to deregulate the state's telephone market. A measure that gained final approval in the Kentucky Senate would strip the Kentucky Public Service Commission of its ability to regulate the prices of retail phone services. Under the bill, phone companies could set their own prices for all offerings outside of basic service. Consumers could purchase options such as call waiting and caller identification on a per-service basis rather than in packaged deals. The proposal also would effectively freeze basic rates for five years. In New Hampshire, meanwhile, the legislature has taken steps to reject a federal mandate for national identification standards. The state House last month passed a measure to refuse participation in a program created under a 2005 law that requires state-issued IDs to meet national standards by 2008.

Broadband
United States Still Ranks 12th In Broadband Reach
     The United States is holding steady in its global ranking for high-speed Internet penetration, according to new statistics from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The numbers rebutted the thesis by some that the country is falling further behind its counterparts. The United States remained in 12th place in the OECD survey of broadband subscribers per capita at the end of 2005, the same standing it held a year earlier. The country had been fourth among the 30 high-income OECD member nations in 2001 and 10th in 2003. The United States continued to trail Iceland, South Korea, the Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland. U.S. broadband penetration covers 16.8 percent of inhabitants, or 49 million. The United States also is in the middle of the growth ranks for broadband subscribers, with an increase of 3.78 percent.

Intellectual Property
Rep. Smith Expects Deals On E-Music, 'Orphan Works'
     New language on licensing musical compositions in the digital world could emerge within as soon as two weeks, the chairman of a House subcommittee with jurisdiction over the subject matter said in a recent interview. "We're on the verge," Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said in an interview with Technology Daily and CongressDaily. "I'm not sure we will have the actual language for the bill, but I hope we will have an agreement when I come back and meet with these groups. ... I am hoping to hear good news." Smith chairs the House Judiciary Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property Subcommittee. He said he expects his panel to approve legislation on music licensing and "orphan works" by the end of the 109th Congress. Orphan works are old copyrighted works whose owners cannot be located. "I think music reform is doable this Congress, as is orphan works," Smith said.