Technological Advisory Council; Meeting

AGENCY:

Federal Communications Commission.

ACTION:

Notice of public meeting.

SUMMARY:

In accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act, this notice advises interested persons of the fourth meeting of the Technological Advisory Council (“Council”), which will be held at the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, DC.

DATES:

Friday, March 24, 2000, at 10:00 a.m.

ADDRESSES:

Federal Communications Commission, 445 12th St. S.W., Room TW-C305, Washington DC 20554.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

Contact David Farber at dfarber@fcc.gov or 202-418-2046.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

The Council was established by the Federal Communications Commission to provide a means by which a diverse array of recognized technical experts from a variety of interests such as industry, academia, government, citizens groups, etc., can provide advice to the FCC on innovation in the communications industry.

The purpose of the meeting will be to hear and discuss the progress of the three focus groups established by the Council to consider the issues the FCC presented to it at its April 30, 1999 meeting. These issues include: (1) The current state of the art for software defined radios, cognitive radios, and similar devices, future developments for these technologies, ways that the availability of such technologies might affect the FCC's traditional approaches to spectrum management, and the current state of knowledge of electromagnetic noise levels and the effects of such noise on the reliability of existing and future communications systems; (2) the current technical trends in telecommunications services, changes that might decrease, rather than increase, the accessibility of telecommunications services by persons with disabilities, and ways the FCC might best communicate to designers of emerging telecommunications network architectures the requirements for accessibility; and (3) the telecommunications common carrier network interconnection scenarios that are likely to develop, including the technical aspects of cross network (i.e., end-to-end) interconnection, quality of service, network management, reliability, and operations issues, as well as the deployment of new technologies such as dense wave division multiplexing and high speed packet/cell switching. The three focus groups will also report on their progress in implementing the suggestions for continued investigation of these issues presented to them at the September 22, 1999 and December 13, 1999 meetings. The Council may also consider such other issues as come before it.

Members of the general public may attend the meeting. The Federal Communications Commission will attempt to accommodate as many persons as possible. However, admittance will be limited to the seating available. There will be no public oral participation, but the public may submit written comments to David Farber, the Council's Designated Federal Officer, before the meetings.