No Relief Amid Many Proceedings as Muni Broadband Comment Extension Denied
No relief is coming to communications attorneys who say they've been working longer hours and during vacations and have had to back off on weighing in on some FCC issues because of the torrent of proceedings there. The Wireline Bureau in Thursday’s Daily Digest denied a request from TechFreedom (CD Aug 22 p10) and others for a one-month extension to comment on two petitions on pre-empting state municipal broadband laws. That day, the Media Bureau denied nonprofits’ requests to delay the comment deadline on AT&T’s plan to buy DirecTV.
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TechFreedom President Berin Szoka had cited a crunch of comment periods scheduled to close between this week and the middle of September, including those on Comcast’s plan to buy Time Warner Cable, AT&T/DirecTV, the net neutrality NPRM and a broadband deployment notice of inquiry. The comment period for the petitions filed by Wilson, North Carolina, and the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga, Tennessee, to pre-empt the state laws will still close Friday night. (See separate report below in this issue.)
Extensions are not routinely granted, the Wireline Bureau said (http://bit.ly/VT2Fx5). “Overlapping comment cycles are not unusual given the press of Commission business, and the schedule established in these proceedings affords significant time for public participation.” TechFreedom is right that the proceedings are important, but that only indicates how an extension would “not be harmless,” said the order dated Wednesday. Also seeking the delay were the American Enterprise Institute, Center for Boundless Innovation in Technology, Citizens Against Government Waste, Digital Library, Institute for Policy Innovation, International Center for Law & Economics, Madery Bridge and NetCompetition.
Szoka, who'd told us last week he wasn’t optimistic the extension would be granted, said Thursday he was busy working on the organization’s municipal broadband comments. “This has certainly not been a typical summer in Washington, D.C.,” said communications lawyer John Nakahata of Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis. “There has been more than a little work that our lawyers have done while on vacation.” Another industry attorney was using an outside counsel to file comments in a proceeding. “We don’t have the bandwidth for all the open proceedings and upcoming deadlines,” she said.
"This sort of a crush is particularly difficult for smaller players -- such as public interest groups, smaller industry trade associations, and small companies,” said Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld. “Smaller organizations with limited resources have to make some hard decisions about how many dockets they can cover and how thoroughly they can cover each docket.” Working with other organizations and signing on to comments instead of drafting their own helps, he said. The crunch is worth it, he said, if it leads to action on critical issues, said Feld. Even without comment deadline extensions, FCC decisions can get delayed and that hurts small players the most, said Feld.
Public Knowledge and the Institute for Self-Reliance unsuccessfully petitioned (http://bit.ly/1tl3TfU) for a 30-day extension of the Sept. 16 deadline to comment on AT&T/DirecTV. The commission’s initial filing period is consistent with its review of Comcast/TWC and Comcast/NBCUniversal, said the Media Bureau order (http://bit.ly/1lyNgP5). The filing period also is longer than the pleading cycles “provided in some other media-related transaction proceedings in recent years,” it said. Initial comments still are due Sept. 16 (CD Aug 8 p11).
"There’s too much going on right now for anyone to do it all,” said Policy Director Matt Wood of Free Press. It had to “pare back our participation on a number of issues at the FCC and in Congress too just to keep up with multiple, high-profile and vitally important dockets like Net Neutrality and the mergers,” Wood emailed.
The comments schedule is “daunting, especially for us and other small organizations since we have limited staff and handle virtually all of our work in-house,” said ITTA President Genny Morelli. “We're working hard and doing the best we can, but we sure would love to see some additional time added to the schedule in a couple of the dockets."
"Definitely a lot going on. I've never really thought of it as a curse to live in interesting times, though I'm starting to understand why they say that,” emailed Doug Brake, telecom policy analyst for the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. “I'd rather be overwhelmed if it means a Commission that forges ahead on important issues.” Brake would have emailed more, he said, “but I'm a bit busy finalizing our muni broadband comments."
At the FCC, the attorneys weren’t getting much sympathy. An agency spokesman quipped that he'd respond to the question, but he was too busy. (kmurakami@warren-news.com)