The FCC EDOCS electronic document management system suffered a system outage Monday that has been resolved, an agency spokesperson emailed Monday. The outage resulted in no generation of a Daily Digest Monday, nor were there any postings in EDOCS.
Matt Daneman
Matt Daneman, Senior Editor, covers pay TV, cable broadband, satellite, and video issues and the Federal Communications Commission for Communications Daily. He joined Warren Communications in 2015 after more than 15 years at the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, where he covered business among other issues. He also was a correspondent for USA Today. You can follow Daneman on Twitter: @mdaneman
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals repeatedly pressed Maine during oral argument Monday on the state's assertion that its cable TV charges prorating law isn't rate regulation. Judge Rogeriee Thompson challenged plaintiff-appellee Charter Communications to explain how the state law supposedly runs afoul of the Cable Act bars on regulating rates for provision of cable service if the law is about requiring prorated refunds when cable service is no longer provided. Maine is appealing a lower court's summary judgment in November supporting Charter's challenge (see 2010290039).
Balance Group, Dish Network and Viasat lawsuits challenging the FCC's April SpaceX license modification (see 2104260077) are considered a long shot, experts told us. They cited an environmental law, among other reasons why the commission's ruling may be judicially upheld. The appellants didn't comment Thursday.
As the C-band phase 1 transition moves into filtering for MVPD earth stations, we're told filter supplies are expected to be more than sufficient. Intelsat and SES have largely cleared the band's lower 120 MHz, they told an ACA Connects webinar Thursday. Tom McNamara, Intelsat vice president-C-band transition management, said the satellite operator's completing that clearing last weekend was "a big milestone."
ISP and internet groups allied before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Tuesday in amicus briefs in support of Cox's appeal of a U.S. District Court's upholding a jury's $1 billion verdict that it's liable for subscriber copyright infringement (see 2101130025). NTCA, CTIA and USTelecom said (in Pacer, docket 21-1168) the 4th Circuit should clarify when, if ever, an ISP has specific knowledge that its services are being used for infringing purposes and thus must cut off access. They said for an ISP to be liable for contributory copyright infringement, it must know that it can do something about it, but transmission ISPs aren't able to do anything but cut off service on the assumption future infringements might happen. Because of the verdict against Cox, "transmission ISPs may have no choice but to terminate consumers’ internet access on a massive scale," they said. The Internet Commerce Coalition warned of "crippling damages." It's "Draconian" to require ISPs, on the basis of vicarious and contributory copyright liability, to terminate service to users accused of piracy, the Internet Association said. It said the lower court wrongly says Cox benefits from infringements by its subscribers since those are a minority of subs. IA said terminating access isn't reasonable "because it is a grossly disproportionate response to accusations of illegal downloading." The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Center for Democracy and Technology, American Library Association, Association of College and Research Libraries, Association of Research Libraries and Public Knowledge said affirming the lower court "would have dangerous consequences" because terminating an account "potentially cuts off every household member," and lack of broadband competition may mean no other way to connect. They said the "staggering and poorly justified" $1 billion statutory damages award against Cox "thwarts basic principles of due process and the public interest." IP law professors said there's no proof the infringing activity is a draw for subs, thus no proof Cox received direct financial benefit from piracy.
Hughes and SES/O3b petitioned for FCC changes to April's SpaceX license modification (see 2104260044). The FCC should have imposed conditions to stop SpaceX from evading equivalent power flux density (EPFD) limits through multiple ITU filings, Hughes told the International Bureau Thursday in a petition for reconsideration. It said the commission should require any favorable or "qualified favorable" finding SpaceX gets from the ITU should say the effect of multiple ITU filings for the SpaceX constellation was considered when verifying EPFD compliance. SES/O3b urged the application to be treated as part of the non-geostationary orbit satellite processing round that closed in May 2020, or "at least adopt more even-handed and comprehensive conditions to protect O3b’s U.S. operations from disruption," such as requiring SpaceX accept any additional interference from the license mod with O3b's network. It said the FCC should require SpaceX to include in biannual reports the total of satellites in orbit and the agency should reconsider the threshold of three satellite disposal failures in a year as enough to trigger consideration of more license conditions. SpaceX didn't comment Friday. Viasat seeks a stay (see 2105240005).
AT&T's spinoff of WarnerMedia and combining it with Discovery (see 2105160003) isn't likely to go through FCC review, we've learned, even though some interest groups critical of media consolidation hope the agency will get involved. FCC acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel told reporters no application is pending. In some past mega-deals of this sort, the regulator also didn't get very involved. The agency didn't comment now.
Federal regulators are likely looking closely at possible antitrust action against Amazon, but the company's $8.45 billion buy of MGM announced Wednesday isn't expected to face federal or state antitrust challenges, experts told us. Lawmakers we interviewed questioned the potential monopoly power of Amazon while wanting the deal scrutinized.
Being vertically integrated with content helped AT&T's domestic connectivity business, but it became apparent its HBO Max platform needed to be global in scale to compete and wouldn't fit with the U.S. focus, hence the spinoff and Discovery deal (see 2105160003), CEO John Stankey said Monday during a JP Morgan conference. He said AT&T's smaller dividend after the DirecTV and WarnerMedia spinoffs will mean more capital the company can invest into wireless and fiber deployment for connectivity.
Though cable operators are shedding landline voice subscribers, experts said they don't see disconnecting that offering in the foreseeable future since it drives some revenue and reduces churn. The landline subs losses aren't a cable-only issue, said industry consultant Steve Effros. "Everybody is losing landline customers." Comcast and Charter are gaining sizable wireless subscriber bases, he said.