A Republican and a Democratic FCC commissioner criticized aspects of the agency's 2020 communications market report but adopted it. The biennial report, released Monday in docket 20-60, runs down the mobile wireless, fixed broadband, voice video and audio markets. It said FCC priorities for the next two years include making additional spectrum available for mobile services, particularly midband spectrum for 5G, and reducing regulatory impediments to wireless and wireline infrastructure deployment. The agency said it will keep up efforts to eliminate or modify "obsolete, burdensome, or [video and audio] outmoded rules." Commissioner Brendan Carr said he concurred partly because the report could go further in recognizing converged markets instead of continuing to see them in silos. Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said the report should do more to identify how services are changing and how that could create opportunities or barriers for new entrants. The report doesn't "adequately reflect the magnitude of the work ahead for this agency" in addressing broadband access and affordability issues, she said. Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, dissenting in part, said the report touts FCC actions as closing the digital divide when they haven't. He said the 2019 Lifeline order increases red tape and will hurt provider participation. He said the report ignores persistent barriers to entry for broadcasters, such as lack of access to capital for people of color and women. He said the fixed broadband priorities ignore any discussion of promoting affordability.
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
Antitrust experts expect somewhat more stringent enforcement and merger and acquisition reviews under a Joe Biden administration than under the Donald Trump presidency, but not significantly more so, several told us. It's also unlikely a Biden DOJ will veer noticeably far from the Facebook and Google antitrust litigation underway, they said.
Challengers to the FCC's attempt to loosen broadcast ownership rules cited the harms of media consolidation and ways the FCC fell short of administrative law, in Prometheus IV amicus briefs filed Wednesday with the Supreme Court. Christopher Terry, University of Minnesota assistant professor-media law, told us there are social issues of broadcast ownership diversity tied to the case, but at its heart, it's a procedural administrative law case, which the respondent amicus briefs delved into more than petitioner amicus briefs (see 2011230064). The FCC didn't comment.
The FCC Enforcement Bureau is cracking down on what it calls overly broad confidentiality requests that ask for confidential treatment of material that needn't be secret, bureau Chief Rosemary Harold said at an FCBA event Friday. She said the bureau started addressing confidentiality requests in an earlier stage of investigations than in the past.
Bidding in the C-band auction is accelerating, hitting $40.3 billion as of midday today, per the FCC's Auction 107 public reporting system. That's nearly double the amount at the close of bidding Thursday. Today marks the 10th day of the auction, which began Dec. 8. It could eclipse the AWS-3 auction, which raised $45 billion in 2015 and become the largest spectrum auction in commission history.
Fox isn't getting its requested permanent waiver of the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule (see 2010060032) that some critics feared the media company would receive in the waning days of the Trump administration. Instead, it got a temporary waiver to continue cross-ownership of WWOR-TV Secaucus, New Jersey, and the New York Post. The FCC Media Bureau order was issued late Friday afternoon (see 2012180069).
The pandemic has hit the commercial space industry and the space economy but not as hard as for some other industries or as badly as it could have been, experts said Wednesday at an International Institute of Space Law symposium. IISL President Kai-Uwe Schrogl said the aeronautics industry suffered more. He said smaller space companies and startups might face short- and medium-term challenges getting financing, and governments need to try to bolster and maintain the commercial space industry's attractiveness to financing. He said there were estimates that the $300 billion global space economy might hit $1 trillion by 2030, but the economic downturn due to the pandemic likely pushed that a few years further into the future. Nanoracks General Counsel Jessica Noble said the company had notable numbers of delays in cubesat projects done in partnership with universities. This year has been "an economic disaster" for the European space industry, said Fritz Merkle, U.S. Space Foundation board member. He said European space operations were hit by the reduced working mode of space agencies and government entities important for contracting new programs. The French and European Space Agency Guiana Space Centre spaceport in French Guiana was closed for weeks, he said, noting private investment in space also is slumping, particularly for European satellite communications. He said the economic downturn will likely continue until a COVID-19 vaccine returns things to some form of normalcy. China's space efforts haven't been largely impacted, said Guoyu Wang, associate professor at Beijing Institute of Technology's Academy of Air, Space Policy and Law. He said China has had 37 launches so far this year, and the carrying capacity of its rockets has reached new levels. He said this year also saw China's first successful commercial launches, and the commercial launch industry will be "a strong supplement" to its national launch capabilities. He said China's Beidou-3 global navigation satellite system is fully operational and providing global service; by October, more than 700 million products with Beidou-compatible chipsets were in China, including smartphones, and Beidou-compatible products had been exported to 120 nations.
In an era of the Me Too movement and Black Lives Matter, running the companies and institutions that dominate the communications universe largely remains a white male affair, according to our analysis of the board membership of major companies, trade and interest groups. Women hold 12% of board seats among broadcasters and 28% among MVPDs and programmers. People of color are harder to find on those boards: 6% at broadcasters, 28% at wireline and wireless operators.
In a media market where broadcasters and MVPDs are far more regulated than booming streaming competition, Congress should consider expanding FCC forbearance authority to cover the video market including broadcasters and MVPDs, Chairman Ajit Pai told the Media Institute Tuesday. He said government should "fundamentally rethink the very concept of media ownership regulation."
In an era of the Me Too movement and Black Lives Matter, running the companies and institutions that dominate the communications universe largely remains a white male affair, according to our analysis of the board membership of major companies, trade and interest groups. Women hold 12% of board seats among broadcasters and 28% among MVPDs and programmers. People of color are harder to find on those boards: 6% at broadcasters, 28% at wireline and wireless operators.