OneWeb's Chapter 11 filing could result in fundraising challenges for other broadband non-geostationary orbit constellation plans, NGSO experts told us. Some said it could stoke doubts about the mega-constellation-delivered broadband business model. The company said it's using bankruptcy as a way to buy time until global markets rebound from the COVID-19 slowdown so it can then sell itself.
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
FCC interaction with constituents is changing in the face of the pandemic, with ex parte meetings down in recent weeks, according to our analysis of more than 400 electronic comment filing system filings. Agency officials said stakeholders presumably are reluctant to set up meetings on non-pressing matters, and commissioners' Tuesday meeting agenda lacks major items. That could change in April with the 6 GHz order expected (see 2003270032), one agency official said. The regulator said aides in Chairman Ajit Pai's office don't seem less busy.
Backers of extra filing time to comment on public safety aspects of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit’s Mozilla v. FCC net neutrality decision applauded the agency's 21-day extension announcement Wednesday (see 2003250031). Some left the door open to seeking more time. About a dozen groups had sought a month longer, citing COVID-19.
The FCC has been pleased to see industry take-up of its "keep Americans connected" pledge and its push to expand low-income offerings, and doesn't anticipate asking edge providers to throttle their streaming video quality to ensure adequate data network capacity, said Evan Swarztrauber, an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai, in a Recon Analytics web conference Tuesday. The European Union asked streaming services like Netflix and YouTube to reduce their data traffic. Deploying 5G could face some COVID-19 headwinds due to the workforce issues getting antennas installed, Techsponential President Avi Greengart said.
Comcast's victory Monday in a Supreme Court decision on what legal standard must be met in a complaint that the cable operator was racially discriminatory in what programming it doesn't carry (see 2003230006) may not signal a quick end to the legal fight. University of Connecticut employment law professor Sachin Pandya, who was part of an amicus brief on behalf of Entertainment Studios Network (ESN) suing Comcast, said the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals conceivably could still decide that the case being remanded from SCOTUS plausibly survives the MVPD's motion to dismiss even under the standard SCOTUS requires. Oral argument was in November (see 1911130024).
The massive shift of workers and students to their homes due to COVID-19 is gobbling up data transmission availability and challenging employers with their networks optimized for an in-office workforce, network and data experts said in interviews last week. Employers are rapidly ramping up the number of VPN licenses. The issue isn’t expected to reach the point where carriers have to plow additional investments into their networks.
Regulatory reviews of mergers and acquisitions aren't expected to face major COVID-19-related slowdowns despite FTC suspension of early terminations (see 2003130075) or DOJ Antitrust Division announcing it will seek extra time to complete its review work and leaving the door open to extending that timeline further, experts told us. Few deals necessitate second information requests by DOJ and that extra time won't materially change how transactions play out, said Holland & Knight antitrust lawyer David Kully, former chief of the DOJ radio and TV M&A section.
Broadcasters having satellite phones on hand and pressing more stations to sign up for the FCC's disaster information reporting system are among items the FCC Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council is considering for dealing with emergencies. CSRIC adopted two working group reports Tuesday, one on broadcaster best practices and one on 911 interoperability in the transition from legacy to IP-based networks. The approved reports weren't posted Tuesday.
A spiraling number of federal, state and local courts are restricting access or pausing cases due to coronavirus concerns, with more expected. Caught between the public's constitutional right of access to court proceedings and health risks, courts are probably going to opt for a "Goldilocks response" of reduced use of in-person proceedings, replaced with technological alternatives and written filings, University of Utah law professor Paul Cassell, a former U.S. District Court judge, told us.
FCC efforts at cutting costs of small-satellite licensing should help reverse the trend of U.S. operators going elsewhere to seek licensing, Alliance of Commercial, Cube Experimental and Small Satellites Director Tony Azzarelli told us Wednesday at Satellite 2020. He and others said on a panel that smallsat regulation is failing to keep up with market changes. Organizers ended the event a day early, on Wednesday and citing COVID-19 (see 2003110036).