The White House and Congress likely will wrestle for several years over ways to reduce regulatory burdens on getting into space, Venable policy adviser Jared Stout said at an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics briefing Wednesday on low earth orbit commercialization. Mike French, Aerospace Industries Association vice president-space systems, said the expected LEO communications satellite boom and the promise it holds in lowering launch costs and increasing the number of launch companies should benefit other LEO space commercialization efforts if rules are adequate on issues like orbital debris and space traffic management. A burden for LEO commercialization is aged regulatory regimes that don't fit well with emerging technology, Stout said. He said space launch regulation is "trying to catch up from three decades of neglect." He said there's uncertainty on what agency's in charge of emerging on-orbit activities. Stout said space-based commercialization needs a "holy grail" application that's more affordable to be done in space than on Earth, or has better results in space, and that will accelerate commercialization efforts and investment. He said Congress will have to start deciding how to better use the International Space Station for commercial opportunities, and what comes after it. Making money in space is a question as investors typically want a five- to seven-year return on investment and space ventures can carry a 10- to 20-year horizon, French said. Near term, the biggest opportunities are in supporting human activity in space, he said. Longer term, possible markets include specialty materials manufacturing and in-orbit satellite assembly, he said. NASA has been particularly active in recent months trying to gin up commercial LEO activity by issuing a price list for ISS hosting astronauts and releasing appendices on revenue generation opportunities, French said. Venture capital won't start flowing until there's a clear product or service, said Cindy Martin-Brennan, director-stakeholder management, ISS National Lab. She advocated coordinated, multi-agency funding and better intellectual property assurance to businesses that want to do such space-based R&D.
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
A Maine law mandating cable operators provide a la carte options, being challenged in federal court, is unique to that state, a cable lawyer told us Tuesday. L.D. 832, which became law in June, violates federal law and the First Amendment and would result in higher costs and fewer programming choices, said cable operator Comcast and a variety of programmers in a complaint last week (in Pacer, docket 19-cv-00410) in U.S. District Court in Bangor. The suit asks for the defendants including Gov. Janet Mills (D) to be permanently enjoined from enforcing or giving effect to the law. The cablers said the law would require extensive and expensive modifications to distributors' network infrastructure; ordering, subscription management and billing systems; and consumer equipment, and give rise to costly contractual disputes between programmers and distributors. Plaintiffs also include A&E, C-SPAN, CBS, Discovery, Disney, Fox, New England Sports Network and Viacom. Defendants also are state Attorney General Aaron Frey (D) and Bath, Berwick, Bowdoin, Bowdoinham, Brunswick, Durham, Freeport, Woolwich and other communities Comcast serves. The governor's office didn't comment.
MVPD interests back allowing emailing required notices to TV stations rather than using certified mail, in docket 19-165 comments posted Thursday. It makes sense, given the agency allowing broadcast carriage election notifications an email-based process, America's Communications Association said. It said broadcasters with online public files wouldn't have any new obligations. It said the email delivery option also should apply to broadcasters that don't have to maintain public files, because having a separate rules regime for them would mean undue complexity and costs for cable operators. NCTA said email delivery would help ensure broadcasters get the notices in a timely fashion and be consistent with modern business practices. It said having similar notice processes for all stations with carriage rights, regardless of whether they have public files, would cut administrative burdens, and the FCC should establish a means for those stations without public files to post an email address with the agency. DirecTV and Dish Network said not allowing email delivery would mean disproportionate burdens between direct broadcast satellite providers and stations, since broadcasters could elect carriage on a DBS system via email but the DBS response would have to be via postal mail. The Further NPRM was adopted in July (see 1907100054).
Eutelsat's no longer being allied with the C-Band Alliance (CBA) (see 1909030041) hurts its band-clearing plan before the FCC, though it remains to be seen how much, experts told us. The key is why Eutelsat left and what it does now. Chairman Ajit Pai’s office and Eutelsat didn’t comment.
NEW YORK -- One 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge seemed to struggle Tuesday with the idea AT&T, as a contractor working on behalf of the U.S. government as it runs the FirstNet national public safety broadband network (NPSBN), has no obligation to follow mandates on federal agencies such as privacy impact assessments (PIA). In oral argument as VTDigger appeals a lower court's dismissal of its Commerce Department litigation (see 1807300058) on FirstNet responsiveness to Freedom of Information Act requests and its lack of PIA, the appellate court also questioned the reasoning federal agencies gave for not looking for information requested in the FOIAs.
The music industry strategy of targeting cable ISPs with contributory copyright infringement litigation won't stop with last week's federal lawsuit against RCN (see 1908280044), legal experts said. It's less clear what the entertainment companies' end goal is. Some see it about getting ISPs to crack down harder on infringing conduct by subscribers. Others wonder if the aim is motivating lawmakers to move for a legislative solution. The RIAA didn't comment.
Ban any exclusive agreement between landlords and ISPs, forcing landlords to let multiple service providers access buildings, urged Public Knowledge and New America’s Open Technology Institute in a docket 17-142 posting Friday. Comments on an NPRM on improved broadband access to multiple-tenant buildings, adopted at the FCC's July meeting (see 1907100020), were due. PK and OTI said the FCC limited its own authority by classifying broadband as an information service, since its authority specific to MVPDs only goes so far and not all broadband providers are MVPDs. They urged the agency adopt a Telecom Act Section 706 classification to give it clear authority to promote multi-tenant access. Or use ancillary authority. Small indie ISPs are the only real competition to the big entrenched cable ISPs and telcos, and whatever steps the FCC takes here, at the least don't harm ability of those indies to access multi-tenant properties, the Multifamily Broadband Council said. It said prohibiting or limiting arrangements where a provider has exclusive right to use in-building wiring would essentially allow mandatory sharing of in-use wiring, inconsistent with other commission findings. The Safer Buildings Coalition urged seeking comment on how the NPRM could affect public safety in-building and rooftop systems and contracts. The Wireless ISP Association, in comments to be posted, said revenue-sharing arrangements between service providers and landlords hurt if not eliminate competition and broadband deployment and should be prohibited. It said public disclosure of revenue sharing agreements isn't a viable alternative since there's no consumer benefit to such disclosures. Bar exclusive wiring and marketing agreements that make competitive entry more expensive, WISPA asked. Exclusive rooftop access agreements are anticompetitive and deter broadband deployment to multi-tenant units, it said. It said some state and local mandatory access regulations and policies aren't technology neutral.
Broadcasters and satellite operators got some of what they wanted in the FCC FY 2019 regulatory fees order. As expected (see 1908220040), there's no sign of overhaul both sectors want in the unanimous ruling. An accompanying Further NPRM tees up issues like the assessing regulatory fees on foreign satellites allowed to communicate with U.S. earth stations. Some say history shows the agency isn't likely to go that route. The money is due Sept. 30.
FCC Media Bureau rejection of beIN Sports' Comcast carriage complaint (see 1907020056) paves the path to distributors dropping unaffiliated networks willy-nilly and leaves customers defenseless, the Sports Fan Coalition said in a docket 18-384 filing Monday. It makes vertically integrated companies like Comcast both "referee and player in its own game," SFC said. It said even if an indie programmer can match bids of cable-owned sports programmers for sports rights, the programmer has the advantage by being able to offer better distribution, promotion and other treatment of its programming service. Also backing beIN's petition asking the agency to review the bureau order, Public Knowledge said discrimination against indie programmers by vertically integrated cable operators, a focus of the 1992 Cable Act, is an increasingly pressing issue due to consolidation. It said the bureau shouldn't have denied beIN's case before it was allowed to engage in discovery and make a case accordingly. BeIN said the bureau has never found a complainant made a prima facie case and then immediately denied the complaint, and its resolving the proceeding without a hearing while agreeing with the complainant’s prima facie case "is arbitrary and capricious." Comcast didn't comment Tuesday.
Size matters when considering safe harbor protections for voice service providers' blocking of robocalls. Parties squared off before the FCC about how broad or narrow such protections should be in docket 17-59 replies posted through Friday. There's disagreement on creation of a critical calls list. Some questioned the need for a secure handling of asserted information using tokens (Shaken) and secure telephone identity revisited (Stir) mandate since industry is implementing it fine.