RLEC groups expect the FCC will adopt the rural telco rate floor elimination order on Friday's agenda, the only question mark being Commissioner Mike O'Rielly's vote. ITTA Vice President-Regulatory Affairs Mike Jacobs said he would be surprised if O'Rielly supports the order, given past support of the rate floor concept. O'Rielly's office didn't comment Wednesday. The other commissioners' approvals were seen likely. The FCC didn't comment.
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
An FCC proposal to open more bands for earth stations in motion communications with geostationary orbit satellites has sizable support. ESIM operators "have the skill, experience, and incentive to effectively avoid causing interference to other systems," Inmarsat commented in docket 17-95, posted Tuesday. Comments on the Further NPRM adopted in September (see 1809260029) were due Monday, replies May 8. Also voicing support were Panasonic Avionics, ViaSat and SES/O3b (see here, here and here). Boeing said the FCC also should move toward rulemaking on use of ESIMs in the remaining frequencies allocated for fixed satellite service, including the 10.7-11.7 GHz band, 12.2-12.7 GHz band, additional portions of the 27.5-30 GHz band and throughout the V-band. Hughes said to ensure interference protection, require ESIM operations in the bands covered by the FNPRM to comply with applicable effective isotropic radiated power limits. The Fixed Wireless Communications Coalition said the agency should clarify that fixed service users in the 10.7-10.95, 11.2-11.45, 19.3-19.4 and 19.6-19.7 GHz bands won't need to protect ESIM downlink users from interference. The National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Radio Frequencies said the FCC should ensure the out-of-band emission standard for ESIM downlinks is sufficient to protect radio astronomy service use of the 10.68-10.7 GHz.
FCC moves to update orbital debris rules in light of proposed non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) mega constellations raised questions of authority, as expected (see 1902080009). The Commerce Department in a docket 18-313 posting Monday said the FCC could be duplicative with other federal agencies, sowing confusion. The department asked the agency delay the proceeding until,White House space policy directives wrap up.
While the FCC looks to revamp its broadband mapping regime, some broadband experts told us the effort is hampered by the discussion not focusing more on including pricing data and involving crowdsourced or locally provided coverage data. ISPs all know each other's prices, but "the public is the only one who doesn't know," said Institute for Local Self-Reliance's Director-Community Broadband Networks Initiative Chris Mitchell. The FCC said the proceeding is still open.
SpaceX plans to relocate more than 1,500 satellites to a lower orbit is getting pushback from satellite operators on spectrum interference and orbital congestion grounds. Given the expected boom in satellite traffic, including Amazon acknowledging plans for its own mega constellation (see 1904040034), the industry has "got to figure this out" and coordinate more, with the current status quo insufficient, space consultancy Lquinox President Charity Weeden said.
More team-ups with other federal agencies going after robocallers and requiring phone companies to implement caller ID authentication tech were among suggestions on the FCC rulemaking on curbing spoofed robocalls. The NPRM was adopted in February (see 1902140039). Beyond requiring implementation of caller ID authentication technology, set guidelines for its implementation and ensure consumers are represented on the Signature-based Handling of Asserted Information Using toKENs/Secure Telephony Identity Revisited (Shaken/Stir) governance board, said Consumer Reports, the National Consumer Law Center and Consumer Federation of America in docket 18-335, which got comments through Thursday. They said spoofed calls need to be blocked or diverted, not just identified, and Shaken/Stir as conceptualized now wouldn't address situations where robocallers buy phone numbers and use those to mask identity. They said the FCC should consider requiring phone companies vet subscribers, monitoring for numbers making inordinate amounts of calls. CTIA said the FCC and other agencies such as the FTC and DOJ, plus states attorneys general and international counterparts, ought to "take even more steps to deter bad actors." It suggested the FCC define the scope of its expanded anti-spoofing rules to include short message service and multimedia message service text messages. The FCC needs to be sure it's "hewing closely" to the updates Congress made to caller ID issues in Ray Baum's Act and not expand the scope of those rules past congressional intent or change the established regulatory framework in other areas, Twilio said. It said the FCC should be careful applying spoofing rules to messages sent using common short code, and not include rich communications services in the definition of text message. Comcast suggested the FCC clarify that a provider originating an IP call has to transmit the calling party name alongside the calling party number. It also recapped meeting with an aide to Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, saying the order creating a comprehensive number database, while not specifically a fraudulent spoofing issue, also will help cut volume of unwanted calls.
Ensuring federal spending on expanding broadband doesn't get used to overbuild existing providers starts with accurate information about what areas are unserved via better mapping, plus congressional oversight, said House Rural Broadband Caucus co-Chairman Rob Wittman, R-Va., in America's Communications Association podcast, released Tuesday. Republicans and Democrats both support net neutrality principles of not allowing blocking, throttling or paid prioritization, but a Title II approach such as in the Save the Internet Act net neutrality bill (HR-1644) is flawed, especially with edge providers being bigger threats than ISPs, he said. He said there's a need for modernizing regulations to accommodate issues like joint use of power poles for fiber or antennas, and discussed legislation he's working on that would create a pilot broadband grant program through NTIA of $50 million yearly.
Big tech companies -- which just a couple of years ago could do no wrong in Washington's and the public's eyes -- today are suffering from an unprecedented change of favor, NCTA CEO Michael Powell said in an interview for C-SPAN's The Communicators that was to have been televised this weekend. The "shocking flip" since around the 2016 election is "the biggest whiplash I have ever seen in policy or public sentiment," Powell said. He said some of that reversal "is probably overdone, but all of it is overdue" since those companies have been allowed to become central in the economy without enough scrutiny. The backlash was inevitable and tech power will define antitrust issues for years to come, Powell said. It's a mistake to lump disparate companies like Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook together given their very different businesses and approaches, and they have to be looked at case by case, he said. A breakup of any seems unlikely at least in the near future, given the legal hurdles and challenges of proving consumer harm when talking about what are often free services, he said. The tech giants' pushes into over-the-top video is leading to cord cutting at a 3-4 percent annual rate, though the legacy cable business "is not on the verge of collapse or vanishing," Powell said. But since the tech companies' primary businesses lie outside video, in areas like internet search or online retail, "They're not really our direct counterparts, they're radically different things" focused on data, he said. Long term, that means " a dramatic revolution" in how services are provided and it could be difficult to compete in some areas without access to that kind of data, Powell said. The Internet Association didn't comment Friday. Powell said all video providers need to be "harmonized" under an overall regulatory philosophy by Congress. He said the differing approaches and rules regimes for legacy providers and new competitors is "an accident of history," with the regulatory structure easily gamed against legacy providers. Asked if video is on the way out, Powell said "the centrality of internet is what's on its way in." And though the video part of the business is "in transition," the industry's 10G initiative (see 1901070048) "is a pretty big statement" of confidence in cable's longevity, he said.
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and the Veterans Crisis Line (VCL) have seen rapidly growing volumes of calls and any move to a three-digit national suicide prevention hotline will likely mean those growth rates accelerate, meaning such a hotline needs to be paired with increased capacity to deal with the calls. That's according to Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and Department of Veterans Affairs officials at Thursday's North American Numbering Council (NANC) meeting.
Though it's not clear how much midband spectrum 5G will require, the U.S. is clearly lagging compared with midband availability in other nations, said CTIA President Meredith Baker at a Media Institute event Wednesday. When we asked her what's needed at minimum, she said the possibility of 180 MHz from the C band, as proposed by the C-Band Alliance (CBA), and 70 MHz from the 3.5 GHz band would still leave the U.S. 50 MHz shy of the global average of what other nations have dedicated to 5G.