The FCC allowed all types of subscription-video providers to enter into exclusive deals to market their services to apartments and other multiple dwelling units and to bill MDUs on behalf of residents. The order drafted by the Media Bureau and approved 5-0 this week sidestepped the question of whether pay-TV companies besides cable operators and certain telcos can exclusively serve an entire building. The expanded exclusives would have been allowed by the bureau draft circulated in late December (CD Jan 12 p3). They were excised from the final order, agency officials said.
Fanning the debate between incumbent local exchange carriers and competitive local exchange carriers in reply comments to the FCC on revamping the special access regime, CLECs said the current pricing framework has thwarted the commission’s goal of allowing competition to flourish. “The fact that the rates charged by ILECs in areas subject to pricing flexibility are often higher than the price cap regulated rates offers compelling evidence of the shortcomings of the existing framework,” Level 3 said. Sprint Nextel said “the incumbent LECs’ ability to exploit their market power has created well-documented harms to purchasers of special access service and, thus, to the U.S. economy as a whole.” ISPs and wireless carriers like Sprint and T-Mobile are asking the commission to adopt an analytical framework to help judge the situation. The FCC is responsible for doing a reliable market-power analysis based on facts, TW Telecom said. The commission should reject the ILECs’ suggestion to rely on anecdotal information, because that can’t “provide a reliable basis for evaluating the competitive conditions in the market,” it said. By studying incumbent carriers’ prices and costs for rack rate special access circuits and term contracts, as well as prices from competitive carriers, the commission can capture “both current and future market activity by all providers of these services using all technologies,” XO Communications said. “It thus fulfills AT&T’s call for a ‘fact-based and data-driven’ inquiry.” Supporters of re-regulation seek to turn the proceeding away from “transparent examination of the relevant competitive data,” because “it’s clear that pricing flexibility rules are serving their purpose,” AT&T said. They have had about a decade to provide evidence to support their claim, “yet they have adamantly refused to do so, even as the ILECs produced reams of data showing these claims to be without merit,” it said.
An extension for satellite reauthorization received another chance Thursday to make it through Congress after a similar effort failed Wednesday, industry and Senate sources said. The House and Senate were expected to pass the extensions without roll-call votes, they said. The satellite reauthorization measure is among several extensions of provisions that Congress was trying to pass before they expire at month’s end. The extension would allow satellite TV providers to legally import distant signals until March 28.
Small rural telcos must answer questions about practices that large carriers call traffic pumping to increase access revenue, Democratic leaders of the House Commerce Committee told the companies in 24 letters sent late Tuesday. The inquiries follow up on October letters (CD Oct 15 p13) to AT&T, Verizon, Qwest and Sprint Nextel. An attorney for addressees of the new letter said he expects the rural carriers to be eager to cooperate.
The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ Committee on Telecommunications was right to approve a resolution supporting an open Internet, USTelecom said Tuesday. “The resolution represents a thoughtful contribution to the open Internet debate,” he said. He said the resolution seeks to level the competitive playing field “and recognizes that, at the end of the day, the essential goal is ensuring that providers have incentives for innovation and investment.”
Universal Service Fund legislation by Reps. Rick Boucher, D-Va., and Lee Terry, D-Neb., could win more urban support by integrating aspects of two other USF bills introduced by Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Doris Matsui, D-Calif., said industry officials. But some warned that a combination could simultaneously cost the support of current backers of the Boucher-Terry legislation. The urban legislators’ bills, proposing new E-Rate and Lifeline programs to spur broadband adoption, may be at odds with the cost-saving focus of the Boucher bill, they said.
USTelecom and TIA announced they're canceling Supercomm this year, after third-party convention planner EXPOCOMM said it didn’t want to manage the show because of negative financial projections. Supercomm could come back, though the outlook is uncertain. The show dates to 1988 and had already been tentatively pushed from a proposed June date to October in Chicago.
An FCC decision to maintain non-rural rules should not result in increased costs for Universal Service Fund high- cost support, some telecom companies and trade associations told the FCC in comments on a remand order by the 10th U.S. Appeals Court by April 16. In 2005, the court called the commission’s rules unlawful and said they affect high-cost area carriers that are considered non-rural because they have too many lines. Some groups backed the interim proceedings as a way to avoid increased high-cost support.
USTelecom proposed a data-gathering project aimed at helping the FCC increase broadband adoption by low-income households. “Solid data on current initiatives, along with that developed from establishing test beds for new initiatives, should be used to inform forward movement on any nationwide program,” the association wrote. Important test bed elements should include “discounts on broadband service, discounts on hardware (e.g.; computers, modems), digital literacy programs, provision of relevant content and education on the benefits of broadband.”
Public interest groups led by the Center for Democracy & Technology said the National Broadband Plan should provide the “impetus” for Congress to pass a comprehensive privacy protection law. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce responded that policy should be left to industry. Several industry groups called on the FCC to defer to the Federal Trade Commission, which is well along in online-privacy work. The comments came in response to the 29th public notice for the plan, put out after the center raised privacy questions in a letter Jan. 11.