The FCC remains on the sidelines of a carriage contract dispute between Dish Network and News Corp.’s Fox pay-TV programming unit, which has left the DBS provider’s customers without 19 regional sports networks, agency and industry officials said Wednesday. Last week the RSN programming and that of the FX and National Geographic national pay-TV channels no longer was available to any of Dish’s 14 million customers after Dish and Fox couldn’t agree to a new deal (CD Oct 4 p5). The continued lack of carriage has fueled requests of some groups seeking changes to retransmission consent and RSN carriage rules to press the FCC to act.
SAN FRANCISCO - Verizon executives shared few product details about the company’s pending LTE service with reporters Wednesday at CTIA, where they announced an aggressive deployment plan for the faster wireless data service. Verizon’s new LTE network will replicate its 3G network coverage within three years and by the end of this year, it will turn up LTE service in 38 U.S. markets using C-block 700 MHz spectrum, Verizon President Lowell McAdam said. Verizon is still working out how the service will be priced and marketed, he said. “We think there is a place for unlimited plans, but we think that over time … our customers are going to shift their consumption to more of a pay as you use plan,” he said. “I expect we will evolve to that, but I don’t think LTE necessarily forces us to that model."
There are lucrative opportunities in communications for companies looking beyond the regulatory impasse on Capitol Hill, speakers said Wednesday at a summit sponsored by the Institute for Policy Innovation. “2010 is about mobilizing voice, data, music, you name it,” said Veronica Bloodworth, a vice president at AT&T. “Customer usage is driving development and we see this in the growth of netbooks and mobility Internet devices.” With plans for more than $18 billion in capital expenditures by the end of 2010, Bloodworth said wireless expansion is AT&T’s number one investment priority.
The FCC may consider revising a draft CableCARD order in areas such as what information cable operators must put on subscribers’ monthly bills, if all operators must let customers install on their own plug-and-play devices, and whether one-way HD boxes without the cards need IP connections, agency and industry officials said Wednesday. Lobbying by the cable and consumer electronics industries on the item continued at what some at the commission described as a fervent pace in preparation for the end of such discussions Thursday night (CD Oct 6 p10). The item isn’t generally controversial within the FCC, agency officials said.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay on the consummation of DBSD’s bankruptcy reorganization plan Tuesday, preventing the company from emerging from bankruptcy as planned. If the court rules against the bankruptcy plan, approved by the Southern District of New York, DBSD may have to start the reorganization planning all over again, said an executive familiar with the case. Both Sprint Nextel’s and Dish Network’s motions for stays were granted by the court and neither company was required to post bond. The court didn’t offer any more information on the decision.
SAN FRANCISCO -- It’s more important that Internet users get useful information, in timely, digestible ways, that they can act on about behavioral advertising than for policymakers to choose between an opt-in or opt-out regulatory system, agreed an FTC lawyer, a privacy advocate and an executive of a location-based services company. The current policy thrust is all toward “simplified, meaningful notice,” FTC lawyer Laura Berger said late Tuesday at the FCBA Seminar West. A privacy report coming from the FTC will stress getting notices to users as they engage in related activities.
An FCC rulemaking notice defines wireless “bill shock” as sudden increases in a subscriber’s bill not caused by changes in a monthly service plan, and says bill shock is a “significant burden” for millions of Americans, said industry sources familiar with the NPRM, slated for a vote at the commission’s Oct. 14 meeting.
Intensifying FCC review of Comcast-NBC Universal shows which issues the agency is focusing on that likely will be addressed in the final merger order, while holding import for how industry, legislators and others perceive Chairman Julius Genachowski and the agency itself, said former commissioners, communications lawyers and antitrust specialists. That more career staffers are spending additional time on Comcast’s multibillion dollar plan to buy control of NBC Universal and late Monday made another request for information from the companies (CD Oct 5 p8) shows an FCC intent on a thorough review. Should that be done with dispatch, Genachowski’s quest to get a reputation as able to timely decide on complex issues may be helped, said lawyers not part of the deal.
The Department of Energy hasn’t drawn any “hard conclusions” on whether utilities should build their own communications networks or rely on commercial networks for smart grid applications, following two smart grid proceedings, DOE General Counsel Scott Harris said Tuesday. The department is leaning toward the position that the utilities should be able to decide on what type of networks they need for smart grid, he told the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington. Harris briefed the center on the department’s conclusions in proceedings on smart grid communications needs of utilities and data access and privacy issues related to smart meters.
SAN FRANCISCO -- State public utility commissions will be the bottleneck through which most smart grid technology investment will pass, industry executives and a California state commissioner said Tuesday. “When we talk about implementation of the grid, what we're really talking about are state policies, state roadmaps and state decisions,” said Mary Brown, Cisco director of technology and spectrum. “There is an awful lot of work to be done where the rubber meets the road at the state commissions,” she told a Federal Communications Bar Association seminar on emerging wireless issues at the CTIA show.