Small and midsize carriers urged policy changes to spur competition in the U.S. wireless market. The requests came in reply comments as the FCC embarks on preparation of its next annual report on wireless competition. CTIA, AT&T and Verizon again called the market genuinely competitive.
Keeping rates low for telecom facilities attached to electric utility poles is important to broadband deployment, especially in rural America, wireline and wireless industry commenters told the FCC in response to a May 20 rulemaking notice. But the Edison Electric Institute, the main electric utility association, questioned whether the FCC can impose additional regulations on the group’s members.
Cable engineers and executives voted a wireless backhaul product the most likely to be adopted among new products displayed at a CableLabs showcase this week. BelAir Networks’ wireless picocell base station, which would let cable operators use their DOCSIS broadband networks to provide small-cell backhaul for licensed and unlicensed wireless use, beat out various IP video and interactive TV products. They were said to make up the dominant theme of the showcase. Executives stressed that the poll, conducted as each of a dozen startups and established cable vendors demonstrated their products, wasn’t a scientific survey, but the results show how interested cable operators are in exploiting the wireless backhaul opportunity. “We all feel the pain that BelAir is looking to help solve, and we as MSOs are looking to participate in that solution of being able to get coverage at spots and capacity at specific locations,” said Mark Coblitz, Comcast’s senior vice president of strategic planning. Comcast is an investor in BelAir.
Cellular carriers have little to offer toward a compromise on wireless net neutrality rules, CTIA President Steve Largent told reporters Tuesday. He and other CTIA officials said wireless carriers couldn’t strike a bargain if they wanted to, since only rules requiring increased transparency and disclosure make any sense for their business.
The sides in a program access dispute likely will begin meeting with commissioners soon in rare joint sessions to brief them and their aides on the case that’s likely to go to the members soon for consideration, agency officials said. They said Mid-Atlantic Sports Network and Time Warner Cable representatives will meet as early as next week with the offices of Commissioners Michael Copps and Mignon Clyburn and may meet later with other FCC members. Such meetings are rare in restricted proceedings on complaints, whose filings aren’t made public by the FCC as is done with rulemakings and transaction reviews. The meetings require the consent of all parties to a proceeding.
Broadcasters and newspaper publishers again attacked FCC media ownership limits in reply briefs this week at the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. The agency’s brief to the court (CD July 22 p6) was “remarkably non-responsive” to the questions raised by media companies, Fox said. “The FCC essentially concedes that it ignored relevant evidence concerning the sole rationale for the newspaper ownership rule -- viewpoint diversity,” Fox said. Similarly, the regulator failed to respond to showings against the multiple station ownership limits, Sinclair said. “The FCC did not refute or even address many of Sinclair’s arguments” and should be inferred that it concedes the points made by that broadcaster, the company said.
AT&T, Verizon, NCTA and other industry players asked the FCC to eliminate unnecessary data reporting requirements in light of changes in the communications world since the Telecommunications Act was enacted 14 years ago. The filings were in response to request for comments by the Wireline, Wireless and Media bureaus. But Free Press and other public interest groups said much of the information is critical to understanding communications markets and the FCC should exercise extreme care in considering changes.
SEATTLE -- The extensive use of telemedicine at a major regional hospital “should be the rule,” but is “still largely the exception in the United States,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski told Seattle Children’s Hospital doctors who participated in a demonstration and news conference late Friday. The obstacle is a slow regulatory approval process for new services and devices, he said. The FCC and its new partner in one particular effort, the Food and Drug Administration, are working to make it “streamlined and effective to encourage investment in new technologies,” Genachowski said.
GENEVA -- The U.S., Japan and Taiwan won in a World Trade Organization dispute over European duties as high as 14 percent on some information technology gear covered under the Information Technology Agreement for tariff-free treatment, officials said. About $44 billion in global exports of set-top boxes, LCD panels and multi-function printers is at stake in the agreement. Questions linger over the possible future tariffs on consumer goods that continue to evolve and incorporate communications and other functions.
Public interest groups and industry players got what may be their last chance to offer formal comments on Chairman Julius Genachowski’s proposed “third-way” broadband reclassification proposal. Reply comments were due at the agency Thursday. The FCC has logged almost 40,000 comments in the proceeding in the past 30 days, according to commission records, with many of the major players offering extensive comments that go on for dozens of pages.