More needs to be done to spur competition in the U.S. wireless market, rural groups and Free Press said as the FCC embarks on preparation of its next annual report on wireless competition. AT&T and Verizon attacked the FCC’s latest competition report, reiterating their stance that the market is competitive, as did CTIA. Comments on the report were due Friday.
The FCC International Bureau’s decision to decline EchoStar’s application for a new C-band satellite on the basis of a pattern of speculative applications (CD July 30 p9) was a surprisingly strict move by the bureau, said satellite industry executives. While the bureau’s decision limits the number of applications the company can file, it remains unclear how it will affect its bottom line, the company said. EchoStar will respond to the action within the next month, it said. It’s thought to be the first time the bureau had used the rule as the basis for declining an application, the executives said.
Motorola, TIA, CTIA and other industry players asked the FCC to maintain the de minimis rule in some form for larger manufacturers when it revises its hearing aid compatibility rules (HAC), in a vote scheduled for Thursday’s commission meeting. One of the results of the order is that Apple’s popular iPhone could become hearing aid-compatible.
National Broadband Plan authors defended the document’s broadband speed recommendations in a laid-back and mostly friendly conversation Friday afternoon with the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association. Reporters and NTCA officials huddled on opposite ends of a large conference table, while in the middle and sitting across from each other, new NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield and former FCC broadband team members Blair Levin and Erik Garr debated what many rural carriers and some members of Congress have called the broadband plan’s double standard: 100 Mbps proposed for 100 million homes, but Universal Service Fund support in rural areas for only 4 Mbps.
Career FCC staffers are updating an overdue report to Congress on hurdles minorities, small businesses and women face in the media and telecom industries which Chairman Julius Genachowski will soon seek a vote on, agency officials said. The triennial report, due last Dec. 31, is mandated by Section 257 the Telecom Act to cover the past three years of work the commission has done to improve such constituents’ access to the industries and describe barriers that are faced, agency and industry officials said. Advocates for minorities said they'll closely scrutinize the document when it’s publicized to get a sense of what steps Genachowski is taking to reduce barriers to entry.
The FCC is ready to handle payphone-compensation problems as needed, Wireline Bureau Chief Sharon Gillett told a commission symposium looking at ways to streamline and improve the dial-around compensation process for payphone calls. A dial-around call is made using an access code or toll-free number instead of coins. “Payphones are very important today, as ever, particularly in times of emergency or for consumers who don’t have access to any other form of wireline or wireless telephone service,” Gillett said. Section 276 of the Communications Act requires payphone service providers (PSPs) be compensated fairly for calls, she noted: “Our challenge today is to ensure that PSPs are compensated for all completed calls, including dial-around calls.”
The FCC could use auction proceeds to pay spectrum users that voluntarily give up their frequencies, under bipartisan legislation introduced Thursday by House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., and Ranking Member Cliff Stearns, R-Fla. The narrowly written, three-page bill would help the U.S. achieve the National Broadband Plan’s goal of finding 500 MHz of spectrum for broadband in the next 10 years, said Boucher. “It’s great to see the movement in Congress we're seeing on incentive auctions,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in an interview.
Motorola, which signed an agreement with San Francisco Bay Area public safety agencies to deploy an LTE network, sees interest from major cities throughout the country, Bob Schassler, vice president of North America Government Markets, said in an interview Thursday. Meanwhile, the company posted a Q2 net income of $162 million versus $26 million a year ago.
Negotiations for a possible compromise on broadband reclassification and net neutrality, hosted by FCC Chief of Staff Eddie Lazarus, intensified this week, with industry officials at the commission for two additional days of discussions and a call scheduled for late Thursday. What is being described as a “marathon” Saturday meeting is also on tap, set to start at 8 a.m. that day. Hill pressure on the commission to reach a compromise is also growing, with Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., telling FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski he’s not pleased with responses to his May 27 letter posing questions about the agency’s work on broadband reclassification.
Applicants have tempered their optimism about Google’s ultra-fast fiber-to-the-premises project, and many are looking for alternatives, said lawyers who advise municipalities. In February, Google said it would build a 1 Gbps broadband network in one or more cities (CD Feb 11 p1). Nearly 1,100 U.S. communities applied for the testbed program, but for many of them disillusionment has begun to set in, said municipal lawyer Nicholas Miller of Miller & Van Eaton. Google hasn’t changed the terms of the offer, and no one we talked with is contending otherwise.