Industry groups and companies reacted along already well-established lines to a Wall Street Journalreport that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is considering a net neutrality order, with some hybrid version of Communications Act Title II, for a vote as early as the Dec. 11 commissioner meeting.
After facing criticism for its Electronic Comment Filing System’s inability to handle a record-setting deluge of public comments, the FCC said publicly for the first time Thursday night that it's working on several changes for ECFS. One fix could speed up the system as soon as late November, the FCC's spokeswoman told us. Eventually, the agency wants to move toward a cloud-based system, she said. That would help avoid the limitations of the FCC's own servers, which have limited memory.
The FCC decision to delay the TV incentive auction wasn’t much of a surprise and shouldn’t lead any of the four national wireless carriers to rethink their likely participation, financial analysts and other industry observers told us. AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon all need, to one extent or another, low-band spectrum and so will go big in the auction, analysts agreed. Several observers said some spacing between this month’s AWS-3 auction and the incentive auction could help the carriers get their incentive auction plans in order. The FCC recently opted to delay the start of the auction from mid-2015 until early 2016 (see 1410240048).
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has “heard very clearly” that it’s still too early to consider a full-fledged Version 2.0 update of the Cybersecurity Framework, said Kevin Stine, Computer Security Division manager-Security Outreach and Integration Group, during a framework development workshop Thursday. Industry stakeholders have told NIST major changes to the framework aren’t a good idea because NIST released the Version 1.0 framework only in February (see 1410140173). A White House official said Wednesday that he believed it was unlikely that major changes would be coming in the near future (see 1410290046). The NIST workshop and comments submitted to the agency have shown there’s “very strong” awareness of the framework in all critical infrastructure sectors but all stakeholders should continue to raise awareness, Stine said.
Regulatory and technical steps can be taken to improve the AM band, increase listenership and reduce interference, said Chris Horne, Spectrum Velocity chief technology officer. Listenership may die soon if the FCC doesn't manage the band, he said Thursday at an Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers event in Arlington, Virginia.
An attorney representing plaintiffs in more than 50 lawsuits against companies for allegedly sending fax ads without opt-out notices blasted Thursday’s FCC order, which reaffirmed the notice requirement in the commission’s 2006 Junk Fax Order. But the order, acknowledging confusion by companies, granted several of them retroactive waivers.
A draft NPRM seeking comment on extending online political ad filing requirements to cable and direct broadcast satellite providers and satellite radio and terrestrial radio stations has been circulated among eighth-floor offices, FCC officials told us Thursday. The NPRM is in response to a petition (see 1409020036) for rulemaking from the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause and the Sunlight Foundation seeking extension of the online filing rules, which already apply to TV stations. Though the petition only sought to extend the rule to cover pay-TV operators, a comment proceeding on the petition also floated the idea of extending the requirement to radio.
Cash from telecom industry political action committees could help tilt the Senate Republicans’ way in next week’s midterm elections, if some forecasts of a GOP takeover of that body pan out. The industry’s heaviest hitters donated more money through their PACs to Republicans than Democrats across the board this cycle, with spending in Senate races specifically leaning in that direction. Media company PAC spending differed, however, many favoring Democratic Senate candidates.
Incoming FTC Chief Technology Officer Ashkan Soltani drew high praise in interviews this week from online consumer advocates and technologists. They expect him to help illuminate the agency’s understanding of emerging tech policies and investigations. Soltani will begin his service next month, after the end of current CTO Latanya Sweeney's 10-month term, said an FTC news release last week. Consumer and privacy advocates don't think the concerns raised by former intelligence officials -- who worried about Soltani’s work with The Washington Post in publishing analyses of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s surveillance disclosures -- are in any way related to Soltani's new job.
A draft rulemaking notice (NPRM) proposing classifying linear online video providers as multichannel video programming distributors wouldn’t immediately change much for over-the-top companies, said cable and content officials in interviews Wednesday. The NPRM, circulated late Tuesday according to an FCC official, would enable over-the-top services to take advantage of program access and retransmission consent rights to better offer competition to cable incumbents in the video market, said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in a blog post Tuesday (see 1410280053). Retrans rights would still leave OTT services unable to stream broadcast content without also negotiating for content rights, and program access rights apply only to negotiations with vertically integrated distributors, which in practice largely means Comcast, said industry officials.