The FCC Friday approved, over one dissent and two partial dissents, rules requiring all carriers and interconnected over-the-top text providers to have the capacity to transmit emergency texts to 911 call centers by the end of the year. The FCC also approved a further NPRM asking about such issues as extending the mandate to non-interconnected OTT providers and on rules for determining the location of those sending the texts and making the system work for subscribers roaming on another network.
Sprint, T-Mobile and others told Congress that the U.S. needs regulated interconnection, even amid and following the IP transition, said comments submitted to the House Communications Subcommittee. Comments were due Friday and generally not yet released online, addressing a July white paper (http://1.usa.gov/1r0IyeZ) on interconnection that House Republicans released as part of their initiative to overhaul the Communications Act. USTelecom and some others strongly disagreed with Sprint and T-Mobile and slammed the notion of such rules or state involvement.
The FCC approved what Chairman Tom Wheeler called “common sense” changes to its Part 17 antenna lighting and marking rules, by a 5-0 vote Friday. Commissioners grumbled that the changes had taken too many years to approve. Wheeler said FCC inaction on the antenna rules had been identified as one part of the agency’s ongoing process reform initiative. “There will be more of these kinds of streamlining initiatives forthcoming,” he said.
A public notice focusing on whether FCC online public and political filing requirements should be extended to pay-TV operators and radio stations could have different implications for different companies in those industries, some broadcast and cable attorneys said in interviews last week. The process may be more burdensome for cable operators than it was for TV stations, a cable attorney said. The Media Bureau PN stemmed from a petition for the changes filed by the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause and Sunlight Foundation, which asked for multichannel video programming distributors to be included (CD Aug 8 p11). All TV stations began complying with the obligation July 1 (CD July 7 p7).
The FCC won’t tolerate paid prioritization that has a negative effect on competition, Chairman Tom Wheeler said in the news conference after the monthly meeting. Wheeler also said the FCC plans a series of roundtable discussions to add to the commission’s already extensive record on net neutrality. The sessions will be Sept. 16 and 19 and Oct. 2 and 7 at the commission, said an agency notice (http://fcc.us/1oqDZrG).
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- There’s “huge” potential in the global market for flexible wearable displays, worth perhaps as much as $20 billion a year by 2020, said a U.S. executive for a Helsinki-based flexible displays supplier. “Lots of players” will rush to exploit that market opportunity, but “only few will win,” and product “differentiation” is what will separate the winners from the losers, Bob Senior, U.S. sales director for Canatu, told the DisplaySearch Emerging Display Technologies Conference last week.
FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly Thursday said the FCC should publish the text of proposed orders before they get a vote by commissioners. Writing on the commission’s blog, O'Rielly said more transparency would lead to a fairer, more efficient rulemaking process. Currently, the FCC releases the texts of orders only after they're approved, in some cases months later. Industry officials said the proposal is likely to prove controversial.
The FCC shouldn’t regulate broadcast ownership at all, commented CBS, NAB and 21st Century Fox in docket 14-50 on a rulemaking on proposed changes to ownership rules as part of the 2014 quadrennial review. Though the Further NPRM sought comment on specific ownership changes, such as relaxing the ban on newspaper/radio cross-ownership, Nexstar and other broadcasters said the competitive video market justified the relaxation of all such regulations. The FCC should “amend or, where necessary, remove ownership restrictions that apply solely to the broadcast industry,” said NAB (http://bit.ly/1nwY5eA). Public interest, labor and consumer groups argued against any rule relaxation. The FCC “must maintain existing media ownership rules to protect local market competition and prevent further media concentration,” said the Writers Guild of America, West (http://bit.ly/1kM3Qup).
Netflix Vice President-Global Public Policy Chris Libertelli said state regulators have a role to play in the net neutrality debate, but told a Thursday meeting at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) that the role should be to focus on protecting consumers. States have to be careful about the route they take in any foray into net neutrality because focusing on issues like the intrastate role of ISPs could be a “debate that isn’t productive,” he said. Net neutrality could also be an issue in any state’s review of major industry mergers like the proposed Comcast/Time Warner Cable deal, Libertelli said. Comcast/TWC creates a large enough company that “if consolidation happens, there’s no reason that Comcast couldn’t own every cable company in America,” he said. Netflix has opposed Comcast/TWC on net neutrality grounds, though Comcast has said Netflix’s opposition is about shifting interconnection costs to all Internet consumers (CD April 28 p20).
The FTC could hold a de-identification workshop in the next 12 months, with a follow-up staff report, said former Consumer Protection Bureau Chief David Vladeck in an interview. Enforcement actions for breaking de-identification promises could follow in the coming years, said Vladeck, Georgetown Law professor and co-director of its Institute for Public Representation. It has been two years since the FTC privacy report, perhaps the commission’s major statement on de-identification, observers said. With research rapidly advancing in the two years since, de-identification experts told us it’s time for the FTC to step up its guidance, and possibly enforcement, role.