The FCC Public Safety Bureau has pressed for emergency alert system rule compliance after getting waiver requests in past months from rural cable operators and TV stations, some of those seeking exemptions told us. The requests claimed insufficient broadband availability prevented them from upgrading EAS for a new format that requires Internet connectivity (CD July 2 p9) by a June 30 deadline. One radio station’s waiver request was denied, while the bureau wanted more details about others’ efforts to acquire broadband service before ruling on waivers, industry officials said. They said some inquiries inspired EAS participants to find innovative ways to connect rural stations and cable headends to broadband.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Friday circulated a notice of proposed rulemaking on an incentive auction of broadcast spectrum, as was expected, agency officials confirmed. Genachowski emphasized in a statement that the proposals include a set-aside of broadcast spectrum for unlicensed use, establishing TV white spaces for a kind of super-Wi-Fi in every U.S. market. Under the timetable envisioned by Genachowski, the auction, expected to be the most complicated in FCC history, would start sometime in 2014 (CD Bulletin Sept 7).

Colorado needs new telecom rules to reflect “competitive changes in the industry,” the state public utilities commission has declared. But rural advocates have voiced strong concern about losing high-cost funds and telecom access as a result. The PUC first sought comments and is now holding four meetings in September and October on potential changes throughout the state. Its tentative goals address new technologies and seek to determine how the industry should be deregulated. The first meeting was held Thursday afternoon in the city council chambers of Fort Morgan.

The National Public Safety Telecommunications Council is expected to weigh in strongly in the 4.9 GHz band docket. The NPSTC’s likely to argue that the spectrum should continue to be set aside for public safety and critical infrastructure use, rather than opened to broad commercial use. The band, once set aside for federal operations, was reallocated to public safety a decade ago, but has seen little use so far. In June, the FCC agreed to launch a notice of proposed rulemaking asking further questions (CD June 14 p2). Initial comments are due Oct. 1. NPSTC members discussed how the group should respond.

The FCC is investigating a special access rate increase proposed by the National Exchange Carrier Association. “NECA’s tariff revisions raise substantial questions of lawfulness that require further investigation,” wrote Victoria Goldberg, acting chief of the Wireline Bureau Pricing Policy Division (http://xrl.us/bnos23). The division was responding to a request by AT&T to suspend the tariff, investigate and issue an accounting order.

In his first trip home as FCC commissioner, Ajit Pai criticized what he called an unstable and unpredictable universal service model that discourages long-term investments in rural broadband networks. “Our rules of the road can’t change every year or two, and Washington’s funding formulas for carriers shouldn’t redistribute money annually in an arbitrary or haphazard manner,” he told a rural broadband roundtable in Oswego, Kan., according to a copy of his prepared remarks (http://xrl.us/bnooja). Pai called for a “transparent system for distributing funds, one that companies can understand to plan their investments and that government watchdogs can follow to guard against waste, fraud, and abuse.” Pai, who grew up in a rural part of southeastern Kansas, spoke of his experience dealing with a rural communications landscape very different from the one in cities. “When rural issues cross my desk at the Commission, they aren’t just abstractions to me,” the text said.

A Chinese delegation to a joint U.S.-China roundtable discussion on spectrum issues Wednesday claimed China is not dealing with the same spectrum capacity issues as the U.S. That’s because China has not “felt our pain yet,” Cisco’s Government Affairs Director Mary Brown said Thursday during a recap of the event for the Telecommunications Industry Association, which also organized the roundtable. “Here in the U.S. ... we are gobbling up spectrum at a rapid rate,” Brown said on the webcast recap event (http://xrl.us/bnooib). “They're a little bit behind the curve,” Brown said of China. “Their technologies tend to be more purely 3G technologies; they have not started deploying LTE technologies. So they're not yet feeling the pain that we feel or our colleagues in Europe feel when it comes to spectrum."

Forcing public safety agencies to move off the T-band will have an impact on communications interoperability, according to early results of a poll released Thursday at the quarterly meeting of the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council. Public safety got the 700 MHz D-block in the February spectrum law, but in return had to give up the T-band, heavily used in 11 major metropolitan areas in the U.S. In August, NPSTC sent out a questionnaire (http://xrl.us/bnkk2a) to gather information as the group prepares a report (CD Aug 14 p6).

Federal employees and their unions anxiously await a White House report to explain exactly how deep the looming sequestration will slash agency budgets if Congress fails to act between now and Jan. 1 to avoid the cuts, the officials said in recent interviews. Union officials representing the FCC, FTC, NTIA and Rural Utilities Service (RUS) employees say the looming cuts could severely limit the agencies’ ability to operate and regulate the booming telecom industry. The administration report, required by the Sequestration Transparency Act (http://xrl.us/bnoi4h), is expected by these officials to be released by the Office of Management and Budget on Friday.

Carriers already have multiple incentives to make their systems robust in the event of emergencies, and the FCC shouldn’t impose additional regulations, CTIA said in reply comments to a public notice asking about communications following the June 29 derecho wind storm. T-Mobile and MetroPCS offered similar comments. Carriers potentially face new backup power requirements in the wake of the 911 problems encountered in the days following the massive storm, which packed high winds and shut off power to millions (CD July 20 p1). The FCC imposed a requirement once before, later dropping the post-Hurricane Katrina mandate (CD Dec 2/08 p1) before it could take effect. Several jurisdictions in the Mid-Atlantic region expressed continuing 911 concerns.