Corrections: An NPRM was the type of E-rate item that was up for a vote at Tuesday's FCC meeting and that was approved there (see 2112130042). ... Up Entertainment's general counsel is Reta Peery (see 2112100027).
Characterizing NAB’s push for regulatory fees on tech companies as a Wi-Fi tax is “plainly false” and “intellectually dishonest,” NAB General Counsel Rick Kaplan blogged Tuesday (see 2110230001). The FCC’s current regulatory fee regime is “sloppy at best” because it requires broadcasters to pay fees to support initiatives that don’t involve broadcasting, such as the USF, he said. “The Facebooks of the world like business plans that rely not only on free, unregulated spectrum, but also Commission resources subsidized from regulatory fees that they are not obligated to pay.” NAB’s request to update regulatory fee payors doesn’t mention Wi-Fi and goes beyond unlicensed spectrum, Kaplan said. “Broadcasters are not seeking to escape paying regulatory fees,” he said. “It should not be controversial for broadcasters to cry foul when being forced to subsidize enormous companies like Microsoft, which generate revenue beyond the GDP of most countries (even after paying groups like Public Knowledge),” Kaplan said. “If public interest groups truly supported what’s best for the public, they wouldn’t simply kick and scream because Facebook, Google, and Microsoft may have to pay their fair share.” Reg fees for unlicensed spectrum is what the FCC sought comment on after NAB's petition, "because those were their words," emailed Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld. "Every single trade association that filed read this the same way -- as a tax on WiFi. If there is any intellectual dishonesty here, it is the effort of NAB to avoid admitting they proposed something so stupid." The FCC and Information Technology Industry Council didn’t comment.
The Supreme Court likely will decide in late January or early February if it will hear the challenge by various localities of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision on the FCC's cable franchise fees order (see 2111010048), said Tim Lay of Spiegel & McDiarmid Monday in a NATOA webinar. He said the deadline for NCTA to seek SCOTUS review of the 1st Circuit's decision on Maine's public, educational and government access channel carriage provisions (see 2108040022) has passed, so the cable industry seemingly is hoping other states don't follow Maine legislatively. NCTA didn't comment. Congressional action on legislation will sharply drop off as it gets closer to midterm elections, making the next few months "pretty critical," said Angelina Panettieri, National League of Cities legislative director-information technology and communications. The Build Back Better Act (HR-5376) passed the House, but take it "with a whole shaker full of salt" that all its provisions -- such as an emergency connectivity fund extension -- will ultimately pass, since negotiations are ongoing, she said. The National Defense Reuthorization Act (HR-4350), which also passed the House, will likely bring with it a requirement local governments report cybersecurity incidents, she said. Key bills for coming months likely include the Broadband Incentives for Communities Act (HR-5058), the Wireless Resiliency and Flexible Investment Act (HR-1058) and the Protecting Community Television Act (S-3361), she said. Gerard Lederer of Best Best said the FCC will likely have a 2-2 split at least until mid-February. He said Democratic commissioner nominee Gigi Sohn not being up for vote by the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday seems to indicate a lack of sufficient Democratic support. He said that points to difficulty mustering the 60 votes needed to pass a motion to end debate. He said there's a large contingent in the Senate "that is just not giving the president any of his team."
The draft NPRM on low earth orbit satellite spectrum sharing on Tuesday's FCC agenda (see 2111230068) will surely pass, but some of its provisions could face friction from some satellite operators, we were told. A lawyer with satellite clients said sunsetting a non-geostationary orbit fixed satellite system's interference protections could get operator pushback. He said there's some gray area in the current FCC rules, so some clarity of what it means to be a first- or second-round licensee could help. ITU has no concept of a sunset, and ITU priority is forever, he said. The FCC draft NPRM in docket 21-456 wants input on sunsetting protections for an NGSO FSS system before the expiration of its 15-year license term and what protections should apply after sunsetting. Astroscale regulatory associate Laura Cummings emailed that there will be a divide among operators over rights sunsetting, because some that were licensed in earlier processing rounds invested first and heavily with the expectation of FCC protection, though later-round applicants would like easier entry into an already crowded spectrum market. She said an FCC decision to sunset first processing round protection rights could result in a legal challenge. She said another issue that could have diverging operator views is on sharing beam-pointing information, which some operators view as proprietary business information. She said operators with government clients also expect client opposition to that sharing. Between spot beams and the sheer number of beams, real-time coordination "would require incredible computing power and logistics" if mandated across thousands of satellites with multiple beams each, she said. She said most operators should agree there should be rules clarity on issues such as the sharing regime, since there has been a struggle to work out how first-round and subsequent licensees can share spectrum across processing rounds. The draft item got mixed feedback from operators. SES/O3b officials told International Bureau Chief Tom Sullivan last week they have concerns about the NPRM, and that other countries also dealing with NGSO sharing might be watching closely. Amazon Kuiper officials, in discussions with aides to Commissioners Brendan Carr, Geoffrey Starks and Nathan Simington and with Sullivan, said that licensees "need reasonable protection and certainty [but] the current rules risk hampering competition and placing the promise of satellite-delivered broadband in the hands of a small group of earlier-licensed incumbents" if there aren't limits on priority protections. SpaceX also told the aides the draft NPRM had its support.
Hal Singer is managing director at Econ One Research (see 2112090069).
The FCC ordered small voice service providers that aren’t facilities-based to implement Stir/Shaken in the IP portions of their networks by June 30. The old deadline was a year later. Facilities-based carriers still have until June 30, 2023. Commissioners OK’d the order 4-0, after unanimously approving a Further NPRM in May (see 2105200072). Friday's release targets the small players “most likely to be the source of illegal robocalls.” It cited “overwhelming record support and available evidence showing that nonfacilities-based small voice service providers are originating a large and disproportionate amount of robocalls.” Facilities-based carriers can still be required to implement Stir/Shaken earlier if the Enforcement Bureau “suspects” them of originating illegal robocalls and the company “fails to mitigate such traffic upon Bureau notice,” the FCC said. Those companies face a 90-day implementation deadline unless “sooner implementation is otherwise required,” the order said. “We close a gap in our current STIR/SHAKEN regime and, by targeting those providers most likely to be involved in illegal robocalling, we reap a substantial portion of the benefits offered … to Americans,” the FCC said.
The U.S. is “in great shape” on 5G competition internationally, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr told a Media Institute virtual event Thursday. He said the agency's approach over the past five or six years of freeing up spectrum and lowering infrastructure barriers has been a proven success. He waved off former Google Executive Chairman CEO Eric Schmidt's repeated warnings of the U.S. lagging behind other nations such as China as "the Chicken Little of 5G leadership." Google didn't comment. Carr said more should be done in spectrum availability and infrastructure reform, citing completion of the 2.5 GHz auction and authorizing very low power use in the 6 GHz band as goals. Asked about 6G planning, Carr said the U.S. could start contemplating issues like the terahertz spectrum it might require, but the U.S. has "got to tend to our knitting" with 5G foremost. Asked about the likelihood of a resumption of net neutrality rules, he said it's "largely baked in" that the agency will at least debate a return to Communications Act Title II rules, though he was dismissive. "It's such an old debate of the past," he said, saying regulatory focus shouldn't be on ISPs but on edge provider behavior. He said if rate regulation were taken off the table, it would be relatively easy to find consensus about net neutrality rules for blocking and throttling. He said there could be a route for Communications Decency Act Section 230 changes that puts an affirmative anti-discrimination requirement on platforms while remaining consistent with the First Amendment. He said the Supreme Court's rulings on the First Amendment, when put on a continuum, include an opening for regulating tech companies' actions as a speech conduit while not implicating the First Amendment. Asked whether the FCC's 2018 broadcast ownership quadrennial review is likely to get done in 2022, Carr said there "is some precedent" for rolling it over: "These may start to run together a little bit."
The assignment phase of the FCC’s 3.45 GHz auction started Thursday. It's expected to last only a week or two, with winning bidders likely to be announced in 2021 (see 2111170037).
Verizon is “very, very confident, certain that the availability of C band is imminent,” said Ronan Dunne, outgoing Verizon Consumer Group CEO, at a Barclays virtual financial conference Wednesday. The C band will “augment our millimeter wave for the next push on 5G,” he said. Verizon and AT&T proposed temporary voluntary power limits and antenna restrictions on C-band deployments near airports as they seek to turn the band on (see 2111240062). Dunne said the recently closed Tracfone buy (see 2111230038) is also important to Verizon’s future and will allow the carrier to expand its customer base: “Our timing on Tracfone couldn't have been more perfect.” The buy means Verizon’s ability to bring in billions of dollars through the FCC emergency broadband benefit program is “significantly enhanced,” Dunne said.
An Amazon Web Services outage midday Tuesday took out a swath of gaming logins, streaming video services and cloud-based events, including the Vizio investor presentation at a virtual UBS technology conference. Amazon reported “impact to multiple AWS APIs in the US-EAST-1 Region.” The outage affected some of Amazon’s monitoring and incident response tooling, “which is delaying our ability to provide updates,” said Amazon, saying it “identified the root cause and are actively working towards recovery.” The Verge reported outages for Disney+ streaming and games and some problems accessing Amazon.com, the Alexa voice assistant, Kindle ebooks, Amazon Music and Ring security cameras. “There are reports from network admins everywhere about errors connecting to Amazon’s instances and the AWS Management Console that controls their access to the servers,” said the Verge. The webpage for Vizio’s event said the presentation was being recorded and the replay “will be posted as soon as the AWS Network is back up.”