NAB filed a petition at the FCC Friday formally asking the agency to revise key parts of its post-TV incentive auction transition plan. NAB said the auction itself was difficult and took many months to complete, but the hard work is just starting. The Media Bureau and the Incentive Auction Task Force still don’t acknowledge “the reality that the repack will present the most challenging transition the Commission has ever overseen,” broadcasters said in a petition in docket 12-268. “Unfortunately, the Commission has made a number of decisions that will make its job, and the job of the industry, considerably harder,” NAB said. The FCC declined to use the $1.75 billion relocation fund established by Congress as a repacking budget “and instead took an unconstrained approach to repacking, desperate to clear spectrum that wireless carriers ultimately did not even want for three full stages of bidding,” NAB said. “This means that the Commission will repack far more stations than necessary, and far more than can likely be fully reimbursed. This will result in the repack taking longer, and causing considerably more viewer disruption, than might otherwise have been necessary.” The FCC should direct the Media Bureau to grant reasonable requests for more time to move to another channel, NAB said. “If the Commission actually allows its 39-month deadline to disrupt service to consumers, it will have failed in its duty to carry out an incentive auction that treats broadcasters fairly by protecting their ability to continue to provide service during and after the repack,” the petition said. “We are eager to work with the Commission to revise the transition plan to ensure that the repack treats all stakeholders, including viewers and listeners, fairly.” The FCC also should direct the Media Bureau to adjust phase assignments to reflect the scope of the work repacking will require, NAB said. The FCC already sent letters to TV stations that weren't winning bidders in the auction telling them whether they'll be repacked “and, if they are, to which transition phase they have been assigned,” the petition said. “NAB continues to believe that waiting to assign stations to phases until the Commission has a better understanding of the repack would be more efficient in the long run.” The FCC also should direct the Media Bureau to limit repacking disruptions to FM stations and other broadcasters, NAB said. FM stations, which had nothing to do with the auction, may be affected, NAB said. “If a repacked television stations adds a heavier antenna or needs to mount its antenna at a different point on the tower, it may no longer be feasible for a collocated FM station to remain at its present location on that tower or even at any location on that tower,” NAB said. “FM and other broadcast stations that are collocated or on towers adjacent to repacked television stations may be asked to reduce power levels to allow workers to perform safely the work necessary to allow those repacked stations to move to their new channels.” FM stations may have to reduce their power levels for days at a time and on multiple locations, as work continues, NAB said. The FCC should also direct the Media Bureau to provide clarity on the international implications of the repack, broadcasters said. “The Bureau has already informed stations of their new channel assignments and operating parameters, as well as their transition phase assignments,” the petition said. “If the Bureau is not in a position to state definitively whether or not the channel assignments it has provided repacked stations will or will not require coordination then the Task Force has overstated the progress the Commission has made with respect to international coordination. Repacked stations along the border deserve to know now whether or not their channel assignments will require coordination.”

Telcordia said a change in its ownership mooted a key Neustar argument against an FCC decision to replace Neustar with Telcordia as local number portability administrator. In a letter (in Pacer) Thursday to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Telcordia said its parent Ericsson announced March 7 that affiliates of U.S.-based private-equity firm Francisco Partners will become a minority investor in Telcordia. "Telcordia will no longer be a wholly owned subsidiary of Ericsson, thereby rendering moot one of Petitioner [Neustar's] primary arguments once the transaction closes," said the letter, which noted the transaction is subject to FCC approval and other customary conditions. "Neustar has argued extensively that Telcordia is not 'impartial' as required by law, because a wholly owned subsidiary shares a complete unity of interest with its parent company," Telcordia wrote. "Neustar misreads the relevant law. Nevertheless, Neustar’s argument has no application to a non-wholly owned subsidiary such as Telcordia." Neustar didn't comment. A D.C. Circuit panel heard oral argument Sept. 13 in Neustar v. FCC, No. 15-1080.

The FCC Connect2Health Task Force will continue to focus on "bridging the broadband-enabled health gap," with Commissioner Mignon Clyburn spearheading the effort, Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement Thursday. Pai called the health gap "yet another aspect of the digital divide, which I'm committed to closing." Clyburn in a separate statement said she was "thrilled" by the continuation announced by Pai, and the task force-supplied information will let the FCC "narrow the digital and opportunities divide to ensure much needed health and wellness solutions reach all Americans.” Pai learned about telehealth during a visit Thursday at the Cleveland Clinic, in his tour that began earlier this week in Pittsburgh (see 1703150020).

Sorenson Communications met separately with Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Mike O'Rielly to discuss points it made in a filing urging the FCC to explore "less regulatory" proposals for determining video relay service compensation rates than in a draft Further NPRM (see 1703150065). Commissioners are tentatively scheduled to vote March 23 on the draft FNPRM, orders and notice of inquiry (see 1703020070).The "transparency resulting from publication of the Draft Order and FNPRM was particularly helpful in facilitating detailed feedback as the Commission heads to its deliberations," said a Sorenson filing posted Thursday in docket 10-51.

Windstream and Granite Telecommunications urged the FCC to ensure wholesale access on reasonable terms as incumbent telcos seek to retire legacy TDM-based services. The FCC could act on related business data service (BDS) regulation in April or May, an industry official told us Thursday, echoing comments from others earlier this week (see 1703140046). The commission appears headed in a deregulatory direction, but the degree of relief for incumbent telcos remains unclear, the official said. Windstream voiced concern that small businesses could "be harmed by steps to scale back or even eliminate existing last-mile access guardrails." The safeguards include "regulation of TDM-based special access and the Technology Transitions requirement that ILECs, as a condition of discontinuing a TDM-based service, provide competitive carriers reasonably comparable wholesale access to the [IP-based] replacement service on reasonably comparable rates, terms, and conditions," said a company filing posted Thursday in docket 05-25 and others on a meeting with Chairman Ajit Pai and an aide. "Windstream reiterated that competitive providers need to purchase last-mile connectivity to many locations because it often is not economical to overbuild last-mile facilities, particularly to consumers with business data services demand at or below 50 Mbps." It said the last-mile access is needed to give many small businesses, government entities, rural healthcare networks, schools, and libraries competitive BDS options, and said it wants to work with the commission "to develop a solution that will not strand" such customers. In a filing on its discussions with aides to Pai and Commissioner Mike O'Rielly, Granite "discussed the importance of maintaining a reasonable transition timeframe for the interim rule that incumbent LECs seeking Section 214 authority to discontinue a TDM-based commercial wholesale platform voice service that is currently used as a wholesale input by competitive carriers must provide competitive carriers with reasonably comparable access on reasonably comparable rates, terms, and conditions." A Charter Communications filing said its representatives met with FCC staff and repeated "private carriage" arguments and discussed the competitive landscape facing cable BDS providers.

Industry groups and other commenters backed the IoT green paper developed by NTIA and Department of Commerce, which posted the comments Wednesday (see 1703140022 and 1701120050). But many provided recommendations on improving the paper and IoT development approach. ACT|The App Association said the paper didn't adequately describe IoT's potential in fueling job growth and should have an "unambiguous policy recommendation" that an ex ante or ex post government action be based on data-driven evidence. "Government actions (or reactions) based on hypothetical and/or anecdotal harms will pose a significant threat to the innovation in the app ecosystem that will drive the growth of the IoT," ACT commented. The Center for Democracy & Technology said NTIA's assessment of IoT privacy issues is "inadequate." CDT said the IoT raises new questions about what constitutes personal data and privacy, which are challenging current legal frameworks. It said NTIA and Commerce should pursue consensus-based global standards and highlight efforts to promote privacy in the industry. NCTA commented that there are security areas the paper doesn't address including: incorporating a unique identifier for each IoT device; supporting authentication and authorization for users to validate a person to use a device and have permission to perform an operation; ensuring data at rest is protected; and "over manageability" of IoT devices for users. NCTA said users will need to keep an inventory of their devices, managing credentials, including when a device changes ownership. CTIA said 5G networks will "provide the speed, reliability and capacity necessary" for IoT growth, addressing "dense usage patterns in urban areas, and [powering] data-rich applications like high-resolution video and medical imaging, streaming media, and augmented and virtual reality." Microsoft worried about the expectation of "unlimited support" for connected devices, because some security advancements can be enabled only through new hardware, not patching. The company said unlimited support would probably stifle innovation by putting a large cost burden on new market entrants and dissuading consumers from buying new devices. CTA commended the paper for concluding that the IoT "require a reaffirmation, not a reevaluation" of government policy to encourage private sector leadership, global standards development and a multistakeholder approach in policy making. The group backed passage of the Digit Act (S-88), which would give Commerce lead responsibility in identifying regulatory hurdles to IoT development.

The FCC eighth floor could decide on a draft order removing the network overbuild condition on Charter Communications within a few weeks, Commissioner Mike O'Rielly told us Thursday. He said he hadn't voted on the order on circulation yet and was still reviewing it. O'Rielly was critical of the build-out condition in the 2016 order approving Charter's buys of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks (see 1605100050), and told us his focus is on the details of how to change the order. He didn't elaborate on specifics of the draft. American Cable Association, NTCA and the Competitive Enterprise Institute petitioned on Charter's overbuild condition (see 1606100043).

The European Commission approved AT&T's $108.7 billion buy of Time Warner, AT&T said in a news release Wednesday. "The global clearance process is on track," said AT&T Senior Executive Vice President-External and Legislative Affairs Bob Quinn. The company said it hopes to have DOJ approval and close on the deal this year (see 1703080006).

With marketers increasingly fed up with different audience measurement standards used by different platforms, TV programmers Fox Networks Group, Turner and Viacom are looking to fill that gap and get ahead of the issue with the announced launch Wednesday of their OpenAp consortium, Syracuse University advertising associate professor Beth Egan said. Better audience targeting "doesn't need to be that complicated," Fox and others said, saying adoption of better audience targeting has been stymied by the lack of transparency and consistency in audience buying. They said the OpenAP standard audience targeting platform will open the door to more transparency in audience buying by being a standard for cross-publisher audience targeting and independent measurement. The OpenAP announcement didn't include some details, including who the independent auditor will be. Nielsen in a statement said it backs OpenAP efforts "to create a clearinghouse to audit the audience-based advertising delivery of its members" and to give audited and verified data on ad delivery. "This is an important part of what is needed to create openness and transparency in ad buying and selling," it said, saying its own ratings data will underpin the consortium data. OpenAP should make buying across different media owners easier, removing some friction, Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser said. He said it's significant that NBCUniversal isn't part of the consortium since it, along with Viacom and Turner, are among the major suppliers in the alternative ad data market. Procter & Gamble Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard in an address earlier this year at the Internet Advertising Bureau was critical of digital companies like Facebook and said more third-party auditing of and transparency around its ad data is needed, Egan noted. That may have influenced the timing of the OpenAP announcement, Egan said. In their announcement, Fox and the other programmers said OpenAP will bring "consistently designed audience targets [that] can be activated across any OpenAP member publisher" as well as independent measurement and an open platform backing industry-standard data and measurements.

Chief Financial Officer John Stephens pegged AT&T investment to decisions Congress may make this year on tax and infrastructure proposals. Speaking at a Wednesday event hosted by the firm, he lamented “dramatically slow economic growth” in recent years, curbing investment from the private sector. If Congress succeeds in the tax overhaul Capitol Hill Republicans and the White House say they want, “I believe we’ll see much larger capital investment, private investment,” Stephens said. “You’ll see it in our broadband, our wired, our fiber investments.” He would like to get gross domestic product growth up to 3-4 percent. A panel of staffers for the Senate Finance and the House Ways and Means committees said an infrastructure package could be linked to tax overhaul legislation and there are many questions about what it may look like. “There’s a whole lot of questions out there over whether this sort of structure is going to be responsive to the actual needs our country faces,” said Aruna Kalyanam, tax counsel for the House Ways and Means Democrats, citing the proposal laid out in a Trump campaign white paper and uncertainty over what funding may be dedicated to and what type of projects would be appropriate. Democrats “strongly believe” in infrastructure funding, she said. “We need more details about how this would work,” agreed Tiffany Smith, chief tax counsel for Senate Finance Democrats. Barbara Angus, chief tax counsel for House Ways and Means Republicans, called infrastructure and tax overhaul “critically related” and said her bosses are interested in anything that drives economic growth. Staffers agreed repatriation of U.S. corporate money held abroad has potential. “It’s the easiest pot of money that’s out there,” said Kalyanam. American Action Forum President Doug Holtz-Eakin urged Republicans to back infrastructure spending and urged inclusion of siting provisions. Infrastructure legislation should have “serious inclusion of economic analysis” and demand “performance metrics after the fact,” he said. Jennifer Fritzsche, Wells Fargo analyst, said the changes could all affect the capital spending of telecom giants. “AT&T buying Time Warner -- this is a game changer,” she said, citing its ability to “challenge the cable model.”