Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., officially won his re-election bid. Ed Gillespie, the Republican consultant who opposed him, conceded defeat Friday. Warner had maintained a slight lead since Tuesday and was widely considered victorious, if just barely. "I called Mark Warner to congratulate him," Gillespie said during a news conference. Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., declared victory Friday in the California 17th District House race. He has led with 52 percent of the vote against Democratic opponent Ro Khanna, former deputy assistant secretary of Commerce during President Barack Obama's first term. Khanna, a candidate who amassed significant backing from the tech industry, had not yet conceded defeat at our deadline. Both Honda and Khanna had voiced support for strong net neutrality rules and criticized government surveillance.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler defended from a technical standpoint the agency’s December NPRM on allowing in-flight phone use while emphasizing the agency is involved in coordination that could include a ban of in-flight conversations. “The NPRM represents only the beginning of a process to consider carefully whether and how we should revise our rules to give airlines the ability to allow passengers to use mobile wireless services while flying above 10,000 feet,” Wheeler told lawmakers in an Oct. 31 response the agency released Friday. “The NPRM makes clear that nothing in the proposal would limit the ability of airlines to ban wireless voice conversations in-flight.” The FCC is conferring with the Department of Transportation in its own assessment of whether such calls should be banned, he said. The FCC has “created a formal input process to examine safety and security matters,” Wheeler said. “This includes a federal multi-stakeholder working group that FCC staff convened to consider national security and safety-related matters related to in-flight wireless services. The working group includes subject matter experts from the DOT, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Justice (DOJ), and other relevant federal agencies.”
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler reassured Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., that the agency is looking into the term “not-for-profit hospital,” which the lawmaker suggested could use some clarity. Commission staff is “actively reviewing questions about the term's definition and seek to reach a determination in as expeditious a manner as possible,” Wheeler said in an Oct. 24 letter the agency released last week. “In general, it is important that the types of health care consortia envisioned by the HCF [Healthcare Connect Fund] program have the flexibility to include as members those entities that will provide as broad an array of telehealth and telemedicine applications as possible, while also ensuring the program maintains sufficient funding to aid the beneficiaries for which it is primarily intended: rural health care providers.”
Public Knowledge upped pressure on all senators to save the set-top box integration ban, contrary to NCTA’s wishes and prompting the association's ire. Public Knowledge led a letter, backed by Common Cause, Consumer Action, Free Press and the Parents Television Council, to all 100 senators asking them to ensure repeal of the integration ban doesn't proceed as part of Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization. “If some insist on including special interest provisions to pad the pockets of the cable industry in legislation designed to keep the government open, we urge you to reject such a cynical, anti-consumer move,” the groups told senators. “There is no reason to hold the workings of the government or the delivery of satellite service hostage to the cable industry's effort to expand their monopolistic stranglehold on consumers.” They backed either stripping the integration ban repeal language or replacing it with a provision offered by Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., which calls for a successor standard before any repeal. Markey and, as of the last week, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., have objected to hotlining the STELA reauthorization proposal due to this provision, and Public Knowledge has told us that other senators privately have voiced concerns (see 1411040053). Hotlining is a procedure that allows bills to be voted on by unanimous consent. STELA expires Dec. 31, and reauthorization is considered must-pass legislation before then. The House already approved an integration appeal in its STELA reauthorization this summer. “Every U.S. senator should know that American consumers are watching them as they decide whether to maintain choice and competition in the set-top box marketplace,” PK Vice President-Government Affairs Chris Lewis said in a statement. “If this legislative giveaway to Comcast and the cable industry is allowed to pass, it will provide them with a virtual monopoly on set-top boxes and allow prices on box rentals to increase unchallenged.” NCTA and staffers for the proposal's author Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., have defended the provision as having bicameral, bipartisan support. The groups’ letter “once again completely ignores the clear consumer benefits that flow from eliminating an outdated technology mandate that wastes energy and adds unnecessary costs to leased set-top boxes,” NCTA’s spokesman replied. “The fact that PK’s latest characterization falls so wide of the mark can only be interpreted as a conscious decision to remain willfully blind to the significant changes that have occurred in the video marketplace over the last decade, to ignore the harmful impact of technology mandates on innovation incentives, and to brazenly deny the manifest injustice of a rule that saddles cable customers with leased devices -- and cable customers alone -- with added costs for no appreciable benefit.” He called the provision “common sense” and said that it does not “disturb the underlying legal obligation to support separable security in retail devices and does not alter the market incentives that drive providers to expand the availability of its services.”
Dust still hadn't settled Thursday in several outstanding races following the Tuesday midterm elections. Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, had not yet conceded. Begich was down by more than three points in his re-election fight against Republican Dan Sullivan. Begich is a member of the Communications Subcommittee and has been active on rural broadband and USF issues. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., is locked in tight race against Republican consultant Ed Gillespie that has not formally been called, although Warner has maintained a slight lead and is widely considered victorious. The California 17th District House race had also not yet been called. Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., has led in the polls against Ro Khanna, also a Democrat and former deputy assistant secretary of Commerce under President Barack Obama.
Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., is still trying to nail down whether it's possible to hold a hearing on pay-TV industry bill practices this year. McCaskill is chairwoman of the Commerce Consumer Protection Subcommittee and said months ago that she hoped to hold a hearing this year if possible. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., endorsed the idea of such a hearing at a September markup session and said McCaskill should lead it. But staffers are still looking at the calendar and assessing when and if such a hearing is possible later this month or December, a Democratic Senate staffer told us. Congress returns for the lame-duck session Nov. 12.
Rep. Adrian Smith, R-Neb., is planning a letter to the FCC on rural TV programming. His office circulated a Dear Colleague letter asking for other lawmakers to sign on by Nov. 18. “Internet speeds and access continue to grow, and consumers have more cable channels and online media options,” said Smith’s draft of the letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. “However, access to these opportunities remains a challenge for many -- particularly the mostly rural Americans not yet reached by the fastest broadband and seniors who continue to access video content solely through television.” The FCC should “remain mindful of the challenges faced by rural Americans as you consider issues before the Commission,” the draft said. “We remain committed to working with you to ensure all Americans have the opportunity to access the content most relevant to their work, families, and communities.”
Two senators urged antitrust regulators to examine AT&T’s proposed acquisition of DirecTV with great care. Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and ranking member Mike Lee, R-Utah, sent a joint letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and Attorney General Eric Holder Oct. 30. “Your agencies should consider the extent to which the merger is necessary to provide bundled service, and whether the merger will improve the companies’ ability to offer service that can more strongly compete with cable,” they said. “We think you should examine whether AT&T’s commitment to offer standalone [broadband] service for three years is sufficient to secure customers’ continued ability to choose that option.” They cited concerns about most favored nation clauses and about how they “can negatively affect competition for independent programming.” They also urged the regulators to examine any program access issues. The tone “suggests conditions, not rejection,” said Guggenheim Partners analyst Paul Gallant in a Tuesday research note to investors. “Given the current dispute over outside parties’ access to the merging companies’ programming contracts, we are inclined to think a March 2015 ruling from the DOJ and FCC is realistic.” Gallant suggested Comcast’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable is the more challenging deal to secure approval. AT&T and DirecTV have defended their deal as strongly pro-consumer and necessary to provide better bundles.
House Ways and Means Committee members and other House members reached across the aisle in recent days to pressure U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman to safeguard digital products and cross-border data flow in the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other trade agreements. The bipartisan group of 55 House members threatened to reject a TPP implementation bill that fails to meet a robust standard of digital protection. “We encourage you to resist efforts by other countries to include overly broad exceptions that would unnecessarily undermine these provisions and provide lower levels of protection for digital products and services than other areas of trade,” said the letter, led by committee members Mike Kelly, R-Pa., and Ron Kind, D-Wis. “We also urge you to resist any delay in the implementation of dispute resolution mechanisms.” The Oct. 31 letter follows two other similar letters from lawmakers in recent weeks (see 1410280026).
TVFreedom issued another blog post Monday tearing into the pay-TV industry for reaping what it called too much profit and not helping consumers. “Using every means at their disposal, [pay-TV lobbyists] continue pressuring Washington lawmakers for new laws and policies that would separate out local broadcast TV stations from existing cable package offerings and, instead, would require consumers to purchase these popular local TV channels on an 'a la carte' basis,” TVFreedom's spokesman wrote of the Senate’s Local Choice proposal. “This is one component of a grand strategy to use government intervention to fundamentally alter the nation's existing video market in order to provide the pay-TV industry with an irreversible competitive advantage over the broadcast television industry for local advertising dollars.” TVFreedom is a coalition of broadcasters, including NAB. “Blinded by the potential financial windfall they'll reap as a result of broadcast-TV-only 'a la carte' through increased local advertising dollars, the pay-TV cabal is now engaged in a full-throttled effort to hide this truth from their subscribers,” the spokesman said. The pay-TV industry should “offer subscribers a lease-to-purchase option for DVRs and set-top boxes as part of service contract renewals” and take “proactive measures to overhaul their truth-in-billing practices for the benefit of customers,” the TVFreedom spokesman said. TVFreedom has been engaged in a lobbying battle with the American Television Alliance, a coalition of pay-TV industry stakeholders, throughout the past year. The American Television Alliance has defended Local Choice as necessary and criticized broadcaster greed (see 1408270052).