Ritter Communications has begun lobbying Congress to revive the broadcaster-reviled broadcast a la carte proposal known as Local Choice. The company, a member of NTCA, has customers in Arkansas and Tennessee. Vice President-External Affairs John Strode spoke in a two-minute video touting Local Choice, as Ritter also asked customers to reach out to the Senate in support of such legislation. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and ranking member John Thune, R-S.D., introduced the proposal this fall and initially tried to attach it to Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization. They ended those plans after broadcaster outrage. Thune wants to fight to enact Local Choice next year, he has said. “Since the price is hidden from you, [broadcasters] can charge higher and higher prices, and boy, do they,” Strode said of retransmission consent fees. Strode said TV blackouts are now “happening more and more frequently. ... We support a simple solution called Local Choice. … That kind of free market would be best for everybody.” Strode pointed out that Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman Mark Pryor, D-Ark., sits on a relevant committee of jurisdiction: “Let him and other lawmakers know that you’re a TV consumer and you’re for Local Choice.” The “Ritter On Your Side” website contains a form letter consumers can use, directed at the Senate and allowing consumers to say whether they are from Arkansas or Tennessee. “Congress should restrain abusive programming and retransmission consent practices and give my cable company the flexibility to offer a range of programming, allowing me to choose the tiers of services I want and not choose expensive channels I don’t watch or want, like expensive sports channels,” the form letter said. “Please join the fight to change outdated, unfair federal laws and regulations, and help me to stop these harmful programming tying and bundling practices. I urge Congress to begin rewriting communications laws immediately to better protect me, the consumer.” The form letter also urged lawmakers “to tell the FCC that you will hold it accountable for protecting consumers by finishing rulemakings on retransmission consent, media ownership and program access.” Ritter’s home page also prominently said TV consumers deserve Local Choice. Broadcasters argued forcefully that Local Choice would wreak havoc on their business models and unfairly singles out broadcasters.
Verizon dismissed fears of paid prioritization as “demagoguery,” responding to a letter from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. Last week, Leahy requested pledges against paid prioritization from Verizon as well as AT&T, Charter Communications, Comcast and Time Warner Cable (see 1410230041). “Unfortunately, the fever pitch over ‘paid prioritization’ and ‘fast lanes’ among advocates of greater Internet regulation is just demagoguery since no major ISP has expressed an interest in offering ‘paid prioritization’ and all agree that the FCC has a valid legal path to prohibit it,” Verizon General Counsel Randal Milch told Leahy in a letter Wednesday. “Verizon has no plans to engage in paid prioritization of Internet traffic.” He emphasized that paid prioritization is “theoretical” and a “phantasm,” without any history of an ISP even laying out the business case for crafting such deals. Milch bashed Title II reclassification and emphasized the FCC’s path to target paid prioritization deals under Communications Act Section 706. Verizon railed against Title II and restrictive regulation generally. “For example, some net neutrality advocates have attacked new business models, such as sponsored data or ‘zero-rating,’ that would save money for consumers,” Milch said. “Under these nascent arrangements, content providers could voluntarily agree to pick up the tab for usage-charges when consumers go to their sites. Or in other instances, such as T-Mobile’s Music Freedom plans, in order to differentiate its service a broadband provider could decide not to charge usage for certain types of traffic.” It would be “regressive” to ban potential “pro-consumer practices,” he said.
Scores of NTCA members spent Tuesday lobbing Capitol Hill offices on various priorities. They were in town for NTCA’s Telecom Executive Policy Summit. “After hearing yesterday from leading policymakers like FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly and FTC Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen, followed by conversations with key stakeholders from the telecom, education and public interest sectors, more than 100 NTCA members fanned out today for meetings across Capitol Hill,” NTCA Senior Vice President-Policy Michael Romano told us Tuesday. “In these meetings, NTCA members hope to convey the importance of near-term, targeted updates to essential universal service cost recovery mechanisms, the value of leveraging existing rural networks to serve critical public policy initiatives and the need to address outdated video content rules that hinder consumer choice and undermine broadband deployment and adoption.” NTCA members also joined the White House Rural Council for a meeting Tuesday to consider the Smart Rural Community Initiative, NTCA said in a news release. The event included remarks from executives heading the North Central Telephone Cooperative, Peoples Rural Telephone Cooperative and Blue Valley Tele-Communications. “Expanding telecommunications is a central component of this administration's comprehensive effort to build jobs and economic security in rural America,” said Doug McKalip, White House Domestic Policy Council senior policy adviser-rural affairs, in a statement.
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., worries the FCC’s proposed $10 million fine against TerraCom and YourTel America (see 1410240055) lacks “an appropriate deterrent effect,” he told FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in a letter Tuesday. That proposed fine “may be seen merely as the cost of business to these carriers,” Nelson said. “Accordingly, I would urge the Commission to use all available authorities and penalties -- up to and including a revocation of the right to participate in the Lifeline program or provide other telecommunications services -- for companies that willfully fail to protect the PII [personally identifiable information] or other sensitive information of consumers.” Nelson praised the FCC for taking action against the companies and believes it has authority to do so. Nelson is widely expected to be the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee in the next Congress.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation criticized the government’s use of what it called “sneak and peek” warrants to access citizen’s information. Those warrants allow law enforcement “to conduct a search while delaying notice to the suspect of the search” based on Section 213 of the Patriot Act, an authority the government demanded as part of its efforts to fight terrorism, EFF said in a Sunday blog post. “But the latest government report detailing the numbers of ‘sneak and peek’ warrants reveals that out of a total of over 11,000 sneak and peek requests, only 51 were used for terrorism,” EFF said. “Yet again, terrorism concerns appear to be trampling our civil liberties.” It argued that Section 213 is as important as Section 215, the much-discussed provision of the Patriot Act authorizing the bulk collection of phone records. “The government will continue to argue for more surveillance authorities -- like the need to update the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act -- under the guise of terrorism,” EFF said. “But before we engage in any updates, the public must be convinced such updates are needed and won't be used for non-terrorist purposes that chip away at our civil liberties.”
Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., would kill the National Football League’s tax-exempt status, he said Sunday during a Senate campaign debate. Franken is facing Republican Mike McFadden in a re-election campaign and has maintained a strong lead, with the Rothenberg Political Report judging his seat Democrat favored. “I would revoke" the NFL’s tax-exempt status, said Franken, chairman of the Judiciary Privacy Subcommittee. When told there was congressional legislation proposing to revoke the exemption, Franken said, “Then I will support that.” Franken doesn't currently co-sponsor any legislation removing the exemption. Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and John McCain, R-Ariz., have pushed for such legislation and framed removing the NFL's antitrust exemption as the ultimate answer to incidents of sports blackouts, which they say remain a policy concern beyond the FCC’s vote in September to end its sports blackout rule. The NFL has resisted these policy changes. “It’s something I will look into,” McFadden said. “I’ve never been asked that question on the trail before.”
Capitol Hill staffers visited FCC headquarters Monday to learn how the agency’s AWS-3 spectrum auction, scheduled for next month, will work. The House staffers work for members of the Congressional Spectrum Caucus, led by Reps. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., and Doris Matsui, D-Calif. Those lawmakers created the caucus in February. “We had about 15-20 staffers from Energy and Commerce offices visit the FCC to see a demo of their auction system,” a spokeswoman for Guthrie told us. “We had a briefing on auction procedures and the history of FCC auctions and then were able to utilize the FCC’s auction system to do a ‘real-time’ demo of the auction system.” A Democratic House staffer told us that about 20 staffers from both political parties attended the briefing. “The FCC walked us through the auction process and we participated in auction simulation,” said the Democratic staffer.
Four senators want Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations to properly account for cross-border data flows. Any agreement “must include meaningful, clear obligations, enforceable through a strong and effective dispute settlement mechanism, that prohibit unnecessary limitations on the cross-border transfer, storage and processing of data or the physical location of computing infrastructure,” said Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.; Commerce ranking member John Thune, R-S.D.; Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore.; and Finance ranking member Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, in a joint letter to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman Friday (http://1.usa.gov/1wwGCeG). “We urge you to stand firm against efforts by other countries to seek reservations and overly broad exceptions that would undermine these obligations and provide lower levels of protection for trade in digital goods and services as compared to other areas of trade.” House Commerce Trade Subcommittee Chairman Lee Terry, R-Neb., and Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., sent a similar letter to Froman and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker Friday. “Trade agreements must acknowledge and support the growth of international trade through e-commerce, and cross-border data flows are the backbone of this growth,” the lawmakers said (http://1.usa.gov/1nCWMl5). “We urge you to secure enforceable commitments to free and open cross-border data flows around the world, for the sake of U.S. businesses and for a prosperous global economy.”
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., hosted a “Silicon Holler Express” bus tour of parts of his state last week, he said in a news release. “We're already doing high-tech business where high-speed Internet is available, but with Kentucky's new 'Super I-way,' we will be able to recruit even more complex businesses, and draw them to what I like to call Silicon Holler," Rogers said in a statement last week (http://1.usa.gov/1sYYRXH). "The first phase of the broadband project is expected to be complete in the next 18 months, so now is the time to plan our work and work our plan." He hosted 50 leaders from Kentucky to highlight this initiative, the release said.
The Competitive Carriers Association lauded five GOP senators for advocating a revamp to FCC Mobility Fund rules to focus on rural areas receiving high-speed mobile broadband. Sens. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H.; Roy Blunt, R-Mo.; Deb Fischer, R-Neb.; Jerry Moran, R-Kansas; and Roger Wicker, R-Miss., sent the letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Friday. “The Senators are absolutely correct; rural households and businesses will benefit tremendously from high speed mobile broadband services,” Competitive Carriers Association President Steven Berry said in a statement (http://bit.ly/1wmwB5e). “It is well within the FCC’s authority to ensure rules for Mobility Fund II will allow rural communities to benefit from the same services as their urban counterparts.”