The FCC scheduled the reverse auction that will award up to $50 million in one-time Tribal Mobility Fund Phase I support for Dec. 19. Auction 902 was previously slated for Oct. 24. “In order to provide interested parties ample time to analyze the updated lists of eligible census blocks released concurrently with this Public Notice and to take any further steps required to establish eligibility for participation in Auction 902, we delay the auction date,” said a Wednesday public notice from the Wireline and Wireless bureaus (http://bit.ly/18dQe09). The order also lays out rules for the auction, which is to be a single-round, sealed bid auction, with bidding “on predefined bidding areas consisting of eligible census blocks aggregated by Tribal lands and census tracts, and in some cases consisting of individual census blocks in Alaska,” the notice said. “Auction 902 will award one-time support to carriers that commit to provide 3G or better mobile voice and broadband services to Tribal lands that lack such services,” the notice said. “Support will be allocated to maximize the population covered by new mobile services without exceeding the budget of $50 million. Winning bidders will be obligated to choose whether to deploy 3G service within two years or 4G service within three years after the award of support."

Intelsat requested an additional 60-day special temporary authority for Intelsat 706. Intelsat was initially granted an STA to operate the satellite at 157 degrees east in the C and Ku bands in inclined orbit, it said in its application to the FCC International Bureau (http://bit.ly/13mFKbb). Discovery is seeking to modify its earth station E100042 in Sterling, Va., “which provides digital voice and video service,” it said in its application (http://bit.ly/19QcLUw).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit allocated 40 minutes for oral argument on Verizon’s appeal of the FCC’s 2010 net neutrality rules, in an order handed down Thursday. The case is to be argued Sept. 9 starting at 9:30 a.m. The order allocated 20 minutes to Verizon and 20 minutes to FCC and intervenors. Public interest lawyer Andrew Schwartzman, a longtime court watcher, said the fact that the D.C. Circuit provided only 40 minutes for oral argument was a surprise, but that arguments likely will take much longer. “The over/under betting line would be that each side will wind up arguing for about 45 minutes,” said Schwartzman, who supports net neutrality. Judges David Tatel and Judith Rogers and Senior Judge Laurence Silberman are to hear argument.

Aereo will start providing service to Utah, Chicago, Miami, Houston and Dallas in August and September, said the company on Thursday (http://bit.ly/16xnRJ5). The company will launch its antenna/DVR streaming technology in Utah on Aug. 19, Miami Sept. 2, Chicago Sept. 13, Houston Sept. 16 and Dallas Sept. 23.

Multichannel video services penetration has slightly declined in the past three years from 88 percent in 2010 to 86 percent now, said a Leichtman Research Group (LRG) survey released Thursday (http://bit.ly/13QCN2P). Among households that don’t subscribe to multichannel video service, 40 percent subscribe to Netflix, 11 percent to Amazon Prime Instant Video and 7 percent to Hulu Plus, the survey found. In total, 42 percent of non-subscribers get at least one of the three over-the-top services (OTT), and 58 percent of non-subscribers don’t get any of these services, said LRG. This results in 8 percent of all TV households watching over-the-air broadcast (OTA) TV only and 6 percent watching a combination of OTA and OTT programming, said LRG. The study was based on a telephone survey of 1,319 households in the U.S., including 150 cellphone calls, in May and June.

The FCC Wireline Bureau seeks comments on a Time Warner Cable petition to become an eligible telecom carrier in Maine for the sole purpose of providing wireless services supported by the USF’s Lifeline program (http://bit.ly/14oqu13). Comments are due Sept. 6, replies Sept. 23, said a bureau public notice.

The New York Public Service Commission scheduled a public hearing on use of Verizon’s Voice Link on Fire Island on Aug. 24 in Ocean Beach, N.Y., said the PSC in a notice Wednesday (http://bit.ly/148xpah). The New York State Department will give a brief overview of the proceeding at noon, followed by public comments on Voice Link service on western Fire Island, said the PSC. Comments can also be submitted to the PUC through Sept. 13 at secretary@dps.ny.gov, referring to “Case 13-C-0197 - Voice Link on Fire Island."

The CBS Television Network Affiliates board supports CBS’s stance in the retransmission consent dispute with Time Warner Cable. It’s the operator, not the broadcaster, “that has chosen to deprive Time Warner Cable’s subscribers of CBS programming,” said the board Wednesday in a news release. Eighty percent of the retrans blackouts that occurred since 2012 have involved Time Warner Cable, Dish Network and DirecTV alone, it said. That underscores “it is the tactics of these distributors that are a threat to consumers, not retransmission consent,” the board said. As a result of the dispute, CBS programming hasn’t been available to TWC subscribers (CD Aug 6 p2). The Parents Television Council credited both parties with agreeing that consumers should choose the networks they want to purchase. In every carriage dispute, it’s the consumer “who is ultimately left with a higher cable bill and no direct recourse,” except canceling service, said PTC President Tim Winter in a separate news release. “In the stream of commerce, there is no cartel-like bundling scheme like that of cable.” If customers were able to decide for themselves which networks they wanted to pay for, there would be no service disruption, and “programmers would be forced to deliver a quality product at a price that the consumer would be willing to pay,” it said. CBS criticized Time Warner Cable for being “on the other side of the table in terms of rights fees,” said the broadcaster in a news release. It referred to a lawsuit brought against the cable company in June by three of its subscribers who claim that Time Warner Cable is requiring higher cable fees to watch Los Angeles Lakers basketball and Dodgers baseball games. About $6.6 billion is extracted from individuals “who do not want and do not watch and do not want to pay for Lakers and Dodgers telecasts and who, if given the option to do so, would opt out of such telecasts,” said the complaint filed in Superior Court of California in Los Angeles. “Neither the Lakers nor Dodgers TWC channels are available to consumers on an a la carte basis,” CBS said. Time Warner Cable said it partnered directly with the teams “to cut out the expensive middleman and save our customers money in the long run.” It’s ironic that CBS “would question moving sports off of broadcast, when they themselves announced in May that they were moving the Final Four [NCAA championship tournament] to cable,” said a Time Warner Cable spokesman.

The FCC should tread with care as it reviews the Universal Service Administrative Co.’s (USAC) finding that audio communication components of Cisco’s WebEx conferencing service are a telecommunications service under the 1996 Telecom Act (CD Aug 7 p17), said Free State Foundation President Randolph May in a Wednesday blog post (http://bit.ly/12ttp31). “It is only natural that USAC has an incentive to want to expand the services subject to USF contribution payments to the extent possible,” May said. “But if the effect of its decisions is to narrow the understanding of what constitutes an ‘information service,’ the consequences can be far-reaching. This is because the FCC would then have authority to regulate as telecommunications services previously unregulated information services."

IPTV providers should pay the same regulatory fees as cable operators, said the American Cable Association in an FCC ex parte filing Wednesday (http://bit.ly/17xZYA6). U-Verse provider AT&T “neither disputes that its U-Verse service is substantially similar to cable service, nor that the Commission lacks regulatory authority to assess regulatory fees on all IPTV providers to support Media Bureau activities,” ACA said. The FCC’s decision to defer consideration of proposals to make DBS providers pay the same fees “should not serve as a reason to delay taking the simpler and immediate step of assessing Media Bureau regulatory fees on self-described non-cable IPTV providers” said ACA. The commission should also limit FY 2013 regulatory fee increases for cable operators “in light of the anticipation of lowered future cable per subscriber regulatory fees that will come through inclusion of all IPTV providers in FY 2014,” said ACA. “Many small cable systems are already operating under severe financial constraints in a difficult economy and unbudgeted increases in operating costs, even increases that might appear small could be the final straw."