The FCC's going from three to five commissioners (see 1708030060) isn’t likely to alter Chairman Ajit Pai’s momentum and main policy agenda, but it could lead to shifts on lower-profile items and possibly a slightly slower-moving commission if Pai seeks to include all the members in deliberations, industry officials said Friday. Former officials said the additions likely means Commissioner Mike O’Rielly’s role will grow in stature. Telecom, cable and satellite representatives expect little to no learning curve given the experience the two bring. Commissioner Brendan Carr may not trigger any notable change in Pai’s agenda, since pet interests of his very likely could be baked into Pai’s priorities.
The LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition said it's “declaring a truce” in the debate over a proposal to reserve vacant channels in the TV bands for unlicensed use (see 1707110015). The declaration came in an email newsletter Tuesday. Though NAB and Microsoft have been actively pressing the FCC on the matter, a broadcast industry official told us the two sides remain far apart, and the coalition announcement doesn’t indicate any of the other parties active in the vacant channel proceeding have reached an agreement with the coalition. The group is working on a plan under which licensees would be offered “economic opportunities to utilize their spectrum rights to participate in the solving of national problems,” the email said. LPTV spectrum could be used for rural broadband, and to assist in the rollout of ATSC 3.0, the email said. Microsoft didn’t comment. NAB "remains strongly opposed to the Microsoft proposal," a spokesman said in response to the coalition announcement. "Microsoft’s proposal could damage TV reception for tens of millions of people living in both rural and urban America.”
Ion's seeking changes to FCC repacking reimbursement processes comes as the payment plan is a problem for many, broadcast industry officials and their attorneys told us. Ion’s petition in docket 12-268 asks the FCC to change its plans for reimbursing station owners (see 1707310068) to give them access to 100 percent of estimated reimbursement funds upfront, plus changes to what modifications are considered upgrades for stations, and restrictions on how an operator can adjust its signal.
Emergency alert system entities, EAS participants and law enforcement organizations divided over whether incidents involving danger to police should have their own EAS code, in comments in FCC docket 15-94 by Monday’s deadline. Most commenters -- including APCO, DOJ (see 1707310045) and the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC) -- support creating the alert code. Others believe existing codes can serve the same function, and adding another will further dilute effectiveness of the EAS system or increase expense. The proposed BLU event code is “another vanity Event Code intended to meet the needs of the one/few at the expense of further eroding the intrinsic value of mass alerting for more significant and substantive mass call-to-action notifications,” said broadcasting technical service provider McCarthy Radio Enterprises.
The post-incentive auction repacking hasn’t been afflicted by a lack of enough engineers, materials and resources to go around, but that could change once broadcasters have more certainty about what will be reimbursed, broadcast engineers and industry officials told us. Though industry officials said some orders for new equipment have come in, most broadcasters are waiting for results from the FCC’s review of their expenses and for news from Capitol Hill and the agency about how far their reimbursement funds will go (see 1707260061 and 1707310050), said Dennis Wallace, broadcast engineer at Meintel, Sgrignoli. Dielectric Antenna Sales Executive Christine Zuba expects a push once stations have access to their reimbursement funds. Broadcasters likely will “wait until they have a confirmed outcome as to what’s going to be approved,” Wallace said. The IATF said reimbursement funds are expected to be available in Q4 (see 1707270051).
The FCC is considered likely to act on updating its rules on FM translator interference with full-power stations through an upcoming adjudication rather than through a rulemaking, several radio industry officials said in interviews. The FCC has a pending application for review on an interference complaint between an FM translator and full-power station in Indiana that involves the issues (see 1611040051) raised in recent petitions for rulemaking from NAB and Aztec Capital Partners (see 1706010063), industry officials said. The FCC’s latest FM translator license application window, which opened Wednesday, is likely to exacerbate interference issues between translators and full powers, industry officials said.
FCC reimbursement fund administrator EY had to press broadcasters for additional information on their repacking reimbursement requests because many are upgrading to ATSC 3.0-compatible equipment and didn’t submit actual price estimates, said FCC Incentive Auction Task Force Chair Jean Kiddoo and industry officials in interviews.
The FCC should allow fixed wireless service to share the 3700 MHz-4200 MHz band with the incumbent fixed satellite service (FSS) because the satellite users are underutilizing the band and are doomed to lose that spectrum anyway, said speakers from Google and rural wireless ISPs. The comments came at a New America Foundation-hosted event in support of a petition for rulemaking in June by the Broadband Access Coalition (see 1706210044). “If the military can learn to love sharing, the satellite industry can, too,” said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at New America. “It’s better than losing it.”
An item on refunds of application fees in media services auctions was added to the FCC’s list of items on circulation Friday. The item involves requests for refunds of application fees previously paid in FM radio service auctions, an FCC official told us.
The FCC should come up with solutions for problems with Lifeline rather than attacking the program, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said during a Q&A session at a Multicultural Media Telecom and Internet Council conference Thursday. Wanting to fix abuses in the Lifeline program is not the same as seeking to “kill” it, Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said during his Q&A. Criticizing Lifeline without coming up with alternatives is “regulatory malpractice,” Clyburn said.