A draft FCC order on special access would introduce mandatory data collection, agency officials said. It comes seven years after the commission opened a proceeding to reform its 1999 special access pricing flexibility rules. There will be far more kinds of data sought than the simple collocation metric used in the 1999 proceeding, FCC officials said. The agency intends to suspend consideration of pricing flexibility petitions pending development of a new framework, the officials said. Special access circuits are dedicated data connections often used by businesses, and as backhaul for wireless sites.
Recent FCC changes to USF subsidies for rate-of-return ILECs are “modest and overdue,” CTIA and NCTA argued Friday in oppositions to several requests for commission-level review of new rules designed to limit reimbursable capital and operating costs. They said a stay would harm competing providers if the ILECs were “allowed to continue receiving excessive and inefficient amounts” of high-cost loop support (HCLS) in areas where the support is unwarranted. The NTCA, OPASTCO and others petitioned for review of the Wireline Bureau’s HCLS Order in late May, arguing the quantile regression methodology imposes unreasonable burdens on rural LECs, applies support limits randomly and will fail to provide incentives for efficient operations (CD May 29 p7).
Executives from TV broadcasters benefiting from must-carry rules pushed FCC officials to prevent the so-called DTV viewability rules from expiring this month, an ex parte notice said (http://xrl.us/bnacdx). Ion Media CEO Brandon Burgess and Liberman Broadcasting Vice President John Heffron met with aides to several commissioners last week as they argued for extending a requirement that cable operators deliver must-carry programming to analog cable subscribers in analog format. The requirement is set to expire June 12, and a draft order that circulated last month would largely allow the mandate to sunset (CD Jun 4 p4).
Some provisions of the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2013, passed on May 18, “could cripple and certainly would delay substantially the overall Export Control Reform initiative,” said Undersecretary of the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) Eric Hirschhorn at a meeting of the President’s Export Council Subcommittee on Export Administration on Monday. Hirschhorn said he hopes the first ECR rules will be finalized this summer or fall.
The FCC got additional replies in its rulemaking on terrestrial use of mobile satellite services spectrum in the 2 GHz band, frequencies for which Dish Network is seeking to build a terrestrial network. Larger wireless carriers opposed strict conditions affecting their spectrum acquisition plans, while some satellite operators butted heads over expansion of terrestrial use in the Big low earth orbit (LEO) band. Replies were due last week in docket 12-70 (CD June 4 p16).
The FCC continues to have a relatively low backlog of cable requests for deregulation of video rates in local franchise areas, as few LFAs oppose them and the Media Bureau approves most within several months. The number of pending requests has about doubled from last summer (CD July 21 p4), the time of the previous Communications Daily review of effective competition petitions. Lawyers for cities and cable operators said the bureau is taking more time to review some requests, though it usually grants them when cities don’t protest. Honolulu is the only LFA now believed to be opposing any petition, this one by Time Warner Cable, said the lawyers. Boston and Comcast meanwhile have been trading filings over whether the bureau ought to stick with this year’s order revoking the company’s deregulation there.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack thinks the new FCC rules on high-cost loop support make the USF less predictable, and that the Wireline Bureau’s waiver process uses the wrong standard, he told FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski last week. The commission has received several petitions for review of the Wireline Bureau’s HCLS Benchmarks Order setting out a regression methodology for determining reimbursable support on capital expenditures. Six companies have filed waiver requests of the various rules adopted in last fall’s USF/intercarrier compensation order, an FCC spokesman said.
FCC and industry officials said they expect few changes to a draft that would allow the commission’s must-carry DTV viewability rules to partially sunset (CD May 25 p5) before the order’s adopted. Parties are continuing to meet with commission staff to push their arguments. Ex parte notices filed in docket 98-120 show a steady stream of visits to the commission from cable industry lawyers and executives. Much of the lobbying has focused on the two newest commissioners’ offices, filings show.
GENEVA -- Initial talks to expand the World Trade Organization (WTO) Information Technology Agreement (ITA) made a first screening of six lists of products proposed for inclusion, went through different products and discussed how to render them into a common list, sources said during technical meetings Friday. The meeting was very technical, a source said. The information technology (IT) aspect is not obvious for some products floated for inclusion, he said, referring to electric hair clippers.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, in a number of recent speeches, has drawn a connection between broadband expansion and jobs. Some longtime observers view his recurring remarks on job growth as surprisingly political for an FCC chairman, even in an election year, especially since jobs are likely to be a key area of conflict between President Barack Obama and presumptive Republican challenger Mitt Romney in the presidential campaign. Other observers say the connection between broadband and jobs has always been tough to quantify.