The cable industry ramped up efforts to get the FCC’s OK for all-digital systems to scramble the basic-tier (CD Feb 16 p7), to remotely turn on and off video service. Fourteen CEOs wrote Chairman Julius Genachowski asking he not wait any longer to circulate an encryption order, and NCTA CEO Michael Powell lobbied Genachowski on the subject. Public Knowledge Legal Director Harold Feld, who had concerns that consumer electronics relying on encrypted signals won’t get programming, thinks the time has come for the FCC to vote (CD Feb 29 p18), with docket 11-169 (http://xrl.us/bmwmw8) having a sufficient record as long as poor customers are made whole. Boxee, the most frequent CE filer against encryption, said its concerns haven’t been addressed by operators.
Release of a report on the 1755-1850 MHz band is still on the way, though it has taken some time to wrap up review of the report by other federal agencies, NTIA head Larry Strickling said Thursday during a meeting of the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee. Meanwhile, NTIA Associate Administrator Karl Nebbia warned that spectrum sharing will be a fact of life for years to come if all or parts of the band are reallocated for broadband. Wireless carriers have long viewed 1755-1780 MHz as their top priority for reallocation for commercial use.
A couple dozen stations’ public files are now online, posted by a researcher for a nonprofit that seeks such disclosure. That’s before the FCC moves to make all TV broadcasters put most of the files now in studios on the commission’s website. After several years of on-again, off-again work, the New America Foundation is making public documents it copied at radio and TV stations in some of the U.S.’s largest markets and some smaller cities. The files are “geomapped” with stations’ locations, so visitors to the site (http://xrl.us/bmwmv5) can see if an outlet in their area has its file available, said Media Policy Fellow Tom Glaisyer of NAF’s Open Technology Initiative. “If the FCC adopts the rules they're considering, this is what it could look like."
FCC plans to consider a rulemaking notice (CD March 1 p9) this month on flexible terrestrial use of 2 GHz mobile satellite service spectrum seem to complicate Dish Network’s plans for using that spectrum, said analysts. While there is disagreement over the actual impact to Dish, it may give the company some more regulatory certainty in terms of FCC expectations, they said. Dish is seeking FCC approval to take over 2 GHz licenses from DBSD and TerreStar and use the spectrum for terrestrial service through waivers of MSS rules.
The White House offered a scathing criticism of an alternative cybersecurity bill introduced Thursday by a group of Republican senators. Meanwhile, AT&T and USTelecom hailed the Strengthening and Enhancing Cybersecurity by Using Research, Education, Information, and Technology (SECURE IT) Act, which competes directly with the Senate Cybersecurity Act (S-2105). The SECURE IT Act is sponsored by GOP Sens. John McCain or Arizona; Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas; Chuck Grassley of Iowa; Saxby Chambliss of Georgia; Lisa Murkowski of Alaska; Dan Coats of Indiana; Ron Johnson of Wisconsin; and Richard Burr of North Carolina.
A Georgia bill would rapidly eliminate the state’s $16 million Universal Access Fund (UAF), which funds rural phone companies and is financed by larger telecom companies like AT&T. HB-855 (http://xrl.us/bmwmgc) is being considered in the House. It would ignore the 20-year phase out of the UAF passed in 2010 and instead eliminate it by 2015. If the bill were passed, the UAF would be reduced to $6 million in 2013, to $3 million in 2014 and be eliminated in 2015.
Rural Utilities Service Administrator Jonathan Adelstein defended the pace of broadband stimulus projects and the failure of Open Range Communications, at a budget hearing Thursday of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture. The White House’s FY 2013 budget proposal provides “adequate” broadband funding for rural areas, Adelstein said. RUS is studying the impact of the recent Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation overhaul, he said.
ITU Secretary General Hamadoun Toure underlined the role of private sector contributions to the review of the International Telecommunication Regulations, at a preparatory meeting for the World Conference on International Telecom (WCIT) in Geneva. A new edition of the ITRs that date from negotiations of the World Administrative Telegraph and Telephone Conference in Melbourne in 1988 await approval by ITU member countries in Dubai in December. The ITRs establish general principles and provisions governing international telecom services.
Public Knowledge, which has informally asked the FCC’s Wireline and Wireless bureaus to investigate usage-based data caps, is considering formally asking for an investigation, Legal Director Harold Feld said in an interview Wednesday. “The longer this issue persists the more likely we are to do it,” Feld said of filing a formal complaint.
Whether a sports blackout rule supports terrestrial TV by keeping professional games on over-the-air broadcasts and not only on multichannel video programming distributors was debated in replies to the FCC on a petition from five groups to end the rule. The affiliate associations of three of the four major U.S. broadcast networks chimed in for the first time on the request, backing NAB’s opposition. The groups that petitioned (http://xrl.us/bmwid3) the commission (CD Nov 15 p3) to end the 1970s-era requirement that MVPDs not carry games in markets where contracts between leagues and stations keep them off-air said there’s “no compelling economic rationale” to keep the rule.