The introduction of TV industry deregulatory legislation (HR-3675, S-2008) and plans for Congressional hearings on the subject (CD Dec 22 p1) point to a desire for a marketplace closer to the Internet, said an industry executive. But such a marketplace may add confusion for the industries rather than lessen it, said others.
Verizon and several incumbents pushed back against competitors’ efforts to repeal forbearance granted to Verizon from Communications Act Title II regulatory obligations. Verizon and its allies, including CenturyLink, Hawaiian Telcom, FairPoint and Frontier, all argued in nearly identical language that pulling back the forbearance -- and the ILECs’ forbearances that followed Verizon’s victory -- would be, in CenturyLink’s words, “both unlawful and poor public policy.” On the other side were MegaPath, U.S. TelePacific and CompTel, all of which argued that the forbearance grants have created nightmarish disparities in the market for non-TDM-based packet switched broadband and optical transmission services. The comments were posted Tuesday in docket 11-188.
The House Communications Subcommittee is eying a series of hearings on the state of video competition next year, Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., told Communications Daily. The Senate Commerce Committee is also expected to have a hearing on the subject, Hill and industry officials said. The hearings are spurred at least in part by legislation (HR-3675, S-2008) introduced this month by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., broadcast and telecom industry lobbyists said. But the DeMint-Scalise bill itself is unlikely to pass as written, they said.
After several rounds of minor editing, FCC commissioners were set to approve a notice of proposed rulemaking for its 2010 Quadrennial media ownership review, industry and FCC sources said. No major changes had been made to the notice in recent weeks, as commissioners and their staff worked on its language, they said. Commissioners’ offices were finalizing their statements on proposed rules Wednesday as approval appeared imminent, FCC officials said. An FCC spokesman declined to comment.
CTIA, AT&T and Verizon Wireless urged the FCC to reverse course from the last two wireless competition reports and find in the 2012 edition that the industry is effectively competitive. Reply comments were due this week on a Nov. 3 Wireless Bureau public notice seeking data as it prepares the Sixteenth Annual Report on the State of Competition in Mobile Wireless. The 2011 and 2010 reports declined to find that the market is competitive. The arguments parallel many of those that dominated the debate over the AT&T/T-Mobile deal. There are no signs that the FCC will change the stance of the last two reports, both prepared under Chairman Julius Genachowski, agency officials concede.
LightSquared’s petition for declaratory ruling Tuesday (CD Dec 21 p8) seeks to hold the FCC’s and the GPS industry’s feet to the fire by dealing with the unresolved issue of L-band and GPS spectrum rights, said LightSquared Executive Vice President Jeff Carlisle in an interview Wednesday. The LightSquared filing seemed to show a new tone in dealing with the agency, perhaps reflecting frustration with the continued regulatory uncertainty and a coming network agreement deadline with Sprint, said industry executives. A GPS industry group accused LightSquared of constructing “revisionist” history, during a conference call with reporters.
AT&T and T-Mobile both face some tough decisions in the aftermath of their failure to consummate their merger. AT&T’s proposed buy of its smaller rival has preoccupied both companies since March, before it was officially ended Monday. AT&T had been soldiering on for almost four months after the Justice Department sued to block the deal in a surprisingly quick decision Aug. 31.
The House GOP authors of spectrum legislation hope to negotiate the payroll tax cut extension with the Senate, but that could be tough because senators have largely returned to their states for a month-long break. After voting Tuesday to move to conference, Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, named as conferees House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich. However, at our deadline, Senate and House Democrats still had not agreed to participate. Members of the Senate have already left for the holidays, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., refused Tuesday to call back his members. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., also said she would not appoint conferees.
CompTel and its allies have cleared another procedural hurdle in their battle to get the FCC moving on special access reform (CD Dec 8 p6), after the D.C. federal appeals court set a briefing schedule in the case. In an order dated and released late Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit set deadlines for briefs in CompTel’s petition: CompTel and its co-petitioners will have until Jan. 13 to file their brief; the FCC’s response must be filed by Jan. 27, intervenors in the case have until Feb. 3, and the petitioners have until Feb. 10 to file a reply.
Broadcasters told the FCC they support a proposal to let HD Radio stations increase their power levels on one of their two sidebands. NPR and iBiquity each submitted studies to the commission showing that increasing sideband power asymmetrically would let HD operators boost power without increasing interference to nearby stations (CD Nov 2 p6). Letting stations take that step will help them “provide enhanced digital coverage that is not achievable while stations are constrained to operate with equal level digital sidebands,” the NAB said (http://xrl.us/bmmhnp). Meanwhile, iBiquity submitted a lengthy lab test report supporting the proposal (http://xrl.us/bmmhp3), prompting “a daily listener of the broadcast radio service” who previously fought a 2010 order letting HD Radio station increase their power to request an extension to the pleading cycle deadlines.