AT&T’s buy of T-Mobile is officially on hold, after U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle agreed to stay the Justice Department’s lawsuit against the deal until Jan. 18. AT&T and DOJ jointly sought the delay in a motion filed Monday. Huvelle acted quickly, issuing an order putting off other deadlines in the case and scheduling the next status conference in her courtroom on that date. DOJ and AT&T were due back in court Thursday.
LightSquared complained bitterly Monday about what it called a distorted leak from government interference tests of the company’s planned wholesale wireless network. “This came from someone inside the government process, and it is an outrage,” Martin Harriman, the company’s executive vice president for ecosystem development and satellite business, told reporters. He was responding to a Bloomberg News report that LightSquared’s technology had failed tests with three-quarters of general navigation devices. Executives expressed confidence that the FCC will by March approve its operation. They said they will make fallback plans only in the event of an unexpected rejection.
NTCA held a flurry of last-minute meetings with FCC staff just days before the group filed an appeal of the commission’s Universal Service Fund order (CD Dec 12 p7), records on docket 10-90 showed. NTCA Vice President Michael Romano joined executives from Vantage Point Solutions and TDS in two meetings with Wireline Bureau staff on Wednesday, one meeting addressing the costs of meeting increased speed standards and the second meeting addressing traffic exchanges, according to an ex parte dated Friday and released Monday (http://xrl.us/bmks85). A day later, Romano joined executives from the National Exchange Carrier Association, OPASTCO and TDS Telecom to discuss caps on operating and capital expenses, a separate ex parte notice showed (http://xrl.us/bmktat).
Draft FCC orders would make it a bit easier for radio stations to move to urban areas from suburban and rural communities and also ease the process for U.S. tribes to seek new allotments, agency officials said. Those draft Media Bureau orders follow up on one approved at March’s commission meeting that made such station move-ins to urban areas harder and that allowed tribes without government-recognized lands to get stations more easily (CD March 4 p10). The two current drafts are moving on two different tracks, agency officials said. The move-in order is likely to change, possibly significantly, and won’t be voted on right away. The tribal order will be approved in coming weeks, likely without significant changes.
House Republicans as expected included the draft spectrum bill by Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., in spending legislation to extend the payroll tax cut and other items. The House GOP unveiled the text of the “extenders” bill Friday morning (http://xrl.us/bmkks2). The chamber is likely to vote on the package this week, the House Rules Committee said. The extenders bill is unlikely to survive in its current form, but could foreshadow a final deal that includes spectrum, said telecom lobbyists and analysts. Also Friday, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., condemned House proposals to provide $3 billion for broadcaster relocation and to force public safety to return narrowband spectrum.
Friday saw at least four more appeals of the Universal Service Fund order (CD Oct 28 p1), as AT&T, NTCA, NASUCA and the Vermont Public Service Board filed in three different appellate circuits. NTCA and NASUCA each filed in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va.; Vermont filed in the 2nd Circuit in New York; and AT&T filed its appeal in the D.C. Circuit. They join earlier appeals, one from CLEC Core Communications in Richmond (CD Dec 5 p11) and another from Pennsylvania regulators filed in the 3rd Circuit in Philadelphia (CD Dec 6 p2).
Broadcasters and multichannel video programming distributors exchanged more words on retransmission consent deals late last week. Mediacom, which has criticized the FCC for not issuing an order changing retrans rules (CD Sept 2 p3), sent a letter to the agency saying broadcasters’ efforts to head off the changes are works of fiction. No retrans order is circulating at the commission, and none seems poised to soon, an agency official said.
The Department of Justice will file a motion either to withdraw its antitrust case against AT&T’s proposed purchase of T-Mobile or to suspend the case indefinitely. Frustrated that AT&T withdrew its FCC petition to acquire T-Mobile (CD Nov 28 p1), U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle said she would entertain Justice’s motion in arguments Thursday. She also said she wanted to hear from FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick, who will be “invited” to Thursday’s hearing.
It will be “more of the same” for the FCC in 2012, Chief of Staff Eddie Lazarus told the Practising Law Institute conference Friday. The FCC still has significant work left expanding broadband adoption and addressing the country’s spectrum deficiencies, he said. Privacy experts on a separate panel said they expect the FTC and FCC to increase their focus on online privacy and cybersecurity issues in the coming year.
The FCC could use a procedural rulebook, former FCC chairman and current NCTA CEO Michael Powell said in an interview to air Saturday on C-SPAN’s The Communicators. It’s an issue Powell pushed during his time at the agency and one that still needs to be addressed, he said when asked about the need for legislation changing the way the FCC operates. “The FCC really doesn’t have a rules-of-procedure book,” he said. “Other agencies have a very clearly published set of rules about how things are done.” At other agencies, processes for voting on items and how commissioners can call up items from bureaus are clearly addressed in rules, he said.