SAN FRANCISCO -- Efforts by national governments to move Internet governance to organizations such as the ITU and the U.N., where they hold sway, reflect their growing fear of the power that can be exerted online, said Vice President Markus Kummer of the Internet Society. It also reflects their mistrust of the engineering organizations that have historically set policy, he said. “The Internet has become so important that it was inevitable that governments would wake up to it,” Kummer said at the .Nxt conference last week. Governments remain “not just clueless but dynamically anti-clueful” concerning how cyberspace works, said John Perry Barlow, an Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder and board member.
The FCC Wireless Bureau Friday restarted it’s informal 180-day “shot clock” on its review of AT&T’s buy of T-Mobile. As a result, Friday was officially day 83 of the review. AT&T welcomed the development, but merger critics said the quick restart of the clock could also be bad news for AT&T. Analysts cautioned against reading too much into the development.
As the FCC seeks authority from Congress to do incentive spectrum auctions to clear part of the TV band, little consensus seems to exist about how much it will cost to move the remaining TV stations onto new channels and make room for wireless broadband services. On the lower end of estimates, CTIA and CEA projected in February it would cost about $565 million to move the stations, citing NTIA data that the cost of buying and installing a new antenna and transmitter would be $898,000 per station. But NAB has told the FCC it will cost the industry roughly $2.5 billion. And legislation in the Senate would set aside $1 billion for repacking costs, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Broadcast technical consultants we interviewed also had a range of estimates for the costs, but they were reluctant to extrapolate what the entire cost of repacking could be because so many variables remain. “So much of it depends on what the commission will do,” said consultant Merrill Weiss.
A compromise proposed by booster maker Wilson Electronics and Verizon Wireless, filed at the FCC last month, got mostly good reviews in reply comments on an April rulemaking notice on new technical, operational, and coordination parameters for fixed and mobile signal boosters (http://xrl.us/bk28pb). Most commenters recognized that the agreement will likely be key as the FCC pushes forward with a final rule.
An influx of freshmen in the 112th Congress forced the telecom industry to increase education efforts in 2011, industry lobbyists said in interviews. This year there are 13 freshman senators and 93 new House members. As a result, telecom lobbyists have had to spend more of their time teaching the nuts and bolts of major telecom issues like spectrum and Universal Service Fund reform, lobbyists said.
The FCC reinstated its video description rules in an order released Thursday. The commission unanimously adopted the rules, which were mandated by the Twenty-First Century Communications and Via Accessibility Act (CVAA) and set a July 1 deadline for compliance by broadcasters and pay-TV distributors. That date was something of a compromise as advocates for the blind had pushed for a March 1 deadline and industry groups wanted to push it back to October 2012 (CD Aug 19 p3). As expected, ESPN and Fox News are exempt from the rules (CD Aug 12 p12). A federal court tossed an earlier version of the FCC’s video description rules in 2002.
Small and mid-sized wireless carriers, cable operators and competitive local exchange carriers all criticized parts of the America’s Broadband Connectivity (ABC) plan for making major changes to the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation regimes. The plan, a compromise among major telecom carriers and rural local exchange carriers, is unlikely to be approved without some changes, said industry and FCC officials. The trick for the FCC will be keeping ILECs on board while accommodating other interests (CD Aug 25 p1). The FCC also asked for comment on a “complementary” filing by rural carriers as well as proposals by the Federal-State Joint Board on USF, also discussed in many of the comments.
The adoption of the America’s Broadband Connectivity Plan (ABC Plan) for Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation revamp would “send us to the nearest federal court of appeals,” James Cawley, state chairman of the USF Federal/State Joint Board, told us. Most of the state commissions that filed with the FCC on the agreement oppose preemption of state role in determining USF eligibility. But Wisconsin regulators support some limited preemption of state authority and unified access charge rates.
The 5.8 magnitude earthquake that hit Virginia Tuesday, leading to a overload in wireless networks throughout the region, highlights an issue still to be addressed by the FCC -- the inability of wireless customers to make emergency 911 calls during the period they didn’t have service. Advocates of a national wireless public safety network were quick to cite the incident as further proof they need access to the 700 MHz D-block. But some observers said the inability get through to 911 services raises far more troubling questions. One former FCC official said the equation is simple, if people can’t connect to the network they can’t call 911.
For the second time in three years, the FCC could be on the cusp of making major changes to the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation regimes. In late 2008, those efforts fell flat when then-Chairman Kevin Martin appeared to have support lined up for a reform order, but pulled an item prior to a vote. All signs this time around are that Chairman Julius Genachowski would like to succeed where the former commission fell short.