All proposed interim solutions for sending text messages to 911 call centers have “issues and limitations” that restrict their usefulness, 4G Americas warned in a white paper it presented to the FCC’s Emergency Access Advisory Committee Friday. President Chris Pearson of 4G Americas presented the findings at an EAAC meeting.
The focal point of new media ownership rules is wholly back on the FCC, since all pending litigation challenging the agency’s last review of the limits has ended. Industry executives and lawyers, FCC officials and nonprofit representatives who oppose further consolidation agreed in interviews last week that the ball’s in the commission’s court. The regulator had been waiting for a ruling, which came in July from a Philadelphia appeals court, on how to proceed on diversity issues (CD July 8 p3). Another court Wednesday (CD Aug 11 p13) denied a licensing challenge on the 2008 order.
California’s inquiry on the T-Mobile sale to AT&T is looking into an open-ended range of actions to reduce possible harms. A ruling late Thursday by Administrative Law Judge Jessica Hecht of the Public Utilities Commission asked participants to discuss several avenues for protecting competition, promoting innovation and supporting service quality. The filing disclaimed any assumption that the commission has authority to act on all the points mentioned, at least beyond making recommendations to the FCC.
There hasn’t been an increase in consumer complaints or service outage reports since Verizon’s union workers went on strike, state commission officials told us. Negotiations continued in Rye, N.Y., and Philadelphia Thursday between Verizon and the Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
Top AT&T executives rejected a proposal earlier this year from the company’s marketing organization to expand the carrier’s LTE footprint beyond its current goal of covering 80 percent of the U.S. population by the end of 2013. AT&T disclosed that in an FCC filing on a recent meeting with key agency staff. The company promised in March to expand its LTE offerings to cover 97 percent of Americans if its buy of T-Mobile is approved. The filing explains in some detail why the company concluded it couldn’t justify the cost of this aggressive rollout without the T-Mobile buy. The filing pegs the cost at $3.8 billion.
Two popular cable channels with lots of live shows are exempt from needing to orally describe action scenes with little dialogue on multichannel video programming distributors, under a draft Media Bureau order implementing video description legislation. FCC and industry officials said Thursday the bureau wants the order voted on later this month, so the rules can take effect soon as required by the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act. MVPDs and their associations as well as advocates for the disabled have been visiting the commission to lobby on the item, officials said and filings in docket 11-43 show (http://xrl.us/bk8c2o).
PHILADELPHIA -- Seattle Chief Technology Office Bill Schrier warned Wednesday at the Association for Public-Safety Communication Official’s meeting that all seven of the jurisdictions that received Broadband Technology Opportunities Program grants to build out early public safety networks in the 700 MHz band may be hard pressed to do so in the two years they have left under BTOP rules. Meanwhile, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski closed the conference with a speech promising the agency would move forward on an ambitious program of improving 911 communications.
Major telcos like AT&T and Verizon aren’t seeing a major impact from the nation’s economic trouble, despite the recent stock market swoon and U.S. credit downgrade, executives said. Verizon Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo weighed in at the Oppenheimer investor conference in Boston Wednesday on the ongoing union workers strike, emphasizing the need to change the company’s cost structure to remain competitive.
Three Commerce Committee members will be on Congress’s joint select committee on deficit reduction. Late Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he appointed Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass. On Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, selected House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich. And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., chose Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa. The lawmakers’ presence on the committee may increase the chances that spectrum is part of final legislation, lobbyists and industry analysts said.
Another program access complaint may make its way to the FCC. Hawaii’s biggest telco has threatened one against that state’s largest cable operator. And the commission may finish work soon on two other program carriage complaints made by AT&T and Verizon against Cablevision and its former programming unit.