The federal government must protect GPS, which has become hugely important to public safety, critical infrastructure and the economy as a whole, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said Friday at the start of a daylong commission workshop. “We have to make sure that we don’t mess that up,” he said. “These are not abstract issues."
TechNet lauded the election of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as Republican House Majority Leader Thursday, replacing Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va. McCarthy has served as whip. “Few members of Congress have as deep an understanding and appreciation for the economic impact and social change created by technology as Leader McCarthy,” CEO Linda Moore said in a statement, citing his “longstanding relationships inside the technology community.” His Federal Election Commission records also show significant donations from telecom and media players such as AT&T, Comcast, CEA, NAB, NCTA, USTelecom, Verizon and Viacom. Republicans also selected Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., as the next whip, replacing McCarthy. Scalise is a member of the Communications Subcommittee and is actively focused on video issues, urging overhaul of old rules and criticizing parts of the current retransmission consent regime. Scalise was one of the most vocal voices on the subcommittee this year in trying to convince his colleagues to overhaul video market rules as part of Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization. Capitol Hill staffers have suggested in recent days that Scalise’s rise to GOP leadership would be good for the House Commerce Committee overall, potentially giving its issues greater prominence and attention. The Communications Subcommittee will have to advance a STELA bill as well as, potentially, within the coming years, an overhaul of the Communications Act, as committee leaders have said they intend to do.
Robert McDowell, a former Republican FCC commissioner, plans to tell Congress Friday why FCC net neutrality rules are not necessary. “Nothing is broken that needs fixing,” McDowell says of the Internet access market in his written testimony for a hearing the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee is holding at 9 a.m. in 2141 Rayburn. McDowell, now a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute, voted against net neutrality rules while at the agency. The agency is currently engaged in a rulemaking with the goal of creating new rules. “In sum, the term ‘net neutrality’ seems to morph almost daily, but ultimately all of the arguments for it translate into ‘please regulate my rival ... but not me!’ in order for the politically-favored to gain a competitive advantage through regulatory arbitrage,” McDowell plans to say, warning of a potential “regulatory Leviathan” that would emerge from the regulation. McDowell’s testimony points to U.S. antitrust laws as protecting consumers and given those laws apply to the Internet, they avoid the question the FCC faces over how to classify broadband. Many net neutrality proponents have requested the agency reclassify broadband as a Telecom Act Title II telecom service, believing stronger rules would be possible in that case. McDowell plans to also point to Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act as a relevant piece of law reducing the need for FCC rules. His remarks slam Title II of the Communications Act as “particularly powerful, prescriptive and far-reaching” and warn that net neutrality rules would spur other countries to regulate the Internet in troubling ways. Other witnesses for the hearing include FTC Commissioner Joshua Wright and Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu, a scholar on net neutrality issues who reputedly coined the phrase. The Telecommunications Industry Association sent subcommittee leaders a letter ahead of the hearing warning against Title II reclassification. “The question of whether or not to impose utility-style regulation on Internet Service Providers has previously been thoroughly considered -- and rejected by the FCC,” TIA President Grant Seiffert said (http://bit.ly/TbnCCj). “The Internet has flourished due to the U.S.’s long standing light touch regulatory approach."
National Association for Multi-ethnicity in Communications hires Eglon Simons, ex-Cablevision, as president and CEO, replacing Alicin Williamson, Raben Group, who was interim executive leader, and promotions include Vice President-Education Programs and Diversity Solutions James Jones to also be executive director, NAMIC Foundation, new position … U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Judge Randall Rader retiring, after recently stepping down as its chief judge after he said his letter of praise to a lawyer breached his ethical obligations (CD May 28 p12).
Keep the FCC from reviewing and imposing conditions on mergers and acquisitions, AT&T told Congress Friday. House Commerce Committee leadership solicited comments on competition policy in a white paper issued last month, with a deadline of Friday. AT&T has proposed buying DirecTV, a deal currently under review by the FCC and Justice Department, as is Comcast’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable.
AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless expressed general support for the FCC’s proposed bidding rules for the AWS-3 auction, scheduled to start Nov. 13. Comments on the rules were due June 9 in docket 14-78, but only posted Friday. All three asked for a few tweaks, which each said would make the auction a more likely success. Sprint, the No. 3 U.S. carrier, did not file comments, but Dish Network did. The FCC approved service rules for a 65 MHz AWS-3 auction March 31 (CD April 1 p1), setting the stage for the agency’s first major spectrum sale since 2008.
The latest in a nearly 20-year dispute, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld (http://1.usa.gov/1ltd6Bf) the FCC 2013 decision not to overturn public utility commission decisions and grant payphone service providers refunds from AT&T and Verizon. In Illinois Public Telecommunications Association v. FCC, IPTA (docket 13-1059), the Independent Payphone Association of New York and the Payphone Association of Ohio had asked the D.C. Circuit to only mandate the companies pay the refunds, or force the companies to give payments they had received from long-distance carriers to the U.S. Treasury.
More than six weeks after passage, the text of the Connect America Fund order was released Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1pl9HHQ). Many of the changes to the CAF order (CD June 9 p7) were primarily focused on responding to Commissioner Ajit Pai’s dissent, FCC officials told us. An FCC spokesman declined to comment on the internal editing process or whether substantive changes were made, but said the fact sheet given to reporters at the April meeting “accurately reflects the final draft.”
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision upholding the FCC 2011 USF/intercarrier compensation order (CD May 27 p1) (http://1.usa.gov/1r18uaa) won’t have an immediate impact on state utilities commissions that had been taking administrative steps to incorporate the order in rules, particularly reductions in intrastate access rates, said officials at NARUC and several regulatory commissions in interviews. Barring an appeal and a reversal, there could be long-term ramifications, they continued to caution, by weakening the authority of state regulators, while forcing the commissions to deal with the order’s ramifications. Ohio, where Middle Point Home Telephone Co. is seeking state permission to raise residential rates by nearly a half in response to the FCC order, is an early example, said David Bergmann, a National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates attorney on its 10th Circuit petition for review of that order. State interests or perhaps other losers have indicated an appeal is all but certain (CD May 28 p3).
The FCC was set to seek comment late Monday on a federal advisory committee recommendation that Ericsson subsidiary Telcordia, doing business as iconectiv, become the new local number portability administration (LNPA) vendor. The current vendor, Neustar, has waged a monthslong battle against that expected selection, saying the selection process was flawed. Federal agencies typically aren’t bound by advisory committee recommendations, and the FCC has ignored them in the past. Observers on both sides of the aisle say this is the most hotly contested FCC advisory committee recommendation in recent memory.