Two decades of change in the video market warrant a fresh look at the Cable Act, House and Senate Republicans said ahead of Tuesday’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the 1992 legislation. Retransmission consent, program carriage, compulsory copyright licenses and program access rules are likely subjects for consideration, said a minority memo that circulated ahead of the hearing. Cable groups will press the committee to rewrite the 20-year-old rules that govern broadcast signal fee contracts in a way that reflects the current video market.
PORTLAND, Ore. -- State regulators axed the first proposed telecom resolution at their mid-year meeting. The NARUC telecom subcommittee spent much of the weekend poring over four draft resolutions, three of which passed out of staff negotiations and will now be assessed by telecom committee commissioners, and then potentially to the full NARUC board. One resolution died at its author’s wish.
Several carriers received approval for interconnection agreement amendments in Idaho Thursday. A total of seven applications were approved, and the companies included CenturyLink QC, Metropolitan Telecommunications of Idaho, Frontier Communications Northwest, Entelegent Solutions, Bullseye Telecom, Ernest Communications, Trans National Communications International, OneEighty Networks and Clarks Electronics. “The amendments to the Interconnection Agreement are consistent with the public interest, convenience and necessity and do not discriminate” and are “consistent with the pro-competitive policies of this Commission, the Idaho Legislature, and the federal Telecommunications Act,” the commission said in its final order approving the interconnection agreement amendments (http://xrl.us/bnhfqe).
Ohio will be revisiting the details of its Lifeline service thanks to two recent applications, the Ohio Public Utilities Commission unanimously confirmed in its meeting Wednesday. TracFone Wireless and Virgin Mobile USA had both applied on June 22 for a rehearing of the commission’s May 23 finding and order, which “established certain requirements for the provision of Lifeline service, including those necessitated by the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) Report and Order in In the Matter of Lifeline and Link Up Reform and Modernization, Lifeline and Link Up, Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service, Advancing Broadband Availability Through Digital Literacy Training,” the commission said (http://xrl.us/bnhfj9). It judges that TracFone and Virgin Mobile have “sufficient reason” to question its ruling and now promises “further consideration,” the commission said. In its June 22 objection, Virgin Mobile called the Ohio commission’s Lifeline order “unreasonable and unlawful,” “contrary to the public interest in that it is discriminatory and anti-competitive with respect to prepaid Lifeline service providers,” and in requesting a rehearing, added it hopes the commission “reverse its finding that reimbursement from USAC to prepaid wireless Lifeline providers is includable for purposes of calculating the 9-1-1 assessment” and “reverse its order directing the remittance of 9-1-1 fees that would have been collected retroactively to the date of ETC designation” (http://xrl.us/bnhfma). In its application for a rehearing, TracFone asserts “non-billed, free Lifeline services are not prepaid services and Ohio law imposes no such 911 fee remittance obligations on non-billed free Lifeline services where there is no available mechanism for collecting such fees from qualified low-income consumers of such non-billed free services,” and said one subset of ETCs, wireless resellers, shouldn’t be singled out for a retroactive obligation for fees that couldn’t have been collected.
Municipalities whose federal grants for public safety networks were suspended say they remain frustrated that, more than two months after the NTIA suspended seven municipal Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) grants, there’s no timetable to save them. Public safety advocates and NTIA encourage patience and wise tax spending, while leaders of some of the 700 MHz projects worry about what suspending the projects has done to safety and tax dollars, they said in interviews. A prominent former Seattle official is urging the FirstNet board, once established in August, to re-engage with the BTOP grantees and kickstart their projects as a potential answer to the limbo and sense of frustration.
State utility commissioners will consider four potential telecom resolutions at NARUC’s midyear meeting in Portland, Ore., on July 22-25. The resolutions ask the FCC to revisit telecom rules, sometimes lauding the federal commission but often asking it to take action. NARUC posted both the resolution drafts (http://xrl.us/bng7ny) and the conference’s final agenda (http://xrl.us/bng7n6) online, the association said late Monday. The resolutions will, according to NARUC, be debated throughout the Portland conference and may become a part of the association’s policy if they are voted out of the telecom committee and are approved by the board July 25.
Other government initiatives to protect mobile privacy are already well under way and the FCC doesn’t need to impose regulations of its own, AT&T and Verizon Wireless said. Their comments responded to a May 25 public notice about carrier practices on network diagnostic information stored on mobile devices. Both companies also assured the FCC they are taking steps on their own to protect consumer privacy. FTC staff suggested carriers and others need to do more to protect consumer privacy. “Providers of mobile products and services must do a much better job of providing consumers with basic information about what information they are collecting, how it is used, and what third parties gain access to it,” staff said.
A federal appeals court denied a petition for a writ of mandamus that would have forced the FCC to act on a pending program access complaint by Sky Angel against Discovery Communications. Sky Angel, which now does business as FAVE TV (Family and Values Entertainment), sells a package of linear pay-TV programming delivered over the Internet to proprietary set-top boxes. It complained to the commission in March 2010 that Discovery improperly withdrew its programming networks from Sky Angel’s service in violation of program access rules. Sky Angel sought the mandamus petition earlier this year to force the commission to act on the complaint.
A Republican member of the Federal Election Commission warned media executives they face loss of an exemption the media industry has for some political disclosures. Donald McGahn said career FEC staff have a natural and nonpartisan proclivity to read a broad mandate into Supreme Court rulings like Citizens United in 2010 and legislation like 2002’s Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. Combined with the three Democratic commissioners who tend to be more regulatory on the six-member agency that’s evenly split among party lines, he told a Media Institute luncheon that the media’s exemption to certain limits on what constitutes impermissible political communications may be peeled away. He said the agency’s approach of not only “belt and suspenders but duct tape and everything else” mooted the practical effect of OK'ing political contributions by text message (CD July 10 p9).
Of the dozens of comments filed this week in response to the FCC’s rulemaking on USF contribution reform, there was little agreement about whether to stick with a revenue-based system for assessing contribution fees, to move to a system that uses connections or numbers, or even whether to assess fees on broadband service. The only universal sentiment that might be teased out of the plethora of comments filed is that, as AT&T put it, the current system is “dysfunctional.” Carriers differed, but generally supported a modified revenue-based system, while VoIP providers preferred a connections-based system.