An FCC committee appeared to have released a report on closed captioning of video that’s delivered using Internet Protocol, said industry lawyers who read what purports to be a copy of it on the panel’s wiki page at http://vpaac.wikispaces.com/home. The Video Programming Accessibility Advisory Committee proposed some deadlines and definitions for implementing part of the 21st Century Communications Accessibility Act, which required the commission to give to Congress a report about online captioning. Six months after rules appear in the Federal Register, prerecorded and unedited programming for Internet distribution to end-users should be captioned, the committee recommended. Live and near-live programming should be captioned in a year, and content that’s been substantially edited for distribution on the Web should have captions in 18 months, it said. Live programming should be considered content “created and presented on television and simulcast for Internet distribution to the end user as it airs on” TV, the report said. “Near-live programming” is that produced within 12 hours of being shown, the panel said. Commission representatives had no comment on the report. Blogs from the Davis Wright law firm reported on its release, and obtained the report from the wiki site.
The FCC must not remove state jurisdiction over intrastate communications and preserve the joint governmental structure in its Universal Service Fund and Intercarrier Compensation proceeding, state officials said during a seminar held by the National Regulatory Research Institute Wednesday. Other top concerns for state regulators include cost and contribution methods, they said.
House and Senate Democrats objected to draft spectrum legislation floated Wednesday by House Commerce Committee Republicans. The draft bill, which will be the subject of a House Communications Subcommittee hearing Friday, does not give the 700 MHz D-block to public safety, unlike the Senate’s bipartisan spectrum bill. Like S-911, the House draft would authorize the FCC to conduct voluntary incentive auctions, but it limits the FCC to a single auction of broadcaster spectrum. Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., introduced a separate spectrum bill Friday related to unlicensed use.
Wireless carriers have plenty of incentives to protect their own networks, without additional government rules, CTIA said in a filing at the commission in docket 11-60 (CD July 11 p7). Industry comments due last week, but posted by the FCC Monday, largely agreed that the FCC need not step in and should not impose overly prescriptive rules for making networks more robust and able to survive disaster.
The FCC and the Administration should press forward on their “diligent efforts” to evaluate all commercial and federal government spectrum that could be reallocated for wireless broadband, CEA said in a filing responding to an FCC public notice asking for technical input on the best approaches to encourage the growth of terrestrial mobile broadband services in the 2 GHz range. But wireless carriers said in individual filings that the FCC must proceed with care as it determines how to get 2 GHz spectrum into play for wireless broadband.
The Arizona Corporation Commission signed off on AT&T’s buy of T-Mobile, without a hearing. The deal is pending before state regulators in California, Hawaii, Louisiana and West Virginia. Meanwhile, both AT&T and merger opponent Sprint Nextel were at the FCC last week, for a series of high-profile meetings on the $39 billion transaction.
A non-nomadic VoIP component may put an $8.5 million Rural Utilities Service-funded project in West Virginia under state regulation. Spruce Knob Seneca Rocks Telephone, a local service provider, asked the West Virginia Public Service Commission if its project needs a certificate of convenience and necessity. Though provisioning of broadband services isn’t state-regulated and doesn’t need a certificate, there remains the issue of non-nomadic VoIP, PSC staff said. While industry groups claimed that states are preempted from jurisdiction, commission staff cited orders from states like Maine, which indicated federal regulators have not yet taken a position on non-nomadic VoIP jurisdiction issues.
The decision whether LightSquared can begin terrestrial-only service will likely come through the International Bureau rather than be a call by the full FCC, an agency spokesman said Thursday. The bureau wasted no time in asking for comments on a working group study of LightSquared interference with GPS signals filed Thursday, signaling the importance of the proceeding to the commission. The public notice asks about LightSquared’s revised roll-out plans that revolve around the company beginning beginning service in the lower part of its L-band spectrum (http://xrl.us/bkygmf). Interested parties have until Aug. 15 to file comments. The inter-bureau spectrum task force will review the study and comments, though the decision was on track to come out of the International Bureau, said the spokesman.
BURLINGAME, Calif. -- Federal broadband efforts were criticized at the eComm conference by Google’s policy chief as lacking effective follow-through on the National Broadband Plan and by a former Obama White House official as failing to deal to what she sees as the central fact of monopolies in wired and wireless communications. Then an anti-regulation think tanker denounced what he called impulses to reimpose public-utility regulation on U.S. telecom.
AT&T got some political cover from House Democrats last week, in the form of a letter signed by 76 of them who said the transaction will create “good paying union jobs” and expand broadband to unserved areas (CD June 23 p13) . The letter doesn’t specifically endorse the deal. Foes of the transaction were quick to question the significance of the letter and whether it will resonate at the FCC or elsewhere in the administration.