The FCC should remove all traces of the Fairness Doctrine from agency rules, House Commerce Committee Republicans said Monday. Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., urged FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski to strike FCC rules 47 C.F.R. Sections 73.1910, 76.209, 76.1612 and 76.1613. “Despite the FCC’s determination not to enforce the Fairness Doctrine, Commissioner [Robert] McDowell recently discovered that it still remains in the Code of Federal Regulations,” Upton and Walden wrote. “Further research has revealed that the political-editorial and personal-attack rules also remain intact despite the FCC’s decision to repeal them.” Upton and Walden asked Genachowski to respond by close-of-business Friday. The commission didn’t comment right away.
The FCC wants feedback on making TV ads quieter. A rulemaking notice issued Friday seeks comment on implementing last year’s Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act, as expected (CD May 26 p7). “The Commission has received complaints about ‘loud commercials’ virtually since the inception of commercial television, more than 50 years ago” and they've been a top source of complaints since at least 2002, read part of the second paragraph. Ads much louder than the shows they appear in happen with terrestrial, cable and DBS programming, the notice said. It asked how TV stations and multichannel video programming distributors can show they're following the Advanced Television Systems Committee’s A/85 standard and proposed “a consumer-driven complaint process to enforce regulations.” The agency sought comments on “challenges for stations/MVPDs in complying with the statute and approaches that will enable them to comply.” Comments are due 30 days after the rulemaking notice appears in the Federal Register, replies 15 days later. Commissioner Michael Copps said “thank goodness that relief is on the way for viewers.” The CALM Act’s original sponsor, House Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., praised the rulemaking notice as “significant progress towards achieving the implementation deadline of Dec. 15, 2011 and bringing much needed relief to the American consumer.”
The FCC’s quiet but determined diplomacy with state regulators has helped ease Chairman Julius Genachowski’s path through key elements of the National Broadband Plan, state and federal officials told us. In early May, for instance, the Joint Board on Universal Service filed comments on Genachowski’s proposed Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation system revisions. Whatever the Joint Board’s other recommendations, it did not insist that the matter should have been referred back to the Joint Board. FCC officials took that as an implicit endorsements of their efforts, which in turn undermined criticisms from rural carriers that the FCC didn’t have jurisdiction (CD May 4 p2). “There really has been a lot of outreach from this FCC,” Vermont Public Service Board Member John Burke told us at the time. “I think it’s fair to say that the FCC here was pretty much unprecedented on how they reached out to members.”
SAN FRANCISCO -- An investigation of the T-Mobile sale that California regulators have decided to consider could influence policymakers in other states and the federal officials with the ultimate say over the deal, officials and transaction opponents told us. California’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC) voted 5-0 late Thursday to consider an inquiry at its next meeting, June 9, rather than allow the proposed purchase by AT&T to be approved automatically earlier in the month under the usual informal procedure.
U.S. officials seized transmission gear of what they called a pirate radio station in Boston, under a warrant unsealed Wednesday, the U.S. attorney’s office for Massachusetts said. It said the equipment was used to broadcast without FCC permission at 99.7 MHz and the transmissions were discovered by the commission, after which time the operation was moved. Enforcement Bureau fines of $15,000 each were issued last week to Robert Brown and Lloyd Morris for operating an unlicensed station at that frequency in Boston. The Federal Aviation Administration complained of interference with radio communications at Logan Airport, the U.S. attorney’s office said. A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney didn’t answer a message seeking further information. An email to the station wasn’t replied to.
The FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) is sending its recommendation of membership to the FCC this week, said Jeffery Goldthorp, associate Public Safety Bureau chief. It expects to hear back within a month, he told an FCBA briefing Wednesday. CSRIC will be looking for input from non-licensees, he said. On cybersecurity issues, it seeks to identify best practices among many different existing frameworks, he said. The commission asked many specific questions about the transition to next generation-911 systems, said Laurie Flaherty, a program analyst with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. CSRIC’s working group on NG911 seeks to limit the scope of work under the FCC’s purview, she said. Financial institutions rely heavily on telecom infrastructure, said Steve Malphrus from the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors. He said the Basel II accord, on banking laws and regulations issued by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, is intended to promote a more forward-looking approach on capital supervision that encourages banks to identify the risks they may face. Basel II risk event types include business disruption and system failures like utilities such as telecom and power, software and hardware failures, he said. Basel II also seeks to improve on the existing rules for managing credit and market risks by aligning regulatory capital requirements more closely to address the operational risks, which include risk of inadequate or failed telecom and information technology infrastructure and services, he said.
In a setback for public safety communications legislation moving through Congress, key Republicans on the House Commerce Committee balked at proposals to reallocate the 700 MHz D-block to public safety. Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., appeared skeptical at a hearing Wednesday of the House Communications Subcommittee about the approach supported by President Barack Obama, the Senate Commerce Committee and the House and Senate Homeland Security committees. House Commerce Democrats supported the reallocation bill (S-911) by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.
Industry remains divided on how best to fix the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation regimes, with a few months left before an FCC-promised deadline. Despite broad agreement that USF and intercarrier comp need fixing, reply comments show deep divisions over such questions as how quickly to transform to an all-IP network, how to treat VoIP service and the role of satellite and wireless technologies. “There is no doubt that the current universal service fund … and intercarrier compensation regimes are not sustainable in light of market and technological changes,” the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance said. “The comments show that there is no industry consensus in favor of the reforms outlined in the Notice or any other plan to promote broadband deployment to unserved areas.” The replies were posted in docket 10-90.
OMAHA -- The FCC should take an active role in creating and enforcing broadband guidelines in its Universal Service Fund reform, T-Mobile Corporate Counsel Teri Ohta said at an FCC workshop Wednesday. “We do feel that the federal government ultimately has the responsibility to make sure those funds are distributed properly.” T-Mobile is worried that giving states authority over broadband regulations will lead to a confusing patchwork of regulations that will make it difficult to deploy broadband, Ohta said.
The Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected MetroPCS arguments that the FCC acted “arbitrarily and capriciously and contrary to law” in declining to decide what was “reasonable compensation” to a CLEC for terminating telecom traffic originating on MetroPCS’s network. The FCC had decided that the California Public Utilities Commission was “a more appropriate forum to determine a reasonable compensation rate” and declined to issue a ruling. The case centered on a dispute between MetroPCS and CLEC North County, but MetroPCS said it had larger implications. A panel of the court found the FCC had done no wrong in handing off the decision to the CPUC. “In the absence of statutory text plainly requiring otherwise, we have little trouble concluding … that the FCC reasonably determined that the FCC had no duty to set the rates for the wholly intrastate traffic at issue here,” said the opinion written by Judge Thomas Griffith. “The FCC’s policy of allowing state agencies to set such rates is consistent with the dual regulatory scheme assumed in the Communications Act, which grants the FCC authority over interstate communications but reserves wholly intrastate matters for the states.” The FCC has made clear “it would not hesitate to preempt any rates set by the states that would undermine the federal policy that encourages CMRS providers and LECs to interconnect,” Griffith wrote. “This is consistent with what Congress intended."