Two similar Texas bills would define VoIP and prohibit state regulation for IP-enabled services and VoIP. SB-980 also seeks to exempt telecom companies from reporting requirements. It and SB-985 are sponsored by Republican Sen. John Carona.
The spectrum inventory discussed by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Wednesday likely won’t satisfy calls on Capitol Hill for a more exhaustive inventory, industry and FCC officials said Thursday. An official in the chairman’s office clarified that Genachowski was referring to the extensive research the commission did as reflected in its LicenseView and Spectrum Dashboard initiatives when he discussed the FCC inventory Wednesday (CD March 17 p1). The official said different bills proposed in Congress differ on what would constitute an inventory. “The broadcasters are really pushing the need for an inventory before anything happens” and the inventory unveiled by Genachowski probably won’t fit that bill, a second FCC official said.
The FCC’s actions on net neutrality have made Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., skeptical of the commission’s proposal to hold voluntary incentive auctions, the House Communications Subcommittee chairman said in a keynote speech for the Media Institute. The subcommittee plans a spectrum hearing in April, he said. Earlier, speaking at a Consumer Federation of America event about a coming House floor vote on net neutrality, Ranking Member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., of the parent Commerce Committee said Democrats hope to send a message that the GOP effort to reverse the FCC rules won’t withstand a presidential veto.
Receiver performance standards will become an increasingly significant issue as the FCC looks at how to make more efficient use of the spectrum, unless industry steps forward to make receivers work better, former FCC and NTIA official Dale Hatfield said Tuesday at the Catholic University of America’s communications symposium. Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Julius Knapp said the FCC continues to look closely at questions about receiver performance.
Nonprofit groups seeking public access to information about cable headend sites in a white spaces database, seek to “trivialize the need for enhanced security for cable broadband facilities,” the NCTA said in an FCC filing. Posted Thursday to docket 04-186, it opposed a filing by the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition that had said the commission shouldn’t grant the NCTA’s petition for reconsideration to make the data private. “The headend is the point of origination and processing for most of the signals received by cable operators from external content providers, local exchange carriers, the Internet and other networks” and often “a distribution hub for the fiber nodes closest to the headend,” the NCTA said. “There is no question that communications networks are considered ‘critical infrastructure’ and that federal homeland security directives require greater protections for critical communications infrastructure."
The Wireless Communications Association (WCAI) called on the FCC to increase a limit on white-spaces antennas of 76-meter height above average terrain (HAAT). Making that change would “enable consumers, businesses, and schools in rural, hilly parts of the country to receive broadband via white space spectrum,” the association said. The Wireless Internet Service Provider Association (WISPA) meanwhile offered two concessions on its proposal for raising the HAAT limit. Others also filed reply comments as the commission deals with five petitions for reconsideration filed in January (CD Jan 10 p 4).
The FCC is working on a pole attachments order for the April 7 meeting that would lower rates for attachers, commission officials told us. No order is circulating -- but Chairman Julius Genachowski has said he would like to finish work on pole attachments by early April, and staff is nearing the end of its work, the officials said. Power companies have lobbied furiously in recent weeks to preserve rates but apparently haven’t swayed the commission, said FCC officials and utility lobbyists.
Even historically nonpartisan telecom issues have become political in an increasingly divided Congress, and it’s become increasingly difficult to pass substantive legislation, former Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said in an interview Thursday with Communications Daily. The Commerce Committee alum urged the FCC to complete what Congress couldn’t: an overhaul of the Universal Service Fund. Dorgan blamed radio talk show hosts for politicizing the net neutrality debate, but he predicted demise for Republicans’ effort to overturn the FCC’s December order using the Congressional Review Act.
Rerun TV programs will count one additional time toward TV stations’ and MVPDs’ obligations to carry 50-hours of primetime or kids’ programming each quarter with video descriptions, said an FCC rulemaking notice released Thursday. Major network-affiliated stations in the top 25 markets will be required to meet that quota, as expected (CD Feb 25 p6). TV distributors with 50,000 or more subscribers will have to make 50 hours of video descriptions each quarter available on the top five non-broadcast networks they carry, the notice said. Any TV station, regardless of size or affiliation, must pass through video descriptions when the network provides it “and the station has the technical capability to do so,” the notice said. MVPDs must similarly pass through the descriptions when provided by a TV station, it said. Under the rerun rule, an hour-long program that appears twice on the same network with video descriptions would fulfill two of the operator’s 50 hours of obligations. Any further rebroadcasts wouldn’t be counted toward the total. The commission plans to adopt and publish its new video description rules by Oct. 8, it said. That’s when the Communications and Video Accessibility Act requires it to reinstate the rules. The FCC won’t require compliance before Jan. 1, 2012, the notice said. Comments on the notice will be due 45 days after it’s published in the Federal Register.
The FCC unanimously adopted a rulemaking notice Thursday that begins the process of overhauling the Lifeline/Link-Up programs. Chairman Julius Genachowski said the two programs had grown in recent years but were too full of waste, fraud and abuse that threatened to undermine the Universal Service Fund reforms he’s championing. “Increases in the contribution burden are particularly concerning for the tens of millions of Americans at or near the poverty line who pay for phone service but don’t participate in Lifeline,” the chairman said. Thursday’s notice includes proposals that would cap the fund, allow the poor to buy bundled services with their monthly subsidies and create a separate “National Accountability Database,” administered by separate officials, to make sure customers receiving the monthly stipends are actually qualified to receive them.