The FCC Thursday unanimously approved three items aimed at improving communications and radio service on tribal lands. Commissioners also heard testimony from tribal leaders about the state of communications in Indian country. The meeting came as the White House held a follow up meeting on last year’s Tribal Nations Summit.
Use of the 4.9 GHz band by public safety has been a failure so far, former FCC Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Ed Thomas said during a commission forum Friday. Thomas proposed that the band be opened up for commercial use, on a secondary basis to public safety.
NAB and the Association for Maximum Service Television asked the FCC to reject industry petitions seeking changes to the commission’s white-spaces rules filed in January (CD Jan 10 p 4). The Wi-Fi Alliance, meanwhile, opposed NCTA and Cellular South petitions for reconsideration that would tighten the rules.
Many organizations expressed support for a privacy-by-design principle, in their comments to the FTC on its privacy framework. The framework’s potential for heavy privacy restrictions was a point of contention. Comments were due Friday. The commission posted some last-minute submissions this week.
The FCC’s forthcoming rulemaking notice on the Lifeline/Link-Up funds would cap support -- and that’s already drawing resistance, industry and commission officials said. A group of Florida public officials wrote the commission this week, urging it to recognize that low-income support is “cyclical” and to focus on other ways of trimming the funds’ costs. TracFone Wireless “will oppose any capping of the fund,” said Greenberg Traurig telecom lawyer Mitchell Brecher, who represents that company. The agency will take up a rulemaking notice on the fund next week.
The FCC’s net neutrality order became a small part of the larger federal budget game after the House Thursday night passed an amendment to the Continuing Resolution sponsored by Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore. Breaking mostly along party lines, the House voted 244-181 to approve the amendment. It would ban FCC implementation of net neutrality rules until the Continuing Resolution expires Sept. 30. A final vote on the CR was expected late Friday. The House also passed an amendment to cut the agency’s chief diversity officer. That position has been held by Mark Lloyd, who drew heat from the political right for what some thought was support of the fairness doctrine, which he said he never backed.
Good oversight doesn’t include “wholesale attacks against agencies … for political purposes,” House Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., told reporters Thursday. She rejected amendments to the Continuing Resolution -- debated Thursday -- that would affect FCC operations. Eshoo said at a media briefing that her priorities for this Congress include spectrum reform, overhaul of the Universal Service Fund and building a public safety wireless broadband network.
The VON Coalition disagrees with findings by commissions in Vermont, Wisconsin and Maine that said VoIP services like Comcast’s Digital Voice service are telecom service and subject to state regulation, Glenn Richards, the group’s executive director, said in a NARUC panel late Tuesday. Betty Ann Kane, chair of the District of Columbia Public Service Commission, cited a Vermont commission order this week that said state law-based regulation of nomadic VoIP largely has been preempted by federal law but such federal preemption hasn’t attached for state law-based regulation of fixed VoIP. States like Maine, Vermont and Wisconsin have taken the advantage of what they believe is the ambiguity in the 2004 Vonage order on whether it applies to non-nomadic or fixed VoIP services, Richards said. Meanwhile, some popular voice applications today don’t have 911 capabilities, said Brian Fontes, executive director with the National Emergency Numbering Association. Some of these application developers are foreign companies and therefore aren’t subject to U.S. regulations, presenting a challenge to emergency communications, he said. There are some technical and economic challenges ahead but Internet Protocol offers great promise for a more robust 911 network, Richards said.
House Republicans will try to use the Continuing Resolution to stop the FCC from acting on its net neutrality order. In a speech Tuesday, House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., said he filed an amendment prohibiting the FCC from spending any money to implement the rule. Also at the NARUC meeting, Walden said he’s considering legislation to overhaul FCC process. He questioned the White House’s FY 2012 budget estimate for money that could be raised by voluntary incentive spectrum auctions.
The White House estimated that it can raise nearly $28 billion from spectrum sales, including voluntary incentive auctions of broadcasters’ spectrum, but the budget it released Monday gives little detail on how it arrived at the figure. President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2012 budget proposed legislation providing authority for voluntary incentive auctions and estimated that spectrum auctions, “along with other measures to enable more efficient spectrum management,” will produce $27.8 billion over the next 10 years. The budget will face scrutiny particularly from House Republicans, who want to spend about $100 billion less in fiscal 2011 than Obama, said a telecom lobbyist.