Utilities should be allowed to use the public safety wireless broadband network in the 700 MHz band to promote grid reliability and efficiency and Congress must consider amending the Communications Act to make it possible, the FCC said in a National Broadband Plan released Tuesday. The commission devoted an entire section to the “important” role broadband and advanced communications would play in achieving energy independence and efficiency.
Maine regulators will spend three months reviewing a petition by FairPoint Communications to accept the company’s bankruptcy reorganization plan and to grant it relief from performance requirements. FairPoint petitioned March 5 for commission approval of its plan and to revise a 2008 order granting it the right to acquire Verizon’s phone network, the commission said.
The most connected societies aren’t the major sources of growth of the Internet economy, said a report (www.xrl.us/bgymnd) Monday by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation on the growth and future of the 25-year-old .com domain. The media fixation on social networking has obscured much more important growth mechanisms whose success can’t be reduced to universal broadband, foundation President Robert Atkinson told reporters Monday. “It’s a mistake to put so much emphasis on broadband” and less on the applications that make the Internet useful, as the FCC seems to be doing, he said.
Wireless carriers may get less in the FCC’s National Broadband Plan than meets the eye, commission officials indicated Monday. Although the plan recommends that 300 MHz of spectrum be made available for wireless broadband over the next five years and 500 MHz total over 10 years, FCC officials made clear Monday that not all will be dedicated to licensed use. The plan also provides substantial detail in its recommendations for the Universal Service Fund, including a phase-out of the high-cost fund. The plan will be presented to FCC commissioners Tuesday. They won’t vote on the plan, only on a mission statement setting out goals for U.S. broadband policy.
Disparate reactions greeted an order proposed Monday by an administrative law judge with the Illinois Commerce Commission opposing the proposed acquisition by Frontier Communications of Verizon landlines in that state. The companies questioned the order’s logic. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Communications Workers of America, foes of the deal in Illinois and elsewhere, lauded the proposed order.
Senate confirms Federal Trade Commission nominees: Julie Brill, ex-North Carolina Department of Justice, and Edith Ramirez, ex-Quinn Emanuel law firm … Qualcomm names ex-banker Rocco Fabiano president of its mobile commerce subsidiary, Firethorn … Joseph Hannan promoted by Cumulus Media to chief financial officer and treasurer, after having been interim CFO … Michael Wynschenk, ex-Verizon, hired by Alaska Communications Systems to new position of vice president of enterprise sales … BigBand Networks changes: board member Mike Pohl becomes non-executive chairman, replacing Amir Bassan-Eskenazi, who remains CEO and board member; Chief Operating Officer David Heard resigns, remains consultant; Ray Fitzgerald promoted to vice president, worldwide cable sales … New officers of Arizona- New Mexico Cable Association: President Dennis Edwards, CableOne; President-elect Scott Leprich, NPG Cable; Secretary/Treasurer Keith Kirkman, Orbitel Communications.
The National Broadband Plan will recommend research and development money to fund new technologies, and assumes that wireless carriers will use spectrum more efficiently, but in the end they will need more spectrum to handle exploding demand, John Leibovitz, deputy chief of the FCC Wireless Bureau, told the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee (CSMAC) Thursday. Leibovitz faced questions from CSMAC member Martin Cooper, inventor of the cellphone, who warned that early signs are the FCC is putting too much emphasis on getting new spectrum to market and not enough on driving spectrum efficiency.
The National Broadband Plan is short on specific recommendations for how the FCC should move on a variety of proceedings it’s expected to undertake this year, agency and industry officials said. Though the document is full of recommendations, they typically avoid charting a specific course for the regulator to take in favor of identifying areas for it or Congress to take up or examine, they said. An example is the section devoted to how video devices can be used to further broadband deployment.
SAN FRANCISCO -- The FCC’s broadband report will prompt 20-30 FCC rulemaking notices, predicted cable lawyer Daniel Brenner of Hogan & Hartson. A great many lawyers outside communications practices “are going to be affected” by the report, because it will cover very broad territory, Brenner said Wednesday at a Practising Law Institute seminar. “Keep an eye out for how it affects” several Cabinet departments, he said. President Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge said the report will emphasize energy, health care and jobs and other economic matters.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski circulated parts of the National Broadband Plan to the other commissioner offices Tuesday. Commissioners still don’t have a full text of the plan, but sections are supposed to be circulated as they're completed by staff, we learned. Meanwhile, Genachowski continued a series of speeches on broadband Tuesday, formally releasing the results of a new survey on “Broadband Adoption and Use in America” that’s expected to get prominent mention in the plan. But industry groups warned the agency that reclassifying broadband as a Title II service, subject to stricter regulation, a proposal reportedly under consideration at the FCC, would push money away from investment in broadband lines.