TORONTO -- Bowing to the fierce opposition of the pay-TV industry, the Canadian Radio-TV and Telecommunications Commission has postponed its early fall hearings on new local TV regulations. They include a controversial proposal to establish local broadcast carriage fees for cable and satellite operators (CD July 9 p7).
The Iowa Utilities Board ruled in Qwest’s favor on a traffic pumping complaint against eight local exchange carriers. But the carriers are challenging the action at the FCC. The board decided Friday that Great Lakes Communications, Superior Telephone and other local rural telcos were engaging in “unreasonable practices” that violate their tariffs, Qwest said. Great Lakes and Superior immediately petitioned the FCC for a ruling that federal law preempts the board from acting against the local companies.
Judicial Watch sued the FCC over a Freedom of Information Act Request seeking communications between the White House and the commission about the delay in the DTV switchover. Judicial Watch sought “any records concerning the decision to delay” the switch and “any and all records of communication” between the White House and commission about putting off the switch, it said in a lawsuit filed at the U.S. District Court in Washington. The FCC fulfilled the first part of the request with volumes of heavily blacked-out material, but it told Judicial Watch it would need to check with the White House before releasing the documents, the lawsuit said. Judicial Watch is concerned that political motivations besides protecting consumers affected by the switch were at play in the decision to delay, said President Tom Fritton. “We're not pursuing the FOIA necessarily just to get more information about the DTV transition, but to uncover whether or not there was any corruption behind the decision to delay the transition,” he said. Judicial Watch is concerned the delay may have given a leg up to Clearwire by delaying Verizon and AT&T’s access to 700 MHz spectrum. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., raised those concerns in February and questioned Clearwire Executive Vice President Gerard Salemme’s involvement with federal DTV policy (CD Feb 4 p8).
National Emergency Number Association CEO Brian Fontes Wednesday proposed two alternative plans for the 700 MHz D- block in a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. In the wake of the failed D-block auction, various public safety groups, supported by AT&T and Verizon Wireless, have instead urged the FCC to petition Congress to change the law so that the spectrum can be given directly to public safety to use, bypassing another auction. Fontes suggested that an auction remains a viable alternative.
Briefs filed with a federal appeals court dispute the validity of the FCC’s censure against Comcast for its handling of peer-to-peer Internet traffic. A brief from the company says the FCC’s Comcast-BitTorrent order “violates elementary tenets of administrative law … circumvents the rulemaking requirements of the [Administrative Procedure Act]; contravenes fundamental principles of due process by applying binding legal norms to Comcast’s past conduct without fair notice; and fails to justify the exercise of ancillary authority. The Progress & Freedom Foundation echoed Comcast’s criticisms in a friend-of-the-court brief filed along with law professors James Speta and Glen Robinson. “The FCC seems to have ignored the foundation of the [Communications] Act and its past actions, that the non- regulation of Internet services is based upon the market’s dynamic, non-monopoly characteristics,” the foundation said. The FCC doesn’t have legal authority to regulate the Internet, and the broad discretionary oversight that the commission tried to give itself in the order violates the Communications Act, it said. “The Act does not grant to the FCC general authority over the Internet, despite the Commission’s claims in this case.”
House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., is working with Republicans on a draft bill about online privacy and targeted advertising, he said at the State of the Net West conference in Santa Clara, California. The bill would require sites to give users an opt-in choice when sharing site visitors’ information with unaffiliated companies. But the legislation would reflect an opt-out policy for data used by the visited sites, marketing affiliates, and fellow members of ad networks that pool information for user profiles and allow consumers to see and change them. Boucher said a draft will be out “in the not-too-distant future.” The timing of the draft depends on agreement with Republicans Cliff Stearns of Florida and Joe Barton of Texas, he told us. The measure’s coverage would be broad enough to cover data collection by ISPs, Boucher said. Categories of “sensitive information,” such as medical, sexual orientation and minor’s information, street address and financial and government identifiers, would always be covered by opt-in, he said. He said the Federal Trade Commission would handle enforcement, but state attorneys general could enforce the law, too. Boucher said he wouldn’t make provision for industry self- regulation, except to allow private organizations to have the first crack at enforcement. A company’s obligations wouldn’t vary and there would be no safe harbor for taking part in self-regulation efforts, he said. Boucher said he’s open to extending the proposed duties to offline information collection, but that would be outside his subcommittee’s jurisdiction. Later in the conference, speaking generally, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. and caucus co-chairman, said “opt-out is largely the way to go” in privacy policy, except for especially sensitive information such as that on health, finances and children.
Midsized and competitive wireline companies, in comments filed Monday, resisted broadening the number ports covered by a time limit of one business day. Big voice providers asked the FCC to apply the newly shortened deadline in additional situations. And MetroPCS called a day too long. In May, the FCC shortened to one business day the interval for “simple” wireline and intermodal number ports (CD May 15 p4). The commission also opened a rulemaking asking about ways to improve the requirement, including whether it should apply to more than simple ports.
The FCC adopted the home-market exclusion as part of its automatic roaming rules approved two years ago “based on a thin record,” and concessions offered recently by Verizon Wireless don’t go far enough to deal with industry concerns (CD July 24 p2), T-Mobile said in a letter Tuesday to House Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif. The Rural Telecommunications Group also sent Waxman a letter objecting to the proposal. More industry letters are likely, a small- carrier official said Tuesday.
The FCC’s Internet policy statement would embodied in federal statute under a bill by Reps. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and Ed Markey, D-Mass., who used be the chairman of what’s now called the House Communications Subcommittee. The Internet Freedom Preservation Act, which doesn’t yet have a bill number, is similar to a measure introduced by Eshoo and Markey last Congress. It calls the Internet “comparable to roads and electricity” as essential infrastructure, but says its historic policies of openness are undergoing “erosion” as network operators exercise control over content and services. The bill refers to “network neutrality” in several places and says the principle is needed to protect First Amendment rights. It would prevent ISPs from interfering with customers’ use of the Internet for “lawful” content or applications, adding a charge on top of subscription services, denying users the ability to attach devices that don’t “harm” the network, and selling service that “prioritizes” traffic. The bill also would bar ISPs from installing “network features, functions, or capabilities that impede or hinder compliance” with the measure’s provisions -- an indirect reference to traffic management gear of the kind offered by Sandvine and others. It would tell the FCC to write rules to ensure that ISPs disclose “meaningful information” to customers in a “conspicuous” manner and make available “sufficient network capacity” to users “to the extent feasible.” A network management practice is “reasonable” and exempt from regulation if it “furthers a critically important interest,” is narrowly tailored and is the “least restrictive” way to meet the need. The FCC would consider the “particular network architecture or technology limitations of the provider” in deciding what’s reasonable - an accommodation to slower DSL providers and cable companies with limited capacity for uploads. ISPs would have to disclose speed, “nature and limitations” of service, and network management practices “in the ordinary, routine use” of broadband service. The FCC would be required to impose rules within six months of enactment to prevent ISPs from requiring customers to buy bundled services to get Internet access. The commission also would have to impose rules within that time to promote facilities-based and other forms of competition, define “private transmission capacity services,” decide whether to exempt such services from neutrality rules and ensure they don’t diminish ordinary Internet access services. The FCC could decide on complaints filed by consumers against ISPs and could fine providers for violations. Markey said the bill would deal with the Supreme Court’s Brand X decision that classified Internet access as an unregulated “information service.” It would “restore the guarantee that one does not have to ask permission to innovate.” USTelecom President Walter McCormick said the bill would “create broad uncertainty and destabilize the investment that is currently creating jobs, spurring innovation, and lowering prices for consumers.”
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski plans to put substantial emphasis on process, ensuring that the commission’s work is done through the its bureaus and offices, staffed by longtime experts. That emphasis, industry and commission officials said, marks a major change from the Kevin Martin FCC, in which power was concentrated in the chairman’s office. An immediate result, commission officials acknowledged, is that the FCC probably won’t make major policy calls in August.