Cable industry officials were upset but not surprised at the last-minute release by outgoing FCC Chairman Kevin Martin of fines against cable operators, long sought data and a letter of inquiry that questioned whether cable operators’ phone services should be subject to stricter regulations. The documents, which trickled out of the agency over the long holiday weekend, included 31 notices of apparent liability or notices of forfeiture against cable operators, a letter to Comcast seeking information about how it handles its own VoIP calls compared to third-party VoIP traffic, the 2007 Video Competition Report and a cable pricing survey from the Media Bureau.
Shaw Communications board names Michael O'Brien lead director, replacing Don Mazankowski, retiring… GMV promotes Jesus Serrano to CEO… Federal Trade Commission promotes David Shonka to acting general counsel.
The FCC has released hundreds of official actions after business hours in recent years, with substantial but unknown costs to the agency’s constituents, according to a Communications Daily study and interviews with communications lawyers and executives. The practice isn’t employed at other federal agencies we surveyed. Items released after usual hours ranged from routine orders to approvals of multibillion-dollar deals. It’s one factor among many feeding executives’ uncertainty about how the agency will regulate them, and it can reduce productivity, said broadcast, cable and telecom lawyers. However, the FCC breaks no rules in frequently releasing items after 5 p.m. and occasionally even after midnight, and some lawyers we spoke to found the practice unobjectionable.
A proposed national public safety broadband network using 700 MHz D-block spectrum will be helpful to first responders, but will only be a partial answer to their communications needs, Chris Essid, director of the Department of Homeland Security’s new Office of Emergency Communications said at the FCC Wednesday. Because of many unknowns, the D-block was not a big part of the agency’s national strategic plan, which it sent to Congress last year, he said as part of the Public Safety Bureau’s speaker series.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Tuesday welcomed the expected nomination of Julius Genachowski to become the chairman of the FCC. The nomination of the Obama campaign insider is expected to be announced Wednesday or Thursday, probably with that of a federal chief technology officer, said a person familiar with transition planning. Genachowski “has the experience and credentials to successfully reinvigorate the FCC as Chair,” Rockefeller said.
Federal agencies and law enforcement won’t object to Inmarsat taking over Stratos Global Communications if the FCC makes Inmarsat obey an information-access agreement it made with the U.S. government, the Justice and Homeland Security departments said. Under the agreement, Inmarsat will make available to law enforcement domestic communications, any electronic communications received by, intended to be received by or stored in the account associated with a U.S.- licensed mobile earth station or transmitted through a U.S. land earth station, or routed through a U.S. point of presence to or from an Inmarsat subscriber, and subscriber and billing information. Inmarsat agreed “that the United States would suffer irreparable injury if for any reason Inmarsat failed to perform any of its obligations under this Agreement, and that monetary relief would not be an adequate remedy,” according to the document filed by the government. Inmarsat also waives any immunity it might have if the U.S. government claims it violated the agreement. This is the second time that the FCC has reviewed many of the issues involved in the Inmarsat-Stratos transaction. In 2007, the commission approved the first step in a deal involving Inmarsat, Stratos Global, Robert Franklin and Communications Investment Partners of Canada, after Inmarsat said it would finance CIP’s acquisition of Stratos (CD Dec 11/07 p1). The transaction gave Inmarsat Finance the option to buy Stratos outright when a distribution prohibition ends in April. When Inmarsat was privatized it was barred from selling directly to end users until then. Inmarsat plans to exercise the option and is asking the FCC for approval.
FCC commissioners and members of a commission advisory committee are upset about being largely left out of decision- making on how to spend the $20 million Congress gave the regulator for digital TV education. Commissioners first learned of $8.4 million in contracts awarded to 12 groups around 7 p.m. Tuesday, when the FCC issued a news release, agency officials said. Members of the Consumer Advisory Committee, recently reappointed by Chairman Kevin Martin with the goal of concentrating on DTV (CD Jan 2 p8), said their advice on how the commission can smooth the transition has been largely ignored and they had little involvement in the contracting process.
Former FCC chairmen and commissioners urged structural and procedural change for the next commission, at a forum Monday hosted by Public Knowledge. Reed Hundt and Bill Kennard, who were chairmen under President Bill Clinton, urged the next FCC to take a fresh look at streamlining the commission and the communications market. In a separate panel, former commissioners and others warned the next FCC not to lose focus on strategic goals.
A rumored FCC order to excuse the movie industry from some TV plug-and-play rules (CD Nov 28 p3) won’t come to fruition during Kevin Martin’s tenure as chairman, he said Tuesday. Some at the commission and in the consumer electronics and communications industries had expected a selectable output control waiver, with heavy conditions, to be granted by Martin, approving the May request by the Motion Picture Association of America. But in perhaps his last briefing with reporters to go over items for the next monthly public FCC meeting, Martin dashed those hopes.
The FCC isn’t violating a Communications Act requirement to act on a proceeding within a year by putting off a decision on AWS-3 band, the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, OPASTCO and the Rural Telecommunications Group said in a letter Monday to the FCC. M2Z, citing section 7(b) of the law, said in an earlier filing that the commission should have acted no later than Nov. 14, the first anniversary of a notice of proposed rulemaking on the AWS-3 band in the Federal Register. “This docket has no statutory deadline for FCC action: just last year, the Commission decisively rejected M2Z’s claim that section 7 applied to its proposal, and has vigorously defended that position before the D.C. Circuit - although M2Z’s letter fails to acknowledge either fact,” the groups said. “Section 7, including the 12-month timeframe for Commission action, applies only to a proceeding for a ‘new technology or service.’ As the Commission correctly concluded, M2Z offers neither.”