FCC Comr. Copps said the Commission should seize on allegations of “pay-for-play” involving TV and radio stations and shouldn’t leave it to the Enforcement Bureau alone, but should confront the issue themselves. Although an aide to Chmn. Powell said the issue should be dealt with in the context of the Commission’s current examination of localism, Copps said “pay-for-play” shouldn’t be part of “some never- ending process that’s going to go months and months forward. I think we ought to deal with this now.” His comments came in a media briefing Thurs. one day after Comr. Adelstein called on his colleagues to open a formal inquiry into “pay- for-play.”
The House passed Enhanced 911 (HR-2898) legislation Tues. afternoon as supporters turned their attention toward moving an E911 bill through the Senate. The House bill was passed on the suspension calender on voice vote. Sponsor Rep. Shimkus (R-Ill.) told us there would be challenges in getting a bill to President Bush’s desk since there were significant differences in the Senate companion bill, but said getting the House bill passed might streamline the process. “Clearly, we have a wide gap to bridge,” House Commerce Committee spokesman Ken Johnson said: “But considering people’s lives are at stake, Americans want us to get this bill done now.”
FCC Chmn. Powell said Wed. that Enhanced 911 Phase 2 deployment had jumped 300% in the last 7 months, but he warned: “There is a real risk that this progress could stall.” At the start of a 2-day meeting of the FCC’s E911 Coordination Initiative, he said 19 states and Washington, D.C., hadn’t yet deployed Phase 2 to a single public safety answering point (PSAP), with the rollout rate below 10% in 15 other states. Meanwhile, House Telecom Subcommittee Chmn. Upton (R-Mich.) said he had hoped a pending E911 bill would be up for a floor vote Wed. morning, but there now was an agreement with leadership clearing the way for a vote as early as Tues.
Enhanced 911 legislation (HR-2898)could come to the House floor as early as today (Wed.), the National Emergency Number Assn. (NENA) said. The bill isn’t listed on the House Whip Notice, but a House source said discussions were going on late Tues. to determine whether the bill would get on the suspension calendar for Wed. If it were placed on the suspension calendar, it would have to get 2/3 of the House votes and no amendments could be offered. The bill, by Rep. Shimkus (R-Ill.), would allocate $100 million for 5 years toward deployment of E911 services. It also would prevent state legislatures that had raided E911 funds for other purposes from receiving federal help. The Administration has raised some concerns with the spending and has suggested that E911 funding come from other grants that already had been established (CD Oct 2 p1).
A report by the General Accounting Office (GAO) found that cable rates were 15% lower in the rare places where a wireline competitor existed and that the FCC had done a poor job of tracking the industry. The 94-page report, prepared at the request of Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.) and long anticipated, said a sharp increase in programming costs, coupled with expenditures for capital improvements, had forced price increases for millions of Americans in recent years at a rate greater than that of inflation. The GAO said overall programming costs had increased an average 34% in the last 3 years while rates for sports-specific networks had risen an average 59%.
GENEVA -- ITU Secy. Gen. Yoshio Utsumi acknowledged at a closing session of ITU Telecom World 2003 here Fri. that only 50 heads of state so far had committed to attending the upcoming World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) that starts Dec. 10, but a U.N. official said that figure had grown from earlier in the year after U.N. Secy. Gen. Kofi Annan stressed to govt. heads the importance of the summit. “I do think it’s a pity if attendance does not rise beyond that level,” said Shashi Tharoor, undersecy.-gen. for communications at the U.N.
LAS VEGAS -- The telecom industry should begin to lay the groundwork for major telecom legislation, possibly in 2005, several speakers and industry officials said at the USTA convention here Mon. USTA Pres. Walter McCormick didn’t commit to legislation, just to change: “We are talking about an objective” of letting the market, not govt., regulate the industry, he said in response to a question about legislation: “That can be achieved in a variety of ways. Legislation is just one.”
The Telecom Industry Assn. (TIA), having been stymied for a year by the White House, Congress and a slow-moving FCC, said Wed. it had a new message for President Bush that it believed this time he would hear: “Jobs, jobs, jobs.” In a meeting with reporters, TIA officials said that after a year with little deregulatory action, continued decline in telecom spending and more job losses, they would renew their push of their message supporting regulatory reform that they said would spark the ailing telecom sector. They want the White House to respond with a mention of broadband in the State of the Union address.
The 9th U.S. Appeals Court, San Francisco vacated the FCC’s declaratory ruling that cable modem service was an interstate information service because it was bound by its earlier conclusion in AT&T v. Portland that cable-delivered Internet service contained both information service and telecom components. In a per curiam opinion Mon., the 3- judge panel remanded to the Commission for further proceedings portions of the earlier decision that weren’t consistent with the court ruling.
Public safety groups questioned Enhanced 911 Phase 2 waiver petitions filed at the FCC by small rural carriers, telling the agency last week that they had “appeared on the FCC’s doorstep like autumn leaves.” The National Emergency Number Assn., the Assn. of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) and the National Assn. of State 911 Administrators said: “The theme of these requests, however, is not relief from accuracy standards but more time to implement Phase 2’s present requirements.” Among the waiver petitions cited by the filing was one by the Rural Telecom Group (RTG), which asked the Commission for a limited stay of Phase 2 deadlines for the smallest wireless carriers, saying most of them couldn’t meet accuracy mandates using a network- based solution for Phase 2. RTG suggested a new category for E911 compliance, composed of the smallest wireless carriers - - those with 100,000 or fewer subscribers. The FCC received a flurry of petitions last month seeking temporary waivers of E911 Phase 2 obligations, particularly a Sept. 1 deadline for starting to sell automatic location identification (ALI)- capable handsets. In the case of a waiver petition by First Cellular of Southern Ill., the request for Phase 2 relief doesn’t lay out “a clear path to full compliance,” the public safety groups said. They said the petitions involved several contingencies based on different solutions. “It would be easier to accept the requested 24-month delay if the path forward were more certain,” the groups said. They also said they weren’t able “to judge the accuracy of the rural wireless carriers’ claims that they are at the end of the line for supply of available handsets from manufacturers and are victimized by ‘exclusive’ arrangements between manufacturers and national carriers. We trust that the FCC will call in the manufacturers to attempt to separate truth from rhetoric in these matters.” The groups said some small carriers had reported to the FCC in recent months that handsets were available to them in enough numbers to meet E911 penetration and accuracy requirements.