Nothing in the contract between the National Exchange Carrier Association and Sandwich Isles Communications prohibits NECA from evaluating members’ cost studies to determine whether they comply with FCC rules, the association said in an ex parte letter Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bmy2m8). The letter was in response to a Sandwich Isles letter arguing that NECA “has no legal right to unilaterally over-ride a Pool Member’s actions.” The letters were the latest volleys in a dispute over how much of Sandwich Isles’ regulated and unregulated lease expenses could be included in the revenue requirement for recovery in the NECA traffic sensitive pool.
TIA supports Senate passage of the House JOBS Act, it said Wednesday. TIA’s 500 member companies “will be able to grow, create jobs, and ultimately reach their full economic potential” under the bill, TIA said. It “will allow smaller companies to access the public markets with some measure of relief from many of the regulatory burdens intended for larger entities, and will help pave the way for more IPOs -- and, ultimately, more U.S. jobs,” TIA President Grant Seiffert said.
The House Communications Subcommittee scheduled a cybersecurity hearing for March 28. The hearing will explore threats to communications networks and the government’s response, the House Commerce Committee said Wednesday. Members also will examine “how the public sector is working with the private sector and how this partnership could improve.” The hearing will be at 10 a.m. in Room 2322, Rayburn House Office Building.
Flash cutting existing originating intrastate access rates for VoIP-terminating access to traffic to the interstate rate level could have “significant revenue impacts on an ongoing basis,” Frontier lawyers told FCC officials, according to an ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bmy2jy). That’s because there is no originating access transition currently in place to “harmonize” originating intrastate or interstate rates, they said. Frontier and Windstream have petitioned for clarification on the issue (CD Feb 14 p13).
The U.S. cable sector has become more prone to suffering from downturns in the economy and is reaching maturity, Standard & Poor’s said in a report on the sector. “Although weaker growth in the cable industry over the past few years may reflect the anemic economic growth in the U.S., the maturity of the industry makes it tough to determine how much of the slowdown resulted from the economy and how much simply reflects a maturity industry,” analyst Naveen Sarma said. And the industry’s recent moves to return cash to shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks could limit their credit profiles, Standard & Poor’s said.
Viacom introduced a new sales effort aimed at combining its TV and online properties. The product, called “Surround Sound,” allows marketers to reach Viacom audiences “wherever they are across our digital portfolio,” said Jeff Lucas, head of sales for music and entertainment at Viacom’s media networks. Viacom is using Adobe AudienceManager for the service, it said.
SeaChange International said it will shed its broadcast server and storage business and focus on its software and services operations. A group of financial investors led by VantagePoint Capital Partners agreed to buy the assets and will run them under the name XOR Media. “It is important to note that this sale is not a parting of ways between SeaChange and the new company,” said SeaChange CEO Raghu Rau. “We will continue to work together to offer our customers a complete solution.”
Fiber network provider Zayo Group acquired Arialink, a fiber service provider in Michigan. Zayo executed the definitive agreement, which will add 930 route miles to Zayo’s footprint, including “400 miles of dense metro networks in Lansing and Ann Arbor,” it said Wednesday. “We have worked with Arialink for some time and adding their reach to Zayo’s national network will allow us to offer a broader range of solutions to our collective customers,” said Glenn Russo, Zayo executive vice president-corporate strategy and development.
The FCC does not have a firm answer to the question of how much spectrum a voluntary incentive auction of broadcast spectrum will eventually yield for wireless broadband, Chairman Julius Genachowski said Wednesday. By some estimates the incentive auction now appears likely to reap only 60-80 MHz, because of various provisions in the spectrum legislation authorizing the auction. That’s considerably less than the 120 MHz projected in the National Broadband Plan (CD March 19 p1). “We don’t have an estimate,” Genachowski said during a press conference. “I've expressed a number of times concerns that the legislation contains provisions that will constrain us from maximizing the amount of spectrum recovered. We've been working hard on that. It’s going to be about the engineering, working within the provisions that Congress has adopted.” FCC staff “believes and I believe the law as adopted constrains our ability to maximize the amount of spectrum we can recover,” he said.
The FCC shouldn’t enforce its rule barring a cable operator from acquiring a management interest or 10 percent stake in a competitive LEC within the operator’s franchise area, said NCTA, the American Cable Association and CompTel in a letter Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bmyzwi). That restriction, contained in Section 652 of the Communications Act, is “unnecessary to protect competition or consumers and it therefore undermines, rather than advances, the public interest,” the groups said. They said the act says the commission may waive the restrictions it deems procompetitive, but only if the relevant local franchise authority approves. “The LFA approval process is completely unbounded; the statute does not prescribe any standard for LSAs to apply when deciding whether to approve a waiver request and even creates the prospect that a single LFA could veto a transaction that the Commission has found to promote the public interest,” the groups said. That nearly happened when Detroit objected to a Comcast acquisition of a Chicago-based CLEC in 2010, the three associations said. “Several of our members have indicated that the apparent applicability of Section 652(b) has dampened their willingness to pursue potential transactions that would strengthen competition vis-à-vis the dominant incumbent LEC and thereby benefit customers.” The rule can “cast a shadow over negotiations” between cable operators and CLECs that lead to “suboptimal outcomes” if parties value the deal differently due to the potential risks that accompany a waiver request, they said. “Many of our members have concluded that the risks associated with cable-CLEC transactions too often will outweigh the benefits, especially when the geographic overlap is substantial and the number of LFAs that must approve a waiver is correspondingly large.” Eliminating the impediments to cable-CLEC transactions will “rekindle local exchange competition and strongly benefit consumers and businesses,” they said.