FCC approval of Charter Fiberlink’s purchase of part of the customer base of James Cable shouldn’t be necessary under carrier change rules, the acquirer said. “Both the Wireline ... Bureau and the International Bureau Policy Divisions Staff have previously advised Charter Fiberlink and its affiliates in the context of similar transactions that the Commission’s consent pursuant to Section 214 of the Communications Act is not required for the acquisition of interconnected VoIP customers and/or assets,” Charter said. It’s a telecom carrier, while James Cable sells VoIP to the subscribers being acquired, said Monday’s filing in docket 00-257 (http://xrl.us/bmyzth).
Small cable operators visited the FCC on retransmission consent, saying the rules need changing even though many deals were signed with TV stations at year’s end (CD March 15 p6). “Just because ‘deals got done’ does not mean the market is working or that the market isn’t saturated with anticompetitive conduct by broadcasters,” said American Cable Association President Matt Polka in a filing posted Tuesday to docket 10-71 (http://xrl.us/bmyzq5). The commission shouldn’t “be lulled into a false sense of security by utilizing the ‘deals got done’ metric,” the filing said. “Across-the-board, retransmission consent fees rose substantially higher than those charged in the preceding cycle” when deals were renewed, ACA said of executives from the association, Armstrong Utilities, Knology, MetroCast, Ritter Communications and Wide Open West’s meeting with Chief Bill Lake and others in the Media Bureau. Knology and some others’ retrans fees almost doubled for this year from last, ACA said.
A Class A TV station will lose interference protection unless it can “show cause” the FCC should do otherwise, because among other apparent violations it has been “on the air for slightly more than 12 of the past 52 months,” said a Media Bureau order released Wednesday to KXCC Corpus Christi, Texas. It’s the 41st such station to get an order (http://xrl.us/bmyzov) from the bureau, which has been cracking down on Class A’s not meeting all commission rules as the agency seeks their spectrum to repurpose for wireless broadband (CD March 21 p3).
GLR Southern California got an FCC permit to deliver programming to Mexican station XEWW(AM) Tijuana, Baja California Norte, said an International Bureau public notice Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bmyzno).
The House Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight plans to review IT security at a hearing Tuesday, the latest in a series on cybersecurity, the Commerce Committee said late Tuesday. The subcommittee will consider “potential threats and vulnerabilities to federal IT systems and examine the steps a number of agencies have taken to address and minimize IT supply chain related security risks,” the committee said. The hearing is 10 a.m. in Room 2123, Rayburn Building.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said he will soon offer legislation banning unauthorized third-party charges on customers’ landline bills, a practice known as “cramming.” The Senate Commerce Committee chairman plans to introduce the bill “in the coming days,” he said Wednesday. Rockefeller had said he was working on a bill at a hearing last summer, following a Senate Commerce investigation on cramming (CD July 14 p5). Also, Rockefeller praised Verizon’s announcement earlier this month that it would ban cramming on its network and offer full refunds to affected customers (CD March 2 p11). “I hope [Verizon] will move as quickly as possible to put this pro-consumer policy in place, and I strongly and urgently call on other companies to follow their lead,” Rockefeller said. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., urged AT&T and CenturyLink to follow Verizon’s example, in letters sent Wednesday.
Cellphones don’t interfere with airplane navigational equipment, and leaving cellphones on during takeoffs and landings cannot crash airplanes, CellAntenna CEO Howard Melamed said in a written statement. “If this were truly the issue, we would know about it,” he said. “It’s ridiculous that Flight Attendants, who are not engineers, and have no knowledge of engineering make-up of planes, tell passengers to turn off their cell phone because it interferes with navigational equipment. It frightens passengers and it is unnecessary. If the FAA was right, and cell phones were dangerous, why would they even allow them on airplanes?” There are good reasons to power a phone down, he said: “It’s almost impossible to make a call above 3500 feet, let alone at cruising altitude,” and the phone on “will ultimately only drain battery as it tries to reach a tower with which it cannot communicate."
San Diego Gas & Electric asked the FCC to clarify its rules for the 2.3 GHz Wireless Communications Service band, which the company is using for deployment of a fixed backhaul network. SDG&E representatives met with Wireless Bureau staff. “SDG&E identified certain ambiguities in the FCC’s current rules for the WCS band and sought clarification from the staff on the proper interpretation of those rules as applied to the SDGE Grid Communication System,” the company said in an ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bmyzgj). For example, it said the FCC WCS performance requirements “appear not to contemplate point-to-multipoint applications that do not provide service directly to consumers like the SDGE Grid Communication System."
FCC members have three fewer items to vote on at Wednesday’s meeting, with release Monday night of two low-power FM-related items (see separate report in this issue) and a rulemaking notice late Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bmywkr) on program access rules. The rulemaking “seeks comment on whether the prohibition continues to be necessary,” the agency said in a news release on program carriage rules. Three scenarios outlined in the news release on the rulemaking ask about keeping the ban on exclusive contracts between a cable operator and its affiliated channel, letting it sunset later this year or relaxing the rule. Those scenarios had been in an earlier draft of the Media Bureau item (CD March 8 p6).
CenturyLink supports Verizon’s petition for waiver of the call signaling rules adopted in the Universal Service Fund/intercarrier compensation order (http://xrl.us/bmywbu). When it adopted the order, “the Commission declined to adopt a technical feasibility exception to the call signaling rules and, instead, encouraged carriers to seek waivers of the rules where necessary,” said CenturyLink, which filed a similar waiver request. CenturyLink said good cause exists for a grant of Verizon’s requested waiver, as long as the commission makes “expressly clear” that the waiver is granted based on the specific facts presented by Verizon’s petition of the limited amount of traffic at issue. “CenturyLink has some concern that, particularly for certain aspects of Verizon’s waiver (e.g., the request for a waiver in certain circumstances where it operates as either a VoIP originator or intermediate IP carrier), the same waiver would not be appropriate in other contexts with other carriers,” it said. Frontier opposed Verizon’s request (http://xrl.us/bmywgi), arguing it “would create broad exceptions that have the potential to negate the intent of the Commission’s rules."