The FCC sought comment on a petition for waiver and clarification of the January Lifeline reform order filed by USTelecom, the Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance, NTCA, OPASTCO, Western Telecommunications Alliance and Eastern Rural Telecom Association (http://xrl.us/bmxwiy). The group asked the commission to waive for “post-paid ETCs” the effective date of several rules established in the order, and sought an extension of the deadline to Oct. 1 (CD March 12 p9). Comments are due March 20 in docket 12-23.
The FCC should approve Adams Cable Equipment’s CableCARD waiver, said Sweetwater Cable TV, a small cable operator that wants to buy refurbished boxes. “The integration ban nearly tripled the price we pay for new entry-level SD set-top boxes and also significantly increased our cost for HD and DVR devices.” Sweetwater said it would support boxes that customers bought at retail from a refurbisher when they're able to confirm a chain of custody for the box. With Adams’ waiver granted, Sweetwater customers “could purchase a set-top box from Adams for less than what they pay to us in rental fees for in five months, for a box with no greater functionality,” the operator said: “We would be happy to ‘lose’ that set-top box revenue in order to have happier customers” who would then have more money available to spend on our video and other services.
Several carriers filed reply comments Friday about proposed competitive bidding procedures for Auction 901, which will disburse $300 million in the upcoming Mobility Fund. The FCC’s proposal to allow bidders to submit package bids on bidder-defined census block aggregations “increases the complexity of the auction greatly and introduces additional problems,” AT&T said, echoing a group of academic experts on auctions. The Universal Service Fund/Intercarrier Compensation order determined that support should be provided on a census block basis, and a subsequent public notice proposed that individual bidders submit up to three package bids per Cellular Market Area based on those aggregations. The problem is that combinatorial auctions make it more difficult to determine winners, and could in fact make it impossible “due to issues of computational complexity,” said AT&T, quoting comments made by the professors. A combinatorial auction will also create “significant opportunities for strategic manipulation of the auction,” and introduce the possibility of overlapping bids, which would only exacerbate things, AT&T said. U.S. Cellular said the requirement for a letter of credit is “burdensome and unnecessary,” and would “impede investment in mobile broadband infrastructure.” U.S. Cellular also said the Commission should delay the auction pending the result of litigation challenging the source of the $300 million in funding. The Rural Telecommunications Group said the proposed American Roamer data and road categories are insufficient to determine and measure eligible areas, because the data could be inaccurate.
Free and fair competition plays a critical and important role in export controls, commercial communications, commercial satellite launches and resolution restrictions, said Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. American business can’t compete effectively “if their hands are tied by unfair and unnecessary regulations,” like International Traffic In Arms Regulations, he said Monday at the Satellite 2012 conference, calling it a “serious threat to our industry.” Achieving ITAR reform is a team effort, he said. Ruppersberger also highlighted the need to drop restrictions on commercial communications satellites as a cost-cutting measure. He also said: “Companies have the capability to take high-resolution images but are prohibited from selling them abroad because of restrictive U.S. policy.” U.S. companies “need to be able to sell our superior technology,” he said. Ruppersberger bemoaned the problem with cyberthreats: An independent hacker or Al-Qaeda could “attack our banking system, our grid system or anything of that nature.”
Cumulus said it’s on track to roll out its daily deals platform SweetJack to 200 markets by the end of 2012. The daily coupon service, along the lines of Groupon or LivingSocial, will be heavily advertised on Cumulus and Clear Channel stations over the next several years, said Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey. The company has an agreement with Clear Channel to market the daily deal site and stream Cumulus station programming on Clear Channel’s iHeartRadio app. “It will be one of the largest brands advertised on radio for the next several years,” Dickey said during Cumulus’ Q4 earnings call Monday. Meanwhile, Cumulus’s integration of Citadel Broadcasting and Cumulus Media Partners is ahead of schedule, Dickey said. “Our team has a lot of experience with that,” he said. “We've done about 150 acquisitions to assemble the company,” he said. “We drilled very hard to prepare for it and our team has done an excellent job in execution. Sales during Q4 at the larger Cumulus fell 5.6 percent from what they would have been a year earlier had Cumulus owned all the assets it owns today to $290.2 million, the company said. The drop was mainly due to lower political ad sales, Dickey said. Its net loss for the quarter was $13.1 million, compared to a $7.5 million gain a year earlier. The drop was the result of higher interest expenses. Shares of Cumulus slid 8 percent Monday.
"Dig once” legislation won’t be attached to the surface transportation bill in the Senate, a spokesman for Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., told us Monday. Warner and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., had an amendment that would have required states to include broadband conduit during the construction of federal highways (CD Feb 23 p4). The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials “had some concerns” and GOP members on the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee “had questions, so we'll have to look for other opportunities to advance this common sense idea,” the Warner spokesman said. House Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., has a similar amendment in the House requiring states to evaluate whether to include the conduit. But House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said last week that the House would vote on the Senate’s version of the transportation bill.
Crown Castle International’s target stock price is $63 per share, up from $54 per share, Benchmark Capital said. Crown’s opportunities will increase as AT&T and Verizon continue to roll out 4G networks, the firm said. Sprint Nextel had more aggressive network growth, which drove performance for CCI because of its ownership of 6,600 towers originally built by Sprint. T-Mobile has increased network activity this year, and Clearwire will “likely show a minor uptick and modest network enhancement,” Benchmark said. The analyst expects CCI to top its current 2012 guidance. “Including acquisitions, we estimate $1.43 billion, and believe organic upside is likely,” it said.
The City of San Jose, Calif., is partnering with Ruckus Wireless and SmartWAVE Technologies to upgrade its free public Wi-Fi network, the city said. The network, initially being deployed in dozens of downtown locations, will cover San Jose’s business district, it said. The project, funded through the city’s parking revenue and general fund, has a one-time upgrade cost of about $100,000 and ongoing costs of about $22,000 a year. The Wi-Fi nodes are being deployed on street lights, traffic signal poles, buildings and other points of presence and will be connected using either high-speed, multi-gigabit fiber connections or wireless mesh connections, the companies said. Since its completion in 2005, the legacy Wi-Fi network only provided sporadic coverage to a few downtown parks and other parts of the city and couldn’t sustain reliable connections for graphic-rich mobile applications and an increasing number of mobile device users in the metropolitan area, the city said. The upgrade is expected to be completed by summer.
The National Hispanic Media Coalition recommended policy changes to the FCC when it filed a report Friday saying Latinos are less likely to have broadband at home than other groups; more likely to rely solely on mobile phones for Internet access; and have higher mobile phone bills than other groups (CD Feb 17 p16). The NHMC filed an ex parte and attached the report (http://xrl.us/bmxv46) in support of its call for the FCC to “reform the Lifeline program to improve efficiency and adoption rates while also moving it towards full support of broadband services”; preserve wireless industry competition; strengthen Internet rules to prevent discrimination; “assert authority over text messaging to prevent bad behavior by wireless companies”; ensure that bill shock protection alerts be offered in easily understood language and in languages other than English; “continue to take strong actions against calling card companies that exploit their customers”; and prevent mobile phone service disruptions without due process.
The FCC Wireless Bureau barred Warren Havens from making without bureau permission further filings on Automated Maritime Telecommunications System (AMTS) license applications he filed that were dismissed by the FCC more than 10 years ago. The order laid out the long history of the proceeding (http://xrl.us/bmxvys). In a 2010 order on reconsideration, the FCC noted that the applications had already been the subject of 12 orders and “stated that it planned to give no further consideration to the matter and directed the staff to dismiss summarily any subsequent pleadings filed by Havens or related parties in this proceeding,” the order said. “Havens and related parties nonetheless petitioned for reconsideration of the 2010 Order on Reconsideration. After the staff summarily dismissed that petition in accordance with the Commission’s directive, Havens filed yet another petition for reconsideration of the staff’s action.” Any additional documents filed by Havens on the matter must include a cover page seeking permission to file, the order said. “In seeking leave to file, Havens must certify that the claim or claims he wishes to present are not frivolous or made in bad faith.” The bureau said it “will deny permission to file abusive documents such as those that are frivolous, repetitive, irrelevant, obstructive, or that appear designed to cause harm in furtherance of a private interest."