Dial Global said it expanded a distribution agreement with Slacker Radio to deliver some sports programming. It includes the 2012 NCAA men’s basketball championship tournament, women’s basketball championship, men’s and women’s baseball College World Series, Division I men’s lacrosse semifinals and finals and the “Frozen Four” hockey tournament.
Hawaii has access to “broadband in name only,” lawyers for the state told the FCC chairman in an ex parte letter filed Monday (http://xrl.us/bmw26m). The state questioned the FCC’s use of the National Broadband Map and NTIA classifications of broadband to determine eligibility for Remote Areas Fund (RAF) support. Specifically, “shortcomings in the data” available through the map could overestimate the availability of broadband in Hawaiian rural areas, “and a corresponding omission of these areas from critically-needed RAF support,” the state said. The shortcomings are due to “insufficiently granular” census-block level data, and a “discrepancy between the NTIA’s low benchmark for broadband speeds and the Commission’s higher benchmark,” which could result in the map reporting large portions of Hawaii as being connected “while nonetheless having little or no access to broadband,” the state said. “For instance, areas in Hawaii that have only wireless coverage at 2G speeds will show on the NBM as having access to broadband despite being far below the speed necessary for the benefits that the Commission and the State envision from broadband access."
FCC process bill HR-3309 “would disable the FCC, not reform it,” House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said at a markup that started late Monday. But Republicans said the bill would make the commission more transparent and accountable, benefiting the communications sector. Members won’t vote until Tuesday on HR-3309 and a separate bill (HR-3310) to consolidate many FCC reports. “Independent experts have told us [HR-3309] would tie the [FCC] in knots and subject it to endless legal challenges,” Waxman said. The Democrat suggested a separate bill on one provision of the bill he supports -- allowing more than two commissioners to meet behind closed doors. The Republicans “rejected this suggestion, which dooms the entire package and raises serious questions about why we are doing this bill at all,” Waxman said. Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., countered that HR-3309 merely “asks the FCC to go through a process similar to what we've gone through in crafting it, and to implement some of the reforms that the House itself adopted just last year.” The bill “does not change the public interest standard that the FCC uses to approve or deny a merger,” Walden said. “If the FCC determines that a merger of two media companies is against the public interest, it can deny it.” Walden doesn’t anticipate litigation over the bill because the bill draws from executive orders and requires the FCC to implement the bill through rulemaking, he said. Democrats are expected to support HR-3310 to consolidate FCC reports, after the committee accepts an amendment (CD Feb 6 p1). Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., urged approval. “By looking at the marketplace as a whole rather than in traditional silos, the FCC and the American public will be better informed about existing competition and any barriers” to job creation, Upton said. The markup is scheduled to resume at 10 a.m. in Room 2123, Rayburn Building.
Belo’s recent 60 percent boost to its annual dividend bodes well for its earnings outlook, Benchmark Capital analyst Edward Atorino wrote investors. “Given Belo’s strong market position, improving balance sheet, cash flow support and dividend, we believe Belo warrants a premium to its peers,” he said, recommending investors buy Belo shares.
The FCC has received dozens of brief grassroots filings in recent days on the issue of whether government authorities should be allowed to interrupt wireless service to protect the public safety. The FCC sought comment in a public notice last week, though responses are not due until April 30 (CD March 2 p 14). “There should be no hesitation by the FCC to reestablish its regulatory control over cellphone usage from state and local governments,” said Peter Kastner of Westport, Mass. “The FCC would not hesitate to act if local governments started to willy-nilly shut down TV or radio stations. Why is the act of shutting down cell phone use any different than radio or TV transmissions?” Neil Forrester of Cambridge, Mass., said “the potential for abuse is tremendous, and that alone should be enough to kill any policy permitting the interruption of wireless service.”
To remedy unreasonably high incumbent LEC prices for TDM-based and packet-switched special access services, the FCC must vacate rules that let ILECs obtain pricing flexibility in the provision of special access services, counsel for tw telecom told an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, according to an ex parte letter (http://xrl.us/bmw242). The company argued there was “ample evidence” for elimination of the rules, such as a 2006 Government Accountability Office finding that prices for special access services in areas where the triggers were satisfied were, on average, higher than prices in other markets. The telco also cited a National Regulatory Research Institute report which found “almost no evidence of the validity of the FCC’s current policy equating special access competition with the presence of collocation in ILEC central offices."
The FCC Media Bureau mostly granted a petition from WMBC-TV Newton, N.J., to add 174 communities in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut to its market for must-carry purposes, an order released late Friday said (http://xrl.us/bmw22y). The same communities were deleted from the station’s market in a series of orders in 1996 and 1997 granting market modification petitions submitted by Cablevision, the order said. But the station argued that the underlying facts of those orders had changed, meriting another revision to its market boundaries. The station is carried by competing pay-TV companies in most of the communities, it improved its signal coverage with a distributed transmission system consisting of two transmitter sites, its Grade B contour has expanded and its programming has changed to include more local service, it said in its petition. The bureau agreed to re-include all but three of the 174 communities to WMBC market.
Bandwidth.com asked the FCC to implement a mandatory port-out period that would not exceed 30 days for projects porting more than 200 telephone numbers, it told commission staff Wednesday, according to an ex parte letter filed Friday (http://xrl.us/bmw24f). Bandwidth.com is experiencing “significant project porting problems” with wholesale porting, because under North American Numbering Council best practice #67, any project that ports more than 200 numbers “could be read to include tacit commission approval for the Old Service Provider to ‘negotiate’ a schedule by which it would perform port-outs,” the company said. As a wholesale carrier that commonly ports far more than 200 numbers at a time, “a system that includes even a suggestion that the Old Service Provider retains control of the port out schedule because it may ‘negotiate’ a project port plan with the New Service Provider is inherently flawed,” it said. The carrier also discussed comments it had made in filings, emphasizing that complex routing, number exhaust, interconnection and Intercarrier compensation issues “remain unsolved."
The Enterprise Wireless Association asked the FCC to act on a 2008 petition for clarification it filed along with Sprint Nextel asking for a tweak to the agency’s 900 MHz business and industrial/land transportation (B/ILT) license application freeze. “EWA explained that the freeze is no longer necessary, as Sprint has determined that it does not need additional 900 MHz spectrum to meet its 800 MHz rebanding obligations,” the group said during a meeting with Public Safety and Wireless bureau staff (http://xrl.us/bmw23e). “EWA also emphasized the hardship imposed on Industrial/Business licensees that are required to operate pursuant to Special Temporary Authorizations that must be renewed every six months and that do not provide the certainty most organizations require before investing in costly equipment.”
FCC members should “take First Amendment principles seriously” and grant Comcast’s request to not accept an administrative law judge’s recommendation the cable operator be required to carry the Tennis Channel more broadly (CD Jan 23 p3), a foe of regulation said. “The ALJ’s Tennis Channel ruling is especially problematic because it is unmistakably content-based,” wrote Seth Cooper on the Free State Foundation’s blog Monday (http://xrl.us/bmw23k). “The ALJ analyzed and compared the respective programming of the Tennis Channel with the Golf Channel and Versus,” two networks which Comcast owns, Cooper noted. “How could the ALJ’s order be said to promote programming diversity if Comcast drops the Tennis Channel along with its affiliated channels?"