Whether a sports blackout rule supports terrestrial TV by keeping professional games on over-the-air broadcasts and not only on multichannel video programming distributors was debated in replies to the FCC on a petition from five groups to end the rule. The affiliate associations of three of the four major U.S. broadcast networks chimed in for the first time on the request, backing NAB’s opposition. The groups that petitioned (http://xrl.us/bmwid3) the commission (CD Nov 15 p3) to end the 1970s-era requirement that MVPDs not carry games in markets where contracts between leagues and stations keep them off-air said there’s “no compelling economic rationale” to keep the rule.
The quest to solve the spectrum crunch is far from over, said panelists at an Institute for Policy Innovation conference Wednesday. The success of the wireless industry, with new technologies and more efficient spectrum usage, is “far from final,” said CTIA President Steve Largent. U.S. carriers will need more spectrum, and competition in the industry is needed to keep up with innovation and usage levels, meet consumer needs and for the country to remain a global wireless leader, he said.
GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney alienates working people, Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen said Wednesday. The former Massachusetts governor “barely won the Michigan primary” Tuesday, Cohen said. “He’s had a hard time hiding his contempt for working people [and] supporting every possible attack on workers’ rights and bargaining rights.”
The FCC will take up a rulemaking notice examining 700 MHz interoperability issues on March 21, where media and satellite spectrum items also will get a vote, Chairman Julius Genachowski said Wednesday. Small carrier officials earlier asked for a vote on the notice of proposed rulemaking at that meeting, to keep a commitment made in the AT&T/Qualcomm order in December that the agency would release a rulemaking in Q1 (CD Feb 6 p2). The meeting is the last of the quarter. “Interoperability is one of the most important issues for competitive carriers, as an interoperability requirement will finally allow competitive carriers to build out their 4G LTE mobile networks and compete with the ever-growing duopoly of AT&T and Verizon Wireless,” said Rural Cellular Association President Steve Berry. The FCC will also consider a rulemaking and notice of inquiry on making mobile satellite service spectrum available for terrestrial service, the agency said. Among the three media items set for a March 21 vote are two that had been circulating for more than a month on radio and a new rulemaking notice on whether to sunset a ban on cable channels that are affiliated with operators withholding content from pay-TV rivals. The program access rulemaking notice asks whether to keep, sunset or “relax” the ban on withholding “and whether to revise the program access rules to better address alleged violations,” the commission said. The rulemaking circulated Wednesday for a vote, an FCC official said. Program access rules now sunset Oct. 5, and the agency had planned to issue a rulemaking on whether to keep them (CD Jan 9 p5). Both radio items tentatively set for a vote at the meeting affect low-power FM stations, with an order limiting the number of translators that can be awarded when the stations would use up channels that LPFMs could occupy. The order is on a “market-specific FM translator processing scheme,” with “application caps to prevent trafficking” and on changing “policies to expand opportunities to rebroadcast AM stations on FM translators,” the FCC said. An LPFM rulemaking notice asks as expected (CD Feb 9 p6) about implementing the Local Community Radio Act so low-power stations can be closer on the dial to full-powers. The item asks about “second adjacent channel waiver procedures, interference remediation requirements, and modification of eligibility, ownership, and selection standards,” the commission said.
The FCC International Bureau agreed to extend the comment deadline 16 days to March 16 for its plan to pull LightSquared’s authorization for terrestrial service (http://xrl.us/bmwiih).
Moody’s gave a B1 rating to RCN’s proposed $125 million term loan. The cable operator plans to use the cash to pay a dividend to private-equity owners Abry Partners and Spectrum Equity, Moody’s said: “Despite RCN’s high leverage, the ability to generate positive free cash flow from” its bundle of video, voice and data services “in densely populated markets supports its B1 corporate family rating."
The Department of Commerce is seeking comment on the administration’s new data privacy proposal (http://xrl.us/bmwife). Last month the White House unveiled its Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, a voluntary code of conduct that aims to protect the data privacy rights of consumers while giving them more control over how their information is handled (CD Feb 24 p6). The National Telecommunications Information Administration is seeking input on “what issues should be addressed through the privacy multi-stakeholder process and how to structure these discussions so they are open, transparent, and most productive,” said Larry Strickling, the assistant secretary for communications and information at Commerce and head of the NTIA. Specifically the agency is asking the public to offer views on how to best increase transparency of mobile device privacy notices, as well as comment on issues concerning mobile applications that provide location based services, cloud computing services, browser cookies, and services targeted to teenagers and children, among other topics. The agency is also looking for suggestions on ways to increase stakeholder participation, transparency and consensus agreement in the development of enforceable privacy codes. Comments can be submitted to privacyrfc2012@ntia.doc.gov or mailed to 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Room 4725, Washington, D.C. 20230. Comments are due 20 days after the request is published in the Federal Register.
Entercom Q4 sales fell 7 percent to $95.1 million from a year earlier, the radio broadcaster said. Profit fell 39 percent to $10.5 million due to lower sales and one-time losses on early debt paybacks and derivative instruments. Part of the sales drop was due to revamping the formats at some of its main AM stations, CEO David Field said.
Mobilitie raised $1.1 billion through a sale of more than 2,300 U.S. and Latin American tower and DAS sites to SBA Communications, the company said Wednesday. Mobilitie will use the cash to continue building and operating wireless infrastructure. “We will continue focusing our ongoing growth across our core business lines, which include the development and leasing of wireless communication towers, and the deployment and operations of Distributed Antenna Systems and Wi-Fi networks at high capacity venues,” said Mobilitie President Christos Karmis.
AT&T is exploring “multiple” options for finding more spectrum, rather than just waiting for auctions, Pete Ritcher, senior vice president of AT&T Mobility, said at the Deutsche Bank conference Wednesday. “Spectrum in the long term is very, very important,” Ritcher said. “It depends from kind of market to market as to what our sort of spectrum needs are. I think the main thing is that it’s very clear that there needs to be more spectrum available in the market near term. … We've been very vocal about that.” Ritcher said AT&T is “looking at everything,” though he wouldn’t speculate on whether the carrier can find enough spectrum to meet its needs before the next big auction. “We need to make sure that the government sort of encourages … commercial arrangements that we have out there, that we're not talking about reducing spectrum screens but increasing spectrum screens,” he said. In New York City, where AT&T has 55 MHz of 850 MHz and 1.9 GHz spectrum, it has dedicated all but 5 MHz to handle 3G traffic in some parts of the city, he said. “We still have LTE spectrum that we will grow into,” he said. “We still have 5 MHz of 2G spectrum or whatever that we're migrating customers off of and moving to 3G.” AT&T isn’t “ready to run out of spectrum tomorrow” but has to “manage that migration of customers over to the available spectrum we have,” Ritcher said.