The FCC should maintain a “flexible regime” in its oversight of closed captions, said NAB in an ex parte filing Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1cUfWad). Broadcasting is a “diverse industry” with “some errors and latency issues that cannot be avoided, due to human and transmission issues,” said NAB. The commission should continue to allow broadcasters to use the Electronic Newsroom Technique (ENT) to provide captions, the filing said. A phase-out of ENT “could likely result in a loss of competitive local news coverage, as well as additional voices in the market,” NAB said. Instead, the commission should “work with industry to examine how ENT can be better utilized to ensure local viewers have improved access to important news and information,” said the filing.
CTIA unveiled a website aimed at helping wireless subscribers make sense of the apps on their phones. CTIA, its members and the app developer community “created KnowMyApp.org so you know how the most popular apps use data,” CTIA said Thursday. “With Intertek Testing Services North America, we offer data usage estimates on some of the most popular apps in the Apple and Google stores.” Offering advice to help networks and devices run better, including using Wi-Fi connections when possible, CTIA said: “Adjust your apps’ settings to stop or minimize updates unless you're on a secure Wi-Fi hotspot. Minimize apps that aren’t in use so they're not running in the background. Uninstall any apps you don’t use.”
The FCC should grant time extensions to stations that need to buy new equipment to comply with the commission’s proposed procedural update to the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act rules, said NAB in comments filed in response to the commission’s November FNPRM on the proposed update (http://bit.ly/1aaVmBV). The proposed changes are prompted by changes in March to the Advanced Television Systems Committee algorithm used to calculate loudness (CD Nov 5 p18). Because the CALM Act legislation references the old standard, the commission proposal would update the language with the new standard. NAB supports the proposed change, and said most stations should be able to follow the proposed new standard with “relatively low-cost software upgrades” within the proposed one-year deadline. However, some stations may need to buy additional equipment, and may need time to do it, since most 2014 budgets have already been finalized, NAB said. The commission should “clarify that it will look favorably on requests for waivers for extensions of time” to comply with the proposed new standards, NAB said.
The FCC should raise the maximum effective radiated power for low power FM stations from 100 watts to 250 watts and hold an FM translator window exclusively for LPFM licenses, said the Prometheus Radio Project in an ex parte filing this week (http://bit.ly/1hHfVLF). Those changes would “significantly unburden” LPFM stations while addressing the problem of limited signal coverage, a “major threat” to LPFM, Prometheus said. The FCC should also delay a proposed FM translator filing window for AM stations until all LPFM applications have been resolved, Prometheus said. That window should also be restricted to Class D and C stations, the filing said.
The Telecommunications Regulatory Board of Puerto Rico asked to withdraw its petition to opt out of the National Lifeline Accountability Database, in a letter to the FCC posted Thursday (http://bit.ly/18N4MZh). The board had previously sought a participation waiver because it had already implemented a similar database. Due to cuts to the board’s budget, however, it won’t be able to make the Puerto Rico database compliant with the Lifeline rules, it said. “The Board commits to maintaining the current Puerto Rico database to retain its ability to eliminate and prevent duplicates in the Lifeline rolls until such time as Puerto Rico has been successfully migrated to the national system,” which will happen in the spring, it said.
Four House members signed onto the Local Radio Freedom Act (LRFA) as co-sponsors, said an NAB news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/1eGw6uQ). They are Reps. Jim Gerlach, R-Pa., Robert Hurt, R-Va., Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, and Bill Pascrell, D-N.J. The LRFA was introduced in the House in February as H.Con. Res. 16 (http://1.usa.gov/1bstiK2) and in the Senate in March as S.Con. Res. 6 (http://1.usa.gov/19jGhxF), said the NAB. The bill says Congress “should not impose any new performance fee, tax, royalty, or other charge relating to the public performance of sound recordings on a local radio station for broadcasting sound recordings over-the-air, or on any business for such public performance of sound recordings,” it said. The LRFA has 188 co-sponsors in the House and 12 co-sponsors in the Senate, NAB said.
It’s time for new telecom policies to match the “new marketplace,” USTelecom President Walter McCormick said in a blog post Thursday (http://bit.ly/1ijg7DA). One hundred years after the Kingsbury Commitment that made AT&T a government-sanctioned monopoly in exchange for “agreeing to pervasive economic regulation,” it’s time for “early 20th century policies” to sunset, McCormick said. “Today the notion of a single voice provider is quaint, at best,” he said. “After 100 years, it’s time to leave the wireline-centric regulation of the monopoly voice era behind, focus on the broader social compact between network operators and their customers, and embrace our nation’s highly competitive, consumer driven, Internet-enabled future."
Members of the GPS community again said the FCC shouldn’t permit the operations proposed in LightSquared’s request to use its spectrum for a terrestrial network until technical interference concerns have been resolved. The concerns should be resolved in “transparent, public notice and comment rulemaking proceedings,” like the process involving Dish Network’s AWS-4 spectrum, the GPS Innovation Alliance said in an ex parte filing in docket 11-109 (http://bit.ly/1cPXT5e). The filing recounted a meeting last week with members of the Wireless Bureau and the Office of Strategic Planning & Policy Analysis, it said.
Comments on the application of the IP closed captioning rules are due Jan. 27, replies Feb. 26, the FCC Media Bureau said in a Federal Register notice to appear Thursday. The bureau seeks comment on the extent “to which industry has voluntarily captioned” IP-delivered video clips, it said.
There are nearly 262 million Internet connections over 200 kbps in the U.S., the FCC said Tuesday in its report on Internet access services (http://fcc.us/1gUSFfx). The report is based on Form 477 data submitted by ISPs, and includes data collected through 2012. At year-end 2012, there were almost 65 million fixed and 64 million mobile connections with speeds of at least 3 Mbps down/768 kbps up, the report said. That’s more than a 100 percent increase for mobile connections over the past year, it said. “Growth is particularly high in mobile Internet subscriptions,” the FCC said.