The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials said it’s launching “AppComm,” a website dedicated to public safety and emergency response apps for use by the public, app developers and first responders (http://bit.ly/ZKtTlj). APCO is creating AppComm “because it recognizes the importance of providing a platform that the public safety community can trust and rely upon to aggregate and develop the most effective apps for public safety and emergency response,” APCO said Tuesday. The website initially features 60 apps “selected by APCO staff that are intended to be representative of the value and diversity of existing public safety apps,” the group said. “For too long our nation’s public safety officials have been limited to using radios that are unable to perform some of the basic functions most of us expect on the phones we carry in our pockets,” said FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, responding to the announcement. “But now APCO’s Application Community, which is inspired by the work of the First Responder Network Authority, is providing a first glimpse at the power a nationwide wireless broadband network can deliver to our first responders."
Allen’s TV Cable Service agreed to pay $8,000 to end an FCC Enforcement Bureau investigation about allegedly not making its public-inspection file available during business hours to bureau agents. The Morgan City, La., system will name a compliance officer and devise a compliance plan, said a bureau consent decree Tuesday (http://bit.ly/14MZ9rD). The company had received a $10,000 notice of apparent liability (CD Feb 14/12 p22).
The Universal Service Administrative Co. estimates the demand for E-rate funding at $4.986 billion for funding year 2013, it told the FCC Wireline Bureau in a letter Monday (http://bit.ly/ZiVM7m). FY 2013 runs from July 2013 through June 2014. The total estimated demand represents a decrease of $251 million, or 4.8 percent, from the demand last year, USAC said. Priority One funding, which covers telecom services and Internet access, was up almost 11 percent from last year; Priority Two funding, for internal connections, was down more than 18 percent. Eric Iversen, USAC director of external relations, told us the lower number of Priority Two requests is a continuing correction from FY 2010: Due to more “rollover” money being available from past unclaimed funds, all the Priority Two requests that year were approved. That sent a “misleading signal” causing subsequent Priority Two applications to increase, he said; that “artificial escalation” has since “snapped back to more realistic levels.” The lower demand reflects how optimistic applicants are about getting funding, he said. Priority One requests have been going up “because schools and libraries want more bandwidth”; that leaves less money available for Priority Two requests, he said. In many cases, “people understand that it’s just not worth the time” to file those requests, he said.
Any auction conducted in Phase II of the Connect America Fund program should attempt to maximize the number of locations to which broadband could be provided and maintained, USTelecom and member ILECs told FCC officials Wednesday, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/ZiSYav). The groups were meeting to discuss “the broad contours of an auction mechanism” that would take place “where a qualifying carrier elects not to exercise a right of first” acceptance of CAF money, the filing said. In order to maximize the flow of Phase II money, bidders should be allowed to aggregate geographic areas to ensure scale for “efficient network construction and operation,” the ILECs said. They also discussed the potential benefits of a multi-round auction and package bidding. Any auction procedures should be “fully described well before any company must make an election to accept state-wide obligations and support” under Phase II, the filing said.
The FCC should decline to set Video Relay Service (VRS) rates that would subsidize specific competitors, Sorensen told the commission in a letter Monday (http://bit.ly/11K7Tr0). Purple and two other VRS providers have asked the commission to continue having tiered VRS rates. “Tiers to support subscale competitors are wasteful, incenting providers to stay small rather than to grow,” Sorensen said. The other companies’ proposals “point out the irrationality of determining compensation on a provider-specific rate-of-return basis -- a form of regulation that the Commission has eschewed in nearly every other setting,” Sorensen said. Sorensen called rate tiers “wasteful, illogical” and “the height of intellectual bankruptcy” when used in conjunction with rate-of-return regulation.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., has heard “absolutely nothing” from the White House about whom it plans to nominate to replace outgoing FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, nor when the administration plans to make an announcement, Rockefeller said. “They are very unpredictable on things like that,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “Just a sort of a strange silence.” Rockefeller added: “I think I know who they are for and I know who I am for. I don’t think it is that close of a choice.” Rockefeller has advocated for his former Commerce Committee aide and current Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel to take the gavel from Genachowski when he retires. He has opposed any nomination of Core Capital Partners Managing Partner Tom Wheeler, who many say is the White House’s lead candidate for the job. In an interview earlier this month, Rockefeller criticized Wheeler’s former work as president of CTIA from 1992 to 2003 and CEO of NCTA from 1979-1984 saying: “A lobbyist is a lobbyist and he was lobbying for some of the things he would be making decisions about” (CD April 10 p3). The White House had no comment.
Bob Edgar, 69, Common Cause president and CEO, died of a heart attack Tuesday at his Burke, Va., home. A U.S. Democratic representative from Pennsylvania for six terms starting in 1974, he was among the Democratic so-called Watergate babies elected to Congress after the Watergate scandal. After losing a Senate contest to then-Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., in 1986, Edgar joined Common Cause’s board as part of efforts aimed at campaign finance reform, and was named president and CEO in 2007. Survivors include his wife and three sons.
The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology is seeking comment on a recent report by the commission’s Technological Advisory Council making recommendations on receiver standards. The report, “Interference Limits Policy,” is available on the FCC’s website (http://bit.ly/13y4M6O). FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski asked TAC “to study the role of receivers in ensuring the efficient use of spectrum and to provide recommendations on avoiding obstacles posed by receiver performance to making spectrum available for new services,” OET said (http://bit.ly/Zj0VfT). “Acting on this request, the TAC working group on Receivers and Spectrum provided actionable recommendations to the Chairman.” Comments are due June 21, replies July 8.
The FirstNet board agreed to negotiate a spectrum lease agreement with Texas so the state can use 700 MHz public safety spectrum for an early first responder network in Harris County. The board appointed one of its members, Sue Swenson, to negotiate an agreement with the state in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security. Board approval will be needed for the final lease. “Based on our site visits and other discussions with the project’s leaders and vendors, we've determined that the Texas project could provide substantial benefits to FirstNet’s nationwide deployment efforts and generate valuable lessons learned on the challenges we face,” said Sam Ginn, chairman of the FirstNet board. “Our task now is to negotiate the terms and conditions of the agreement that will transform the potential benefits into the tangible results of meaningful, working relationship between FirstNet and the grantee."
The FCC should ignore a filing by the Justice Department on spectrum and competition (CD April 15 p7), said Fred Campbell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Communications Liberty & Innovation Project, in a blog post Tuesday (http://bit.ly/mSKl6O). “The new ‘findings’ in the DOJ filing fail to cite any factual record and are inconsistent with the DOJ’s factual findings in recent merger proceedings that contain extensive factual records,” wrote Campbell, former chief of the FCC Wireless Bureau. “The DOJ filing blithely relies on a discriminatory evidentiary presumption to insinuate that Verizon and AT&T are ‘warehousing’ spectrum, and then uses that presumption to support a proposed remedy that bears no rational relationship to factual findings that the DOJ has actually made. The absence of any empirical evidence supporting the relevant conclusions in the DOJ filing gives it the appearance of a political document rather than a deliberative work product crafted with the traditionally substantive and impartial standards of the Justice Department. The FCC, the independent agency that prides itself on being fact-based and data-driven, should give this screed no weight."