The FCC Media Bureau rescinded a conditional renewal of the license of the Enid Public Radio Association for KEIF-LP, Enid, Okla. EPR failed to comply with the conditions set forth in a previous memorandum opinion and order and notice of apparent liability, the bureau said in an order (http://bit.ly/ZEi9BL). In 2010, EPR was granted a special temporary authorization “to operate with temporary antenna facilities following a lightning strike to its existing facilities,” it said. The licensee failed either to “request extension of STA to operate with reduced facilities, or to apply for modification of its license to operate with new facilities,” it said.
Migration from TDM services should be driven by consumer demand, not carrier convenience, AARP told aides to FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel on Thursday, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/15WyrJZ). State preemption is not a “reasonable approach,” the association said. It said interconnection issues are technology neutral and require ongoing oversight, and regulation is not impeding broadband investment. The National Consumer Law Center, also at the meeting, raised concerns about ILEC-supported state bills to eliminate the state Lifeline programs as an “additional backdrop” to AT&T’s petition for deregulatory trials in various wire centers (CD Feb 22 p1).
In establishing an appropriate analytical framework for its special access rulemaking, the FCC can rely on its established test for determining whether a firm has market power, tw telecom told Wireline Bureau officials last week (http://bit.ly/15Wy3es). Regulations adopted based on a careful application of that framework, along with appropriate benchmarks for prescribing prices, would “withstand the inevitable incumbent LEC appeals,” the CLEC said. CenturyLink has “not come close to meeting its burden” of proving that dominant carrier regulation is no longer necessary, tw telecom said of CenturyLink’s petition for forbearance of several rules. The CLEC criticized CenturyLink’s “failure to make a serious attempt to provide a market analysis that would justify forbearance” as itself sufficient grounds for denial.
Entropic Communications slashed its forecast for Q1 revenue to $74 million to $76 million, blaming a slowdown in a pay-TV operator’s deployment of high-definition digital transport adapters (HD-DTA). Entropic, which developed the PNX8475 chip for HD-DTAs, originally projected Q1 revenue of $79 million to $81 million. As a result of the change in HD-DTA deployment plans, “excess inventory” has built up, Entropic said. Entropic didn’t identify the pay-TV operator, but has Comcast, Cox Communications, DirecTV, EchoStar, Time Warner Cable and Verizon as customers, largely for its multimedia-over-coax (MoCA) chips. Despite the slowdown, the number of HD-DTAs expected to ship through 2018 hasn’t changed, Entropic said.
Congress should work to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) said Monday. The House Crime Subcommittee plans a Tuesday hearing on the law. ECPA establishes a legal framework with “a complex and baffling set of rules” that are “both difficult to explain and to apply in this age of networked and cloud computing,” SIIA President Ken Wasch said in a statement. Congress should “work with all deliberate speed to enact legislation creating a warrant requirement for law enforcement access to remotely stored electronic content,” he continued. “It is critical to level the playing field for information Americans store in the cloud, ensuring that it receives the same protection as the information they store in their homes."
Sinclair said it plans to refinance some debt it used to fund recent station acquisitions. It said it’s seeking $900 million in new term loans. Separately, its subsidiary Sinclair TV Group plans to sell $600 million in senior unsecured notes due 2021 in a private offering, the company said. The proceeds will be used to pay back some debt under the subsidiary’s credit facility, it said.
The FCC appears close to release of the latest edition of its report to Congress on the state of wireless competition, with voting wrapping up as early as Monday. There are expected to be few surprises. The report reaches the same finding as every Mobile Wireless Competition report under Chairman Julius Genachowski -- that the commission can’t conclude that the wireless industry is effectively competitive, officials said. Commissioners Robert McDowell and Ajit Pai both are objecting to the non-conclusion, with McDowell concurring with the report and Pai issuing a partial concurrence, officials said. Pai was not on the commission in June 2011 when the last report was released (CD June 28 p1), nor was Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. “We have not identified new or particularly revealing information that would prevent us from opining as to ‘whether or not there is effective competition,’ as the statute requires,” McDowell said then.
The Internet of Things can be an engine for economic growth with the right regulatory policies, Broadband for America wrote in a blog post Monday (http://bit.ly/YCJDFp). The success of the technology that allows machines to sense and communicate with one another will rely on “regulatory policies that incentivize continued investment in high-speed broadband infrastructure that these connected devices depend upon,” the post said. “More devices will require more bandwidth, more speed and more efficiency."
Meetings continued last week at the FCC on proposed rules to make emergency information more accessible to people with disabilities. Comcast officials visited an aide to Commissioner Robert McDowell to express its support for a proposal to restrict the rules to broadcast services and multichannel video program distributor (MVPD) services, but “not to IP-delivered video programming that is not otherwise an MVPD services,” an ex parte notice shows (http://bit.ly/Zo4vUa). Separately, CEA officials and an official from Samsung held a series of meetings and phone calls with 8th Floor officials to push for restrictions on what devices the rules will apply to and to review arguments the association has already made in the proceeding, an ex parte notice shows (http://bit.ly/WlkiEl). They also sought prompt action on the CEA’s pending petition for reconsideration on FCC IP captioning rules, the ex parte notice said.
The Kansas Fiber Network consortium of 29 carriers upgraded its packet optical network to 100 gigabit-per-second speeds, Cisco said Monday (http://bit.ly/Z9KUnl). The change lets the 2,700-route mile network “more easily scale to meet growing customer demands for Ethernet, mobile backhaul and high-speed private line services, and allows for seamless delivery of popular mobile content such as high-definition video, mobile applications and collaboration tools,” Cisco said. The company also said the upgrade will help it serve rural areas and create possibilities related to telemedicine.