The Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable (DTC) provided no evidence that the data Charter submitted to the FCC in its quest to be let out of local rate regulation in five towns in the state was misleading, Charter said in a filing with the Media Bureau (http://bit.ly/XUAIjl). The DTC had complained that subscriber data Charter submitted may have counted residences that are excluded from the Census Bureau’s tally of occupied homes in the area, thereby giving the impression that competing providers serve a higher percentage of the market. “The DTC, however, conspicuously fails to provide any community specific evidence to overcome Charter’s prima facie showing of effective competition,” Charter said. Furthermore, Charter submitted a declaration from the Executive Director of the Satellite Broadcasting Communications Association saying the figures it provided Charter do not include such “commercial” accounts that the DTC had concerns about.
Comcast and advocates for the hearing impaired lobbied the FCC on their different interpretations of a 2010 law’s requirements for what types of TV services should face emergency accessibility programming rules. The cable operator backs a rulemaking notice proposal that multichannel video programming distributors should be required to pass through such information from broadcasters on the secondary audio stream. The company also backed a rulemaking’s proposal to cover broadcast TV and MVPD services but not Internet Protocol-delivered content that’s not otherwise an MVPD service, a filing said executives told an aide to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. “Comcast today passes through the secondary audio stream for all of its cable services and supports access to secondary audio in its set-top boxes.” The ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/YM5JoL) was posted Tuesday in docket 12-107, where a lobbying disclosure from two deaf groups also appeared that day. The agency should “clarify that the emergency information rules will apply to all video programming providers” and video programming distributors, “not just broadcasters” and MVPDs, National Association of the Deaf and Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing reported telling aides to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. The law “prevents the Commission from excluding classes of apparatuses” such as those getting IP-delivered content from MVPDs, from the rules, the groups said (http://bit.ly/YM5JoL).
Eutelsat renewed three long-term contracts with Algerie Telecom Satellite for capacity on Eutelsat 5 West A. The contracts cover 105 MHz of spectrum on the satellite, “connected to the satellite’s high-power service area over Algeria and the Sahara region,” Eutelsat said in a release (http://bit.ly/100kuYb). ATS uses the capacity to deliver high-quality broadband connectivity to local administrations, hospitals and schools beyond range of terrestrial infrastructure, it said.
Broadband access is increasingly needed for participating in school and in the economy, Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen told reporters Tuesday during a press conference announcing an expansion of Comcast’s Internet Essentials program. He pointed to a recent Pew Internet & American Life Project report that said nearly 80 percent of students are asked to access and download assignments, while in some low-income areas Comcast serves, fewer than 20 percent of households buy broadband. Internet Essentials provides low-cost broadband connections to low-income families with school-aged children. Beginning in April, families who home-school their children or send them to parochial or private schools but would otherwise qualify will be eligible for Internet Essentials, Cohen said. Comcast is also giving out pre-paid “Internet Essentials Opportunity Cards” that Comcast’s nonprofit and school-district partners can distribute to eligible families to help them pay for the service for up to a year. But even though broadband service is increasingly necessary, it shouldn’t be regulated, Cohen said. “The surest way to kill broadband is to regulate it,” he said. “You don’t need regulation to stimulate broader and more investment by broadband providers,” he said. He said broadband access is available in 99 percent of Comcast’s footprint and programs like Internet Essentials can help “move the needle” on adoption. “We can share a goal, and I absolutely welcome the public interest groups’ passion for universal adoption,” he said. “But this would not be a place where regulation would be particularly helpful -- in fact I think it would be particularly harmful.” Comcast said it has signed up more than 150,000 homes through the program.
A hearing on Game Show Network v. Cablevision was delayed for a third time, to start at the FCC on April 2 at 10 a.m., and at 9:30 a.m. on any following days, said the administrative law judge overseeing the program carriage complaint case. The companies had sought the extra week (CD Feb 28 p24) “to resolve issues of witness accessibility,” and the Enforcement Bureau hadn’t objected, Chief FCC ALJ Richard Sippel wrote in a Feb. 28 order posted Monday in docket 12-122 (http://bit.ly/YM0hSV).
KTLA-TV, Los Angeles, is seeking authority for a transportable transmit-only earth station “for the purpose of providing news programming, sports and event coverage to KTLA, their customers and affiliated station,” it said in its application to the FCC International Bureau. “The earth station will transmit a compressed video signal."
Georgia needs new 911 rules and a new 911 authority geared toward next-generation 911, Georgia Senate Bill 144 proposes. It was introduced last month and a substitute text was passed favorably out of committee this week. It’s designed to change Georgia rules “so as to create the Georgia Emergency 9-1-1 Support Authority as a body corporate and politic, an instrumentality of the state, and a public corporation; to require the authority to establish an Emergency Information Program for emergency first responders; to provide for the purposes of the authority, which purposes shall include, but not be limited to, ensuring that effective 9-1-1 service is provided to all Georgians,” according to the latest 17-page text (http://1.usa.gov/Yur1u0). The bill proposes to streamline and better coordinate many elements of a changing 911 system which is facing new concerns of funding and technology. It endeavors to help in “assisting the implementation of updated technological resources and enhanced 9-1-1 services throughout the State of Georgia, facilitating the adoption of information services for the provision of lifesaving information to first responders, auditing the payment of certain 9-1-1 fees by prepaid wireless telephone service providers to increase compliance in collection of revenues and provide fairness to those service providers already paying such fees, supporting the public interest in providing cost-efficient collection of revenues, and disbursing funds to local governments for the operation and improvement of emergency telephone 9-1-1 services; to provide for duties of the authority; to make available on a state-wide basis services and resources to local governments for improvement in emergency 9-1-1 systems,” it said. The 911 support authority would have 13 members, including one director, it said. Six of the members “shall be a mayor, a chief of police, a fire chief, a county commissioner, a sheriff, and an emergency medical services director and who shall be appointed by the Governor” and another six “experienced in and currently involved in public safety, local government, or management of emergency services, three of whom shall be appointed by the President of the Senate, and three of whom shall be appointed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives,” it said. The law, if passed, would take effect Jan. 1.
ICANN should increase protections for trademark holders before it rolls out new generic top level domains, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) said in a letter last week, which the group released publicly on Tuesday (http://bit.ly/14pVCtu). Specifically, ICANN should create a Limited Preventative Registration (LPR) system, through which trademark holders could easily and inexpensively register their trademark across all domain registries, ANA Executive Vice President Dan Jaffe said. “The LPR is an eminently reasonable and implementable proposal,” and 60 companies -- including companies like Coca-Cola and Verizon and groups like the American Intellectual Property Law Association and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association -- have said an LPR system “would be the single-most significant protection for consumers and brand holders,” he said.
The U.S. Air Force gave Lockheed Martin an $284.4 million fixed-price contract for infrared surveillance satellites. Under the contract, Lockheed will procure long lead parts for the fifth and sixth geosynchronous Earth orbit satellites, GEO-5 and GEO-6, in the Space Based Infrared System missile warning constellation, Lockheed said in a release (http://bit.ly/XRcYj7). Lockheed previously received an Air Force contract to complete non-recurring engineering activities for GEO-5 and GEO-6, it said: “A final contract for full production under fixed-price terms will be awarded at a later date.”
Deputy NTIA Administrator Anna Gomez, ex-Sprint Nextel, is leaving the agency effective March 15 after four years there, NTIA said Tuesday. Gomez was widely viewed as the leading contender to replace Administrator Larry Strickling if he left the agency, possibly to become chairman of the FCC. Her departure is “a tremendous loss for NTIA,” Strickling said.