California’s Senate Bill 740, introduced recently and read the first time this week, would change how the state addresses universal service. It proposes three funds within the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) -- the Broadband Infrastructure Grant Account, the Rural and Urban Regional Broadband Consortia Grant Account and the Broadband Infrastructure Revolving Loan Account. The state currently applies a surcharge to collect up to $100 million for the Broadband infrastructure Account, but this bill would bump up the amount significantly. “This bill would instead require that $200,000,000 be deposited into the Broadband Infrastructure [Grant] account,” it said (http://bit.ly/XjlUg6). “The bill would increase the amount of additional money the commission is authorized to collect to $225,000,000, with a sum total not to exceed $325,000,000,” an authorization the proposed law would extend till 2020. The Broadband Consortia Grant Account is to receive $10 million and the Revolving Loan Account $15 million. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Alex Padilla, D, would take effect immediately “in order to authorize the award of funds for the expansion of broadband deployment to unserved and underserved areas of California, to stimulate investments in infrastructure critical to increasing the state’s productivity, and to improve the quality of information available to all of the state’s citizens, as needed for the health and safety of those citizens,” it said. It added that “This bill would provide that, notwithstanding the requirement that moneys in the funds are to be used to compensate telephone corporations for their costs of providing universal service, an entity that is not a telephone corporation is eligible to apply to participate in the CASF program if the entity otherwise meets the eligibility requirements and complies with program requirements established by the commission.”
Fox Networks said its new channel Utilisima will be distributed on Comcast’s Multilatino tier in some Florida cities beginning March 4. Other distributors such as DirecTV, Dish, Time Warner Cable and Verizon have already agreed to carry the network, it said. The deal means it’s “available on Comcast systems in most top 25 Hispanic” markets, said Sean Riley, senior vice president-distribution for Fox Networks.
The Game Show Network and Cablevision proposed a new hearing schedule in their administrative law hearing. They proposed to exchange documents and exhibits by March 8 at noon, any written testimony by noon March 12 and objections to written testimony March 15. Additionally, each party will be allowed to submit supplemental expert testimony on March 19, and exchange responses and objections by March 20, ahead of hearings that would run April 2-12. They said a modest extension of the established trial date is needed to resolve “issues of witness availability."
James Hedlund, former president of the Association of Independent TV Stations (INTV), died Saturday at the age of 69. A memorial service is planned for 3 p.m. Friday at the United Methodist Church in Aiken, S.C. He’s survived by his wife Carolyn Lee Hedlund, a son, a sister and two granddaughters. An NAB spokesman said Hedlund’s “savvy leadership helped make INTV an impressive force both at both the FCC and on Capitol Hill.” For more information visit: http://bit.ly/XAxMLv.
CEA supports legislation to help protect innovators from patent trolls, President Gary Shapiro said Wednesday. The legislation, called the SHIELD Act (for Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes), is co-sponsored by Reps. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., and Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and would allow tech companies to recover litigation costs of lawsuits where the plaintiff’s legal claims had little chance of succeeding. “If we want to build American businesses and create jobs, we need to change the law that encourages baseless but disruptive legal threats for American businesses,” Shapiro said. “A successful defense of a patent lawsuit costs upwards of a million dollars, so many small businesses and startups cannot fight back or get funding to continue their businesses.” Existing law “encourages unethical patent trolls,” and the SHIELD Act would “get it changed,” he said.
The Iowa Legislature this week joined other states in introducing a bill to limit state regulation of Internet Protocol-based services. House Study Bill 170 proposes “exempting internet protocol-enabled service and voice over internet protocol service from direct or indirect regulation by any department, agency, board, or political subdivision of the state” of Iowa, according to the text (http://bit.ly/XbqApG). Like in other states, the Iowa bill makes certain exceptions for how states will deal with IP. “These provisions shall not be construed to modify or affect the application or enforcement of a law or rule that may apply generally to the conduct of business in Iowa, including but not limited to consumer protection and unfair or deceptive trade practice laws and rules,” its text said. “The bill further adds that these provisions shall also not be construed to affect, mandate, or prohibit the assessment of nondiscriminatory E911 fees or telecommunications relay service fees.” Wyoming’s IP-focused bill (CD Feb 1 p7) received signatures this week from both the Senate president and the House speaker after votes in both legislative bodies.
Level 3 and Bandwidth.com officials spoke with FCC Wireline Bureau officials and an aide to Chairman Julius Genachowski Monday about their opposition to the several pending petitions seeking direct access to numbering resources, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/WrNZPK). “If the Commission is inclined to act, only a broad, comprehensive NPRM will ensure that commission action does not provide special treatment to one party while discriminating against other industry members,” the filing said. The CLECs stated their opposition to the idea of using waivers as a way of conducting “live test cases,” they said. If the commission does want to conduct a trial, it must be transparent and limited in scope and duration, they said. On Friday, Vonage urged the Wireline Bureau to move forward with its waiver “in a manner that will foster the success of any efforts to deploy IP interconnection and capture the benefits of direct access to numbers” (http://bit.ly/13olIRs).
Common Cause doesn’t like the prospect of the FCC relying on an outside group’s study of the impact of a draft order’s media ownership rule changes on minorities and women. The agency Tuesday paused a proceeding on some cross-ownership deregulation pending the study by BIA/Kelsey paid for by the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council (CD Feb 27 p1). The FCC “should take the time necessary to conduct careful, independent research on how proposals to relax its rules on media consolidation would impact levels of broadcast ownership by women, African-Americans and other minorities,” Common Cause said in a news release Wednesday. Common Cause Special Adviser Michael Copps, a former FCC member who is an opponent of media mergers and acquisitions, is “troubled by the process” the commission is following, he said. BIA/Kelsey “has longstanding ties to the industry,” Copps said of the broadcast research firm. “The FCC itself should be driving the research process, setting the parameters and teeing up the questions needed to satisfy anti-discrimination requirements set by the courts and guarantee an independent and data-driven outcome.” But it’s MMTC, not broadcasters, that’s paying for the study, the council’s executive director, David Honig, told us of the concerns of groups opposing media M&A.
AT&T and Zeus Wireless are fighting over their interconnection agreement in Texas. “After conducting call studies, AT&T Texas discovered that Zeus was sending it large amounts of land line-originated traffic” through its interconnection agreement (ICA), against its terms, AT&T told the Texas Public Utility Commission in a post-hearing brief Tuesday (http://bit.ly/Y3DODA). It complained to the PUC last fall and notified Zeus, it said. AT&T wants an expedited proceeding to terminate the interconnection agreement. AT&T doesn’t care that Zeus might stop sending landline traffic now, given the longstanding interconnection agreement only provided for wireless-originated traffic: “That does not cure Zeus’ daily breach of the ICA over the last three years or its refusal to pay the compensation due on the land line-originated traffic already sent. AT&T Texas is still entitled to, and still intends to, terminate the ICA.” AT&T pointed to lost access charges and compared the situation to its battle with the now-liquidated Halo Wireless, against which it “spent much of the past two years prosecuting complaints” in multiple states as part of what it alleged was Halo’s “scheme, conducted in breach of the same ICA language at issue here. Halo -- like Zeus -- had interconnection agreements with AT&T ILECs that allowed it to send only wireless-originated traffic to AT&T.” Zeus, in its own post-brief hearing, argues that AT&T isn’t entitled to an expedited ruling and calls this “its own manufactured crisis” (http://bit.ly/VafVLZ). Zeus criticized the way AT&T conducted now “stale” traffic studies before informing Zeus of its concerns. “As a result of [AT&T’s] August 3, 2012, demand letter, Zeus made significant changes to its systems on August 22, 2012, to satisfy AT&T’s concerns and cure any alleged breach,” Zeus added. It said a more recent study showed the traffic issues were largely resolved. “AT&T Texas is not entitled to terminate its ICA and discontinue providing service to Zeus, because any alleged breaches have been timely eliminated,” Zeus said.
The FCC Wireless Bureau extended the deadline for filing comments on a further NPRM on the appropriate treatment of 121.5 MHz emergency locator transmitters under Part 87 of commission rules. Comments are now due April 1, replies May 2. The Airline Owners and Pilots Association, Experimental Aircraft Association, General Aviation Manufacturers Association, and National Air Transportation Association had asked for a 60-day extension of the comment deadline. “Due to a desire to conduct a prompt review of the record, we find that the requested 60-day extension is excessive, and instead we grant a 30-day extension of the comment deadline and a 45-day extension of the reply comment deadline,” the bureau said (http://fcc.us/15QRExA).