Representatives of PCIA and its DAS Forum elaborated on the challenges of meeting National Historic Preservation Act and National Environmental Policy Act requirements in distributed antenna systems (DAS) and small cell rollout, during a meeting with FCC Wireless Bureau officials. Steps that would help include clarification of the 2004 Nationwide Programmatic Agreement for attachments within the utility rights-of-way a declaration that “DAS and small cell deployments are not federal undertakings and are thus excluded from Section 106 requirements under the Nationwide Programmatic Agreement,” the filing said. Representatives of AT&T and tower owner Crown Castle discussed the scope of DAS deployment, said an ex parte filing on the meeting (http://bit.ly/XKJVti): “AT&T has had a 30,000 percent increase in mobile data traffic over the last six years and ... the carrier plans to deploy over 10,000 new macro cell sites, over 1,000 DAS and over 40,000 small cells in order to provide high quality service to its customers."
TruePosition plans to test the indoor location accuracy of its Uplink-Time Difference of Arrival (U-TDOA) technology in Wilmington, Del., said Joel Jankowsky, a lawyer for the company, in a call with FCC Public Safety Bureau Chief David Turetsky, according to a filing at the commission (http://bit.ly/15sczqC). U-TDOA tracks a mobile phone’s location by a process of multilateration using sensitive receivers located in cell towers, TruePosition explains on its website (http://xrl.us/bohz44).
The FCC International and Wireless bureaus modified the ancillary terrestrial component licenses of Gamma, a Dish Network subsidiary, and Dish’s New DBSD Satellite Services, to authorize Dish to provide terrestrial service in the AWS-4 spectrum band. The commission approved Dish’s authorization to use the spectrum in an order last year (CD Dec 13 p8). The AWS-4 order proposed modifications to Gamma and New DBSD’s licenses “to add AWS-4 terrestrial operating authority, to remove ATC authority and to modify the MSS [mobile satellite service] duplex pairing,” the bureaus said in an order on modification. Gamma chose to operate on the new 2 GHz MSS A block (2000-2010 MHz and 2180-2190 MHz), and New DBSD will operate on the new B block (2010-2020 MHz and 2190-2200 MHz), it said. The modifications will be effective March 7, the order said.
Verizon Wireless said Friday it had completed three spectrum license deals with rural carriers it had agreed to late last year as part of the sale of its 700 MHz A-block and B-block licenses. The carrier completed the sale of a B-block license last week to Nortex Communications that covers a four-county area northwest of Dallas. A separate deal also finished last week gave Panhandle Telecommunication Systems a B-block license that covers 12 counties in northwest Texas, Verizon Wireless said. Colorado Valley Communications completed its purchase Jan. 16 of a partitioned A-block license that covers a five-county area in the Houston market (http://xrl.us/bog8oh).
Local governments should be able to serve residents by directly building their own telecom networks if they choose, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said Friday in a statement. “Proposals that would tie the hands of innovative communities that want to build their own high-speed networks will slow progress to our nation’s broadband goals and will hurt economic development and job creation in those areas,” he said. “I urge state and local leaders to focus instead on proposals that incentivize investment in broadband infrastructure, remove barriers to broadband build-out, and ensure widespread access to high-speed networks.” Legislators in Georgia have begun considering a bill this month (CD Feb 14 p12) that would limit municipalities’ ability to create their own networks, instituting a caveat that communities can only build such networks when unserved. Any community that wants to build its own network would have to apply to do so with the Georgia Public Service Commission and show the relevant area meets the unserved threshold. Genachowski gave no specific examples of states where such hand-tying proposals have been instituted or are being considered. FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn questioned the Georgia bill -- House Bill 282 -- directly last week. Genachowski did praise “municipal and public-private projects like those in Chattanooga, Tennessee and San Leandro, California” as “vital” to U.S. broadband strategy. He cited language from the National Broadband Plan defending local governments’ right to build their own networks as they deem appropriate. But investment “has and will come overwhelmingly from the private sector,” he added when crediting public-private partnerships.
CBS said its Q4 sales increased 2 percent from a year earlier to $3.7 billion. Ad sales were up due to higher political ad spending, it said late Thursday. Revenue from pay-TV distributor affiliate fees increased as well, with both its cable networks and TV stations receiving more money, it said. Additionally, the company is getting more money from its broadcast affiliates, but it did not say how much. Net earnings increased 6.2 percent from a year earlier to $393 million.
The FCC Media Bureau approved the transfer of KSNB-TV Superior, Neb., from Colins Broadcasting to Gray TV, a letter from Video Division Chief Barbara Kreisman said (http://bit.ly/14X75To). The application had been unopposed, the letter said. Though Gray operates another nearby station, KOLN Lincoln, the bureau issued a failing station waiver that allows the two stations to be owned by the same licensee, it said. “We believe the combined ownership of these stations will pose minimal harm to our interest in diversity and competition,” the letter said.
The FCC issued a $4,800 forfeiture order against North County Broadcasting Corp., the licensee of KFSD-AM in Escondido, Calif., for Emergency Alert System (EAS) equipment violations, an order from the Enforcement Bureau said (http://bit.ly/15iwnN9). Following an investigation, the station acknowledged its EAS equipment was not functioning properly between December 2009 and April 2010, the order said.
The FCC Media Bureau dismissed several dozen FM translator Form 349 “tech box” proposals in Auction 83, a public notice said (http://bit.ly/VW1Q5Z). The bureau already dismissed more than 3,000 such proposals because of applicants’ failure to properly fill out the form, it said. The latest proposals were dismissed because they violated application caps adopted for the auction, it said.
Groups opposed to broadcast/newspaper cross-ownership visited the FCC late last week. One foe of consolidation met with Chairman Julius Genachowski to tell him about possible ways a forthcoming order could deal with unfinished studies on barriers to entry for minorities, which some public interest groups have said should be completed before new rules are released. No vote on the media ownership rules that have been circulating since Nov. 14 or resolution of commissioner deadlock on how to proceed (CD Feb 1 p3) seems imminent, an agency official told us. The National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters now wants any quadrennial review order to “include a commitment to complete all studies needed to meet the Supreme Court’s Adarand strict scrutiny standard for implementation of race-conscious policies in the promotion of minority ownership in the broadcast industry,” NABOB said in a filing posted to docket 09-182 Friday (http://bit.ly/UoaYig). The order should say what studies the commission now is relying on and which ones need completing, NABOB Executive Director Jim Winston told Genachowski, Chief of Staff Zac Katz, Genachowski aide Elizabeth Andrion and Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake. Winston also said the agency should state it'll “allocate the necessary resources needed to complete the studies” and “spell out the timetable for completion.” The group told Andrion last month that ownership rules shouldn’t be relaxed without “developing a record” on the impact on minorities and women, since doing so wouldn’t comply with the appeals court ruling that sent the last quadrennial review back to the agency (http://bit.ly/XTEcDB). NABOB, which still opposes deregulation, meant the new filing to show how if the FCC proceeded anyway it could address some of the group’s concerns, Winston told us. A bureau representative had no comment for this report. Other groups also opposed to media consolidation still want the agency to study the impact of deals on women and people of color before acting on deregulation, they told Andrion, Katz, Lake, FCC General Counsel Sean Lev and Office of Communications Business Opportunities Director Thomas Reed. “The situation” of media ownership among those demographics “is in crisis and we cannot afford to lose any others,” said an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/12RPD4m). “The Commission has evidence on the record that would, at a minimum, enable it to conclude that it should keep the existing ownership rules pursuant to the legal standard in the quadrennial review provision if it cannot obtain the diversity of ownership data it needs” now, said officials at groups that belong of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. They included the American Civil Liberties Union, Communications Workers of America, National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC), National Organization for Women, National Urban League and United Church of Christ. Some of those same groups said bureau officials agreed the bureau will give public notice of waivers for cross-ownership of a TV station and daily newspaper in the same market, as occurred for Tribune. Lake told the nonprofits that the agency wants “to retain the general prohibition on newspaper-TV cross ownership and merely sought to provide for greater clarity and certainty” with “a rebuttable presumption in favor of waivers in top twenty markets where: (1) the requesting party is not in the top four broadcasters within that market; and (2) at least eight separate voices will remain after the waiver is granted,” said a filing from Georgetown University’s Institute for Public Representation (http://bit.ly/12MsmMB). Bureau staff said they don’t “expect to base waiver decisions on program promises, but rather to assess the impact of the proposed merger on the local media ecosystem,” the filing recounted. The church, Free Press and NHMC proposed the agency require a station that got a temporary cross-ownership waiver to file a license renewal application at least four months before the waiver expired. They also sought “escalating forfeitures in situations where stations with expired waivers failed to come into compliance.”