The FCC Media Bureau’s Video Division approved an application to transfer the license of WXVT Greenville, Miss., from Saga Broadcasting to H3 Communications, said a letter from Chief Barbara Kreisman. The letter also denied an objection to the application filed by Raymond Hamilton “that was not served on either applicant,” who complained that the transaction would give a family that owns two other local stations control of WXVT. “Hamilton provides no factual support for his allegation that ‘one company under two different names will have a monopoly on the television market here in the Mississippi Delta,'” the letter said (http://xrl.us/bodebu).
The Florida Public Service Commission ordered Neustar to give AT&T additional numbering resources for the Gainesville, Fla., region. Neustar had previously denied AT&T’s request for a number block of 10,000 numbers, saying the telco “did not meet the utilization criteria,” said the PSC’s Monday order (http://xrl.us/bodebs). AT&T appealed that decision to the PSC Jan. 22. The PSC’s analysis focused on how the technology surrounding numbering resources has shifted. “The new Months-to-Exhaust criteria creates a disadvantage for carriers with multiple switch rate centers because it is now based on rate centers, rather than switches,” it said. “One switch in a multiple-switch rate center may be near exhaust while the average Months-to-Exhaust for the rate center is above six months, thus preventing a carrier from obtaining additional numbering resources for the switch near exhaust.” The PSC expressed concern that “denial of additional numbering resources also poses a possible barrier to competition” and said that AT&T had demonstrated it had customer need for these numbering resources.
The Broadcasting Board of Governors must take additional steps to address overlap in international broadcasting, a GAO report found. Nearly two-thirds of the BBG language services overlap with another BBG service “by providing programs to the same countries in the same languages,” the report said (http://xrl.us/bodebw). Although some BBG officials said some overlap helps provide news from various sources in countries of strategic interest, they also acknowledged that overlap reduces funding available for broadcasts that may have more impact, it said. BBG’s annual service review “does not systematically consider the cost and impact of overlap,” GAO said. GAO recommended that BBG consider the cost of overlap and the activities of other international broadcasters in its annual language service reviews.
FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn is slated to discuss prison phone rates Friday morning at the Rainbow Push Coalition Wall Street Project Economic Summit in New York City (http://xrl.us/bodebo). The summit is at the Roosevelt Hotel.
Boeing urged the FCC to make changes to a report and order allowing the earth stations aboard aircraft (ESAA) service. The commission adopted the items last month to support the deployment of Internet access on airplanes (CD Dec 31 p8). For consistency in licensing and operation of ESAA systems, “all ESAA networks should require licenses from the commission both when operating in U.S. airspace and when operated aboard U.S.-flagged aircraft,” Boeing said in a petition (http://xrl.us/bodd89). The company recommended a clarification of rules requiring target satellite operators to provide the FCC with a certification that they will “include the aggregate power-density levels of the ESAA applicant in all future coordination agreements."
The FCC should make public and seek comment on the software the FCC plans to use to repack the TV band after the incentive spectrum auction, executives of TV broadcasters that own NBC affiliates said in meetings with FCC commissioners Robert McDowell and Jessica Rosenworcel and their aides, plus aides to the other three commissioners, an ex parte notice shows. During the meetings, they also talked about broadcast spectrum, media ownership rules and retransmission consent, the notice said (http://xrl.us/bodd8r). “As the DTV transition showed, predictive models are not always accurate and if errors result in loss of service, the public will be harmed,” and a goal of the law that authorized the auction -- to protect the broadcasters that remain on the air and their audiences -- will go unfulfilled, they said. On ownership, they cited the importance of joint and shared services agreements to broadcasters: “Restricting such arrangements would not increase diversity or localism, but would have the opposite effect by eliminating efficiencies that promote stronger public service.” During some of the meetings, FCC officials asked whether shared services agreements typically involve joint retransmission consent negotiations. The affiliates said yes, such arrangements were common, and “there is nothing improper about these arrangements and that the good faith negotiation rules already apply” to make sure such negotiations between broadcasters and pay-TV distributors are fair. Additionally, the retransmission consent rules are working “as Congress intended,” they said.
The Fiber to the Home Council Americas plans a conference in the Kansas City area May 29-30, it said. It’s hosting the event with Google Fiber, Gig.U, KC Digital Drive, NATOA, Broadband Communities and the NTCA, the council said Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bodd87), giving several new details about the planned meeting. The event will be called “From Gigabit Envy to Gigabit Deployed” and “will bring the [council’s] Community Toolkit to life, with working sessions that focus on every aspect of upgrading a network from building the business case and securing community support to navigating the local government and engaging the key stakeholders,” it said. A news release promised a keynote by Case Western Reserve University Chief Information Officer Lev Gonick, “who will discuss how gigabit connectivity has changed Case Western and the city of Cleveland."
California Public Utilities Commission staff discussed the commission’s petition to opt out of the FCC Lifeline accountability database, and gave FCC officials details of its state LifeLine database. Several CPUC staff members spoke with the Wireline Bureau’s Jonathan Lechter and explained “how it checks for duplicate claims, performs identification verifications, and exchanges data between the third party administrator and the carriers,” said a Monday ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bodd65). They talked for about an hour, the filing said.
Sony Network Entertainment added a higher-quality streaming option to the cloud-based Music Unlimited Service, it said Tuesday. By turning on the high-quality streaming option in Music Unlimited’s settings menu, songs will now be played back in 320 kbps AAC high fidelity audio, it said. The new feature went live on the PS3, Android smartphones and tablets, Sony’s Android Walkman and Web apps, and “will be added to other devices compatible with the Music Unlimited service later this year,” it said. The Music Unlimited service was running 48 kbps AAC before the update, Sony spokesman Greg Belloni told us. The service has “grown incredibly fast since last year including expansion to eight new countries,” launching on the PS Vita, “adding offline playback for Android devices, and remodeling the service’s subscription options,” he said. “The initial 48 kbps bitrate was established to balance playback performance and audio quality,” he said. But Sony “learned from our users that high quality audio was a very important feature and we've worked to bring it to the service as quickly as possible,” he said.
Arbitration is something to be avoided, six of the largest media companies told the FCC. That’s why the commission should reject Comcast’s arguments over a recent Media Bureau order that requires online video distributors (OVDs) to disclose upfront certain licensing agreements when an OVD seeks to license Comcast/NBCUniversal programming under the terms of the Benchmark Condition to the FCC’s order approving the merger of those two companies. Comcast “claims that this is only a clarification and it is not a question of ‘whether’ a contract will be disclosed, but ‘when,'” said CBS, News Corp., Sony Pictures, Time Warner, Viacom and Disney in a joint reply to Comcast’s opposition in the proceeding (http://xrl.us/bodd6p). “This argument misses the point that ‘when’ will determine ‘whether,'” because the costs, inconvenience and uncertainty inherent to arbitration make it something most parties want to avoid, they said. As it stands, the Media Bureau order -- which the companies asked the commission to review and block -- transformed the Benchmark Condition from a check on Comcast/NBCU’s power in dealing with new OVDs to a huge advantage, the media companies said. A reversal is necessary to protect the public interest because it “is the product of arbitrary and capricious decision-making, abrogates contracts without statutory authority, creates a regulatory taking under the Fifth Amendment and violates federal statutes,” they said.