The FCC’s Healthcare Connect Fund will devote up to $400 million annually to foster telemedicine, it said Monday (http://xrl.us/bn9tcg). The fund will begin accepting applications in late summer and subsequently is intended to “spur the development of broadband networks to support modern telemedicine, which will link urban medical centers to rural clinics or provide instant access to health records,” according to the commission. Its upfront payments are capped at $150 million annually. Potential applicants include hospitals, rural health clinics and centers, local health departments or agencies and medical schools. The fund will encourage communities to create “state and regional health care consortia to save costs and expand access to health care” and will give these successful applicants a 65 percent discount on “broadband services, equipment, connections to research and education networks, and [healthcare provider] HCP-constructed and owned facilities (if shown to be the most cost-effective connectivity option), while requiring a 35% HCP contribution,” the FCC said. The fund’s goals include increasing broadband access to rural healthcare providers and using lessons from the FCC’s pilot programs. It’s “expected to bring thousands of new providers across the country into the program, and allow thousands more to upgrade their connections,” the FCC said. The FCC is also set to launch in 2014 the three-year New Skilled Nursing Facilities Pilot Program, which will be giving out $50 million total.
The FCC Wireline Bureau denied two requests for review of Universal Service Administrative Co. decisions Monday (http://xrl.us/bn9sy9). The two school systems seeking review had failed to submit their requests to the commission or to USAC within the required 60 days, the order said. The bureau also dismissed a Texas school’s petition for reconsideration seeking review of a bureau order denying, as untimely, its initial requests for review.
Western Pacific dismissed its carriage complaints against Verizon’s FiOS in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, filings with the FCC show (http://xrl.us/bn9s72, http://xrl.us/bn9s74, http://xrl.us/bn9s76). Separately, Armstrong Utilities told the Media Bureau it should dismiss a complaint by Western Pacific that would force Armstrong to carry’s the broadcaster’s WACP Atlantic City, N.J., on the operator’s Oxford, Pa., systems (http://xrl.us/bn9s83). “The station fails to deliver a good quality signal to Armstrong’s principal headend,” Armstrong said. “Due to distance, low transmitter power, and the station’s signal propagation, absent extraordinary measures, the broadcaster will never deliver a good quality signal to Armstrong’s headend."
The Environmental Protection Agency and New Cingular Wireless reached an administrative settlement resolving alleged reporting, planning and permitting violations at 332 legacy AT&T Wireless (AWS) sites that New Cingular now owns. New Cingular agreed to pay a $750,000 civil penalty and commit $625,000 to environmental projects to resolve the violations, the EPA said Monday. The alleged violations, which occurred at AWS sites in 43 states, included “failure to comply with Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) reporting requirements related to the presence of sulfuric acid and diesel fuel at sites, inadequate or no Clean Water Act (CWA) Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure (SPCC) Plans, and Clean Air Act (CAA) minor source permitting requirements,” the EPA said. New Cingular will provide certification of EPCRA compliance at 1,356 sites, do CAA audits at 1,361 sites and CWA audits at 41 sites, the EPA said. New Cingular also agreed to pay penalties for all disclosed and corrected violations found through the audits, the EPA said (http://xrl.us/bn9tbj).
AT&T opposed comments from Sprint Nextel, Rural Telecommunications Group and Public Knowledge in the proceeding around a framework for an incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum. Some wireless providers urge the FCC to abandon a light tough approach “in favor of blatantly skewed spectrum policies that are designed to tip the competitive scales in their own favor,” said Federal Regulatory Affairs Vice President Joan Marsh. AT&T opposed a suggestion from Sprint that “most of its own spectrum should continue to be excluded from the spectrum screen, while much of the spectrum held by Verizon and AT&T should be double-counted,” she said in a blog post (http://xrl.us/bn9tce). Marsh also disagreed with other commenters that supported weighting sub-1 GHz low band spectrum more heavily in the spectrum screen or applying a separate screen to such spectrum. “There is no economic or policy basis for either of these schemes.” AT&T reiterated its stance that there is no reason for the FCC to abandon spectrum policies “proven to promote competition, investment and innovation when a few simple adjustments are all that is necessary to restore predictability and rationality to the commission’s framework,” she said.
Level 3 Communications and XO Communications said Monday they signed a peering agreement. The agreement ensures customers on each of the ISPs’ networks can continue to exchange data with customers on the other ISP’s network efficiently and cost-effectively, Level 3 said. Level 3 Chief Technology Officer Jack Waters said in a news release the company is “also working with providers of traffic-flow monitoring systems to make the measurement process straightforward and consistent across the industry.” The agreement contains provisions to add capacity and new interconnection locations between the networks as traffic demand increases, Level 3 said (http://xrl.us/bn9tag).
The FCC should reconsider its decision to approve without prior public notice a transaction that gave Sprint Nextel majority control of Clearwire, Clearwire investor Crest Financial said Friday in a filing. Sprint had bought Clearwire stock owned by Eagle River Investment in November, which gave it 50.45 percent ownership of Clearwire. Crest owns about 8 percent of Clearwire. “Sprint portrayed the Eagle River transaction to the Commission staff as a pro forma matter for which public notice and review above the staff level were unnecessary,” counsel for Crest Financial said in the petition. “Far from being a non-substantial matter, the Eagle River transaction gave Sprint both de jure and de facto control over Clearwire. Therefore, the public should have been given notice and afforded the opportunity to comment upon it.” The transaction was also a preliminary step in Sprint’s more recent bid to acquire full ownership of Clearwire, Crest’s counsel said (http://xrl.us/bn9s9b). Sprint reached a deal Dec. 17 to buy the remaining 49 percent of Clearwire for $2.2 billion (CD Dec 18 p7). The filing, released Monday, followed Crest’s announcement Friday that it plans to ask the FCC to block Sprint’s Clearwire purchase and a separate deal that gave Japanese telecom company SoftBank 70 percent ownership of Sprint. Both deals would undermine the value of Clearwire’s spectrum and could lower the value of spectrum the government plans to auction in the future, Crest said. The comment deadline on both deals is Jan. 28, the FCC said. Crest also filed a lawsuit in December in the Delaware Court of Chancery to stop the SoftBank deal, Reuters reported.
Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson arrived in Pyongyang, North Korea Monday. The “timing … is not great” for Schmidt to visit North Korea with Richardson, but they are “private citizens” so the State Department doesn’t have much else to say, agency spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told a press briefing Friday. North Korea launched a long-range missile Dec. 12. She declined to answer whether the pair postponed their North Korea trip from December at State’s behest: “They are well aware of our views on this.” Asked whether the trip might actually help secure the release of a U.S. citizen being held in North Korea, given Richardson’s history of securing such releases from the isolated country, Nuland said the U.S. was working through “our Swedish protecting power” to secure the U.S. citizen’s release. Google has only said Schmidt’s visit is “personal.” Jared Cohen, director of the Google Ideas think tank and a former State policy adviser, also went on the trip.
LIN Media said it changed the name of its RMM advanced advertising unit to LIN Digital. “Our new brand identity combines the size and legacy of LIN Media with our digital expertise, premium comScore Inc.-ranked network of publishers and proprietary technology,” said Jamie Elden, LIN Digital senior vice president-sales.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., prodded the FTC to investigate media leaks on the commission’s Google probe, according to a news report from social-media blog Mashable. Details about the agency’s investigation into Google’s practice of pulling content from other websites and ad restrictions were reported by several publications prior to the FTC’s settlement agreement last week. Issa sent a letter to FTC Inspector General Scott Wilson urging him to investigate how “nonpublic information” regarding the Google inquiry was “inappropriately shared with the media,” the report said. The FTC did not comment other than to say Wilson had received the letter from Issa.