Engineers for the Integrity of Broadcast Auxiliary Services Spectrum requested additional time to file comments to Globalstar’s petition for rules that would allow it to use mobile satellite service spectrum for terrestrial use. Comments are due 30 days from the FCC public notice issued Nov. 30. EIBASS suggests giving entities until Jan. 16, two extra weeks for the comment deadline, it said in its filing (http://xrl.us/bn5vie). EIBASS also said Globalstar’s petition itself fails to show up online in docket RM-11685.
The FCC waived the VHF/UHF Jan. 1 narrowbanding deadline for the Spokane Regional Emergency Communications Systems. Policy and Licensing Division Deputy Chief Zenji Nakazawa signed the order, released by the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau Monday (http://xrl.us/bn5vf6). The Spokane group had requested a waiver previously and in September, asked for an extension to June 30, 2014, which the bureau granted. Spokane suffered delays and difficulties during inaccessible winter months, it said. The bureau found that “the underlying purpose of the narrowbanding rule -- promoting efficient spectrum use -- would not be served or would be frustrated by application to the present case” if it refused the waiver. The Iowa Department of Public Safety and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources also received waivers until Nov. 14, 2014, in a separate order released Monday (http://xrl.us/bn5vhf). The bureau said those parties had completed the majority of the narrowbanding and recognized its “need for additional time to purchase and install narrowband VRS [vehicular repeater system] equipment.”
The leaders of the congressional black and Hispanic caucuses asked FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski in a letter published this week not to proceed with the commission’s proposed media ownership rule changes. “Further consolidation would harm the entire media system, but have a disproportionate impact on diverse owners and the communities they serve,” the letter said. The letter was signed by Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., and Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chairman Charles Gonzalez, D-Texas, along with 42 other House members. They said the FCC’s recent minority ownership report paints “a bleak picture” and said that the already low numbers on ownership would be diminished by the proposed rule changes. The FCC had no comment. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., separately expressed his displeasure with the FCC’s proposal, in a letter sent this week to Chairman Julius Genachowski. New Jersey is the “poster child” for the importance of broadcast localism because the consolidation of media ownership, particularly by News Corp., has “not served New Jersey well,” said Lautenberg. “A lack of diversity in media ownership has contributed to the dearth of local coverage in New Jersey,” the letter said. Lautenberg urged the commission to carefully consider its proposal and how it could impact broadcast localism, diversity and consolidation in markets like New Jersey, he said.
Comments are due Dec. 21, replies Jan. 7, on an FCC public notice seeking comments on Phase II of the Mobility Fund. The public notice was released by the Wireless and Wireline bureaus and was published Tuesday in the Federal Register (http://xrl.us/bn5u5w).
The FCC Wireless Bureau Monday reinstated two renewal applications for Educational Broadband Service stations by Burlington College, even though the Vermont college failed to respond to a notice it needed to file an additional FCC form. “While the original dismissals were correct, we find that the public interest would best be served by reinstating the renewal applications and allowing the licensee to provide educational broadband services,” the bureau said (http://xrl.us/bn5qgf).
Reports of NBCUniversal plans to rebrand its G4 network to the Esquire Channel through a partnership with Hearst are “a deafening declaration of everything that is wrong with the cable industry’s regime of forced product bundling,” Parents TV Council President Tim Winter said. “Nowhere in a free marketplace must consumers pay for a product while it rebrands and turns itself into an entirely new product,” he said. Demand may exist to justify creating an Esquire network, “but the cable industry should not force millions of concerned parents to subsidize it,” he said. His comments were similar to those by Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt at an investor conference last week (CD Dec 4 p3). A spokesman for NBCUniversal declined to comment.
Cox said its smartphone and tablet app for video customers added access to 56 additional cable networks. Among the new channels are Encore, G4, the Hallmark Movie Channel, Tennis Channel and Oxygen, Cox said. The new channels brings the total number of channels accessible through the app to more than 90, Cox said.
The forthcoming media ownership order should find coordinated retransmission consent talks by separately owned TV stations within a market create an attributable ownership interest, two telecom groups that have sought changes to retrans rules told the FCC. NTCA and OPASTCO agreed with recent comments in docket 09-182 by the American Cable Association and pay-TV companies on the subject (CD Nov 23 p5) and back ACA’s proposed standard for retrans practices that create ownership attribution. The telco associations’ filing was posted to the docket Friday (http://xrl.us/bn5qc8).
Replies on the FCC notice of proposed rulemaking on accessible emergency information and video description (CD Nov 20 p1) are due Jan. 7, the Media Bureau said in an order released Friday. It said the deadline had been Dec. 28, but the CEA, NCTA and NAB asked for more time to prepare their replies, the order said (http://xrl.us/bn5qbg).
Dish Network opposed Sprint Nextel’s criticism of its proposal to use the lower 5 MHz of its uplink as a guard band to protect the H block. Sprint’s concerns are procedural, not technical, “and those procedural concerns are either easily remedied or wholly speculative and without factual foundation,” Dish said in an ex parte filing in docket 12-70 (http://xrl.us/bn5qch). Dish proposed giving up use of a portion of its uplink in exchange for an out-of-band-emissions limit of -30 dBm, instead of the FCC-proposed -40 dBm (CD Dec 5 p8). Dish also proposed an OOBE limit of 149 dBm for any future operators of the H block. Sprint offered no filter analysis to support “its unsubstantiated claim that Dish’s proposed OOBE limit of -49 dBm/MHz a 2005 MHz for H block base stations would increase network costs by hundreds of millions of dollars,” it said. Sprint further urged the commission to ensure that “there be no diminution or weakening of the established PCS G block interference protections” and that the H block is fully useful for wireless broadband communications, it said in an ex parte filing recounting a phone conversation with Chairman Julius Genachowski (http://xrl.us/bn5qfp). Sprint said it encouraged the commission to adopt AWS-4 service rules that will promote competitive terrestrial broadband service in the AWS-4 and H block spectrum.