The FCC should accept comments for 30 days on minority media ownership, Minority Media and Telecommunications Council President David Honig said Thursday night. He suggested a 20-day “lightning round of comments,” with 10 more days for replies. MMTC has backed allowing cross ownership of daily newspapers and TV stations within a market, as an FCC draft order would allow waivers for, and unlike other public-interest groups (CD Nov 30 p22) that continue lobbying the agency on the draft rules. The commission should “improve the record on the relationship between structural rules and minority ownership, on the definition of an eligible entity, on the many specific pending proposals aimed at advancing minority ownership, and on the research needed to ensure that decisions made in this area are well supported and wise,” Honig said in an email. Other nonprofits that oppose media consolidation and have said the commission is rushing to approve deregulation (CD Nov 29 p5) contend not examining the impact of the rules on “racial and gender diversity of station owners” would violate the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ requirements for new rules. It’s “arbitrary and capricious” if the final order “failed to provide for meaningful public notice when applicants sought waivers and failed to prevent stations from circumventing the local television limit by means of shared services agreements,” representatives of about 10 groups told Commissioner Ajit Pai, according to a filing Thursday in docket 09-182 from Common Cause, Communications Workers of America, Free Press, National Organization for Women and others (http://xrl.us/bn38zh).
New Mexico may cap its universal service fund surcharges. The USF surcharge rates have been “trending upwards” and are now at 3.45 percent, said New Mexico Public Regulation Commission Commissioner Jason Marks in a statement (http://xrl.us/bn38v6). The PRC launched a rulemaking Thursday with a 4-1 vote that will examine whether a cap on landline and wireless phone surcharges is necessary. The one dissenting commissioner, Chairman Patrick Lyons, advocated the PRC hold workshops with industry first. The proposed rulemaking places the cap at 3 percent. The USF’s formula would also change, shrinking the overall fund and reducing the need for higher surcharges, it said. The fund amounts to about $24 million a year currently, and its subsidies are paid to CenturyLink, Windstream and “smaller landline phone companies,” according to the PRC. “For all intents and purposes, the USF funding mechanism is a tax on consumers that turns into a subsidy for certain phone companies,” Marks said. He has fought its rise since 2005 and wants to limit its use to where it’s needed, like in rural areas, he said. The PRC will hold a public hearing on the proposed cap March 18.
Motorola Solutions asked for a waiver of FCC rules to allow the continued manufacture and import of 25 kHz-capable equipment for sale to entities that have received waivers of the FCC’s Jan. 1 VHF/UHF narrowbanding deadline. While manufacturers will continue to sell the inventory of devices in stock, “Motorola Solutions anticipates that new equipment will need to be manufactured after January 1, 2013, to ensure that the systems of waiver recipients remain in full working order until their migration to narrowbanding technology is complete,” the company said (http://xrl.us/bn38qx). “Denying the extension could result in service interruptions, unpredictable variations in coverage for waiver recipients, and other negative effects which jeopardize public safety.” Motorola Solutions said the radios will have the capacity to operate on both 25 kHz and narrowband channels. “Waiver recipients will ultimately realize the Commission’s goals of spectrum efficiency and capacity increase after carrying out their transition by utilizing the narrowbanding capability of the newly-manufactured radios,” Motorola Solutions said.
State regulators should promote a three-pronged approach to cybersecurity, wrote Terry Jarrett, chair of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners critical infrastructure committee. Utilities should first acquire a preventative “set of tools,” said the Missouri Public Service Commission commissioner in PSConnection, the periodic magazine of the PSC (http://xrl.us/bn38ps). “Such preventative strategies involve not only traditional security controls, like performing background checks on employees, but also use new technologies, much like antivirus software that you would install on your personal computer,” he said. The second step involves utilities collaborating with one another and sharing information on threats, and the third involves how utilities handle successful cyberattacks, Jarrett said: They “must be resilient in quickly responding to and effectively recovering from such an attack.” The Missouri PSC recently conducted a workshop where it asked 47 questions about the readiness of the state’s electric utilities, he said. His cover story details other cyber risks, important preventative steps, the implications of more advanced grid infrastructure and describes incidents that have already happened.
Correction: Verizon was the participant in a meeting of chief technology officers that called for changes to work on standardization (CD Nov 27 p8).
The Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled an executive business meeting to mark up the Location Privacy Protection Act (S-1223) at 10 a.m. Dec. 6 in Dirksen Room 226. The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., would require companies to obtain express consent from consumers before collecting or sharing their location data with third parties. The bill also contains a provision that would require companies that track more than 5,000 mobile devices to protect the data from disclosure, tell inquisitive consumers what data they track, and delete the data if requested.
The federal government continues to make progress on the administration’s goal of making available 500 MHz of federal and nonfederal spectrum by 2020 for wireless broadband, NTIA said in its third progress report on the ten-year plan. The report said the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee continues to make progress and the federal Policy and Plans Steering Group has met 18 times. “NTIA along with federal and non-federal stakeholders will continue to address the increasing radio spectrum needs of both federal and non-federal users as efficiently and effectively as possible,” the report said (http://xrl.us/bn34ef). “The focus for the next 12 months will be on engaging industry and government stakeholders to continue to evaluate the feasibility of achieving the transition of the 210 megahertz previously identified through innovative relocation and sharing approaches, including the 1755-1850 MHz band, and to facilitate the evaluation of expansion options for unlicensed devices in the ... 5 GHz bands."
Entropic declined comment on an analyst report that it could get $8 to $10 per unit for Comcast’s IP client set-top recently cleared by the FCC. Comcast’s new X13-H IP client set-top features Entropic’s MoCA along with system-on-chip (SoC) technology, D.A. Davidson analyst Aalok Shah said. Entropic branched into SoCs with the acquisition earlier this year of bankrupt Trident Microsystems’ set-top IC business. Entropic initially bundled SoCs with its MoCA chips, but expects to start sampLing a combined IC by late 2013 (CED Nov 27 p3). Humax is building the device, which lacks internal storage, but has an SD card slot, HDMI connector, Ethernet and USB ports, according to the FCC filing. The set-top was submitted Nov. 12 for testing, which was completed four days later, according to the filing.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., remains “deeply concerned” that the “unethical practices” of U.K. newspapers owned by News Corp. “may have violated U.S. laws and injured U.S. citizens,” he said in a news release Wednesday. He said he “looks forward” to reading Lord Justice Leveson’s report on U.K. media practices. News Corp. had no comment.
State and local governments have carried out “misguided tax policies” that “burden” wireless consumers, Free State Foundation Research Fellow Seth Cooper said in a Thursday blog post (http://xrl.us/bn34eu). Maryland should stop the “trend,” he said: “It should reduce the special burden it puts on wireless consumers through multiple taxes, fees, and surcharges. Ideally, Maryland tax policy should treat wireless services just like any other service, taxing them no higher than general sales tax rates and limiting any imposed fees to actual costs.” The free market think tank is based in Maryland. The state’s wireless consumers face 12.77 percent in taxes, fees and surcharges, “the eleventh highest wireless tax burden in the nation,” Cooper wrote, referring to wireless taxes, universal service payments, 911 fees and the state sales tax.