Dell Telephone Cooperative will have to provide more information if it wants a waiver of several USF rules, the FCC Wireline Bureau said in a letter Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bn2tvg). Bureau Chief Julie Veach posed 11 questions requesting additional details on employee salaries, marketable securities, life insurance and patronage refunds. “The Bureau needs to better understand Dell’s operations” to determine whether “good cause” exists to grant the waivers, it said. The West Texas co-op seeks a waiver of the $250 per line per month cap, the rule limiting reimbursable capital and operating expenses applied to high-cost loop support (HCLS), and rules limiting recovery of corporate operations expenses applied to HCLS and interstate common line support (CD July 12 p7).
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski circulated a notice around enabling commercial small cell use of the 3.5 GHz band. The proposal promotes small cells and spectrum sharing aimed at enabling more efficient use of radio spectrum, Genachowski said in a statement. It “will enable new commercial use of 100 MHz of spectrum in the 3.5 GHz, while protecting government missions that are vital to our national interest,” he said. This proposed approach “broadly reflects recommendations made in a recent report by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology,” (CD July 23 p1) he added.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski circulated separate orders on auctioning the H block and allowing AWS-4 spectrum to be used for a terrestrial service with Dish Network as the likely licensee, an agency spokesman said Tuesday. Genachowski shared proposals with his colleagues “that will unleash up to 50 MHz of spectrum for mobile broadband, including LTE,” the FCC spokesman said. Genachowski circulated an order to enable terrestrial use for AWS-4 spectrum which “moves forward with implementation of Congressional direction to auction the H block, slated for 2013,” the spokesman said. The H-block auction “will yield the first significant auction revenues for FirstNet and deficit reduction,” he said. If approved, the items will promote competition, investment and innovation, and advance FCC efforts to unleash spectrum for mobile broadband “to help meet skyrocketing consumer demand, while unlocking billions of dollars of value to the public,” the representative said.
WatchESPN is available on Xbox to Verizon FiOS TV customers. HD-quality live programming and events from ESPN, ESPN2 and other ESPN channels are available to Xbox LIVE Gold members, Verizon said in a news release. Customers can access popular shows like SportsCenter and NFL Live, and use features like “My Sports,” which allows viewers to find games and content, the telco said.
The National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates on Tuesday asked the FCC to reject AT&T’s August “checklist” of actions the commission could take to encourage the transition to an all-Internet Protocol ecosystem. The telco’s proposal preempts states’ oversight of carrier-of-last-resort obligations, and “would do an end run around state public utility commissions’ oversight” of when and where ILECs can be relieved of the obligation to provide basic service, NASUCA said. “AT&T has failed to demonstrate the urgency of migrating to an all-IP network and has also failed to identify, let alone address, the harms to consumers and to competition that would ensue if the FCC were to adopt AT&T’s proposal.” The proposal that the FCC reform and streamline Section 214 discontinuance requirements would mean that AT&T and other ILECs can “unilaterally abandon service on any segment of their networks,” abandoning customers who do not meet their short-term revenue objectives, “without any consideration of the disruption this may cause ... in violation of state and federal policy,” NASUCA said. No state could override what would amount to “voluntary” eligible telecom carrier status by imposing “inconsistent COLR obligations,” the association said (http://xrl.us/bn2pit).
News Corp. bought a 49 percent equity stake in the Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network (YES). The network, which covers New York Yankees baseball, Brooklyn Nets basketball and other sports-related programming, also entered a media rights agreement “that will keep Yankees baseball on the YES Network through 2042,” News Corp. said in a Tuesday news release. The rights agreement will need the approval of Major League Baseball, and the investment is expected to be completed this year, the company said.
The FCC’s spectrum licensing approach “generally encourages efficient spectrum use,” said a recent report by the GAO. Interviews with industry stakeholders revealed that the commission’s spectrum policies promote efficiency, and availability of commercial spectrum, GAO said in a letter sent Tuesday to House and Senate Commerce Committee leaders (http://xrl.us/bn2puq). The report was required by the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act. It was sent to Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas., House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Ranking Member Henry Waxman, D-Calif. The report added that spectrum is “generally available” in the 11, 18 and 23 GHz bands.
LightSquared urged the FCC to grant the company’s request for it to no longer be bound by the buildout milestones adopted when Harbinger Capital Partners purchased SkyTerra. Granting the request would serve the public interest, LightSquared said in reply comments (http://xrl.us/bn2pu8) to an FCC public notice on the request (CD Oct 12 p8). LightSquared said the FCC doesn’t have to address its public notice proposing to revoke its ancillary terrestrial component authority. LightSquared proposed a comprehensive and constructive solution “that would resolve the GPS compatibility questions underlying that public notice while still allowing LightSquared to implement its network.” The National Society of Professional Surveyors urged the FCC to first address the proposals in the public notice. By further delaying addressing the questions in that public notice, the commission “is leaving the GPS user community in uncertainty and limbo while waiting for the FCC to make a final rule on the outstanding LightSquared issues,” NSPS said (http://xrl.us/bn2pu6).
NTCA is the latest organization to petition for a rulemaking concerning the impending transition from TDM to an all-Internet Protocol infrastructure. In an FCC petition for rulemaking (http://xrl.us/bn2pu2), the association urged the commission to take a “balanced approach” of “smart regulation” that retains parts of the existing regulatory framework that protect consumers, while jettisoning regulations that have limited applicability in an IP world. The commission should develop a list of existing regulations that may have limited applicability in an IP world, and seek comment on which of those regulations should be eliminated, retained or modified, NTCA said. Regulations to be eliminated could include legacy discontinuance requirements and equal access dialing parity rules, said Michael Romano, senior vice president-policy. The association said this proposal would lead to a “comprehensive, but granular ‘refreshing'” of the regulatory framework that would promote regulatory certainty and provide peace of mind to lenders and investors. While its review is under way, the commission should implement an incentive-based mechanism that lets carriers recover costs for the exchange of communications traffic where they agree to make available IP-based interconnection, NTCA said. Incentivized IP-to-IP interconnection would promote investment in IP networks, Romano told us. NTCA asked the commission to confirm that “all interconnection for the exchange of traffic subject to sections 251 and 252 is governed by the [Telecom] Act, regardless of the technology that might happen to be used to achieve such interconnection.” Romano acknowledged a “big debate” as to whether traffic exchanged on an IP basis between carriers is subject to the interconnection duties. After the FCC said last year that VoIP and other telecom traffic is subject to the intercarrier compensation requirements of Sections 251 and 252 -- and used that rationale to take jurisdiction to change ICC rates on those systems -- then “it must follow” that interconnection for the exchange of such traffic is also subject to the Act, Romano said.
Some conservatives expressed anger Tuesday on a quickly withdrawn brief on copyright by a Republican Study Committee policy staffer, Derek Khanna, that called for comprehensive copyright reform (CD Nov 20 p8). Republicans on the conservative House caucus and elsewhere have historically supported copyright protections, “and not because of big money special interests, because most of Hollywood’s and the recording industry’s political money flows in the other direction,” said Tom Giovanetti, president of the Institute for Policy Innovation, in an email blast. “You can’t have contracts, or licensing, if you don’t have clear and enforceable property rights,” and not just “new” business models, but all of them rely on property rights, he said. Khanna’s report is “jaw dropping” for its use of “much of the rhetoric … of the CopyLeft movement,” Giovanetti said. IPI was assured by the committee that the paper reflected “the views of a single” staffer and it was also written “in a very casual style that is not typical of finished and vetted policy papers,” he said. Netcompetition.org Chairman Scott Cleland said in an email blast that Congress and the Supreme Court from the nation’s founding have not misinterpreted the founding fathers’ views of property rights, as suggested in the brief. Khanna used “buzzword blackmail” pioneered by copyleft pioneer Larry Lessig by characterizing the “exclusive rights” of copyright as monopoly rather than property, Cleland said.