The Association of Public Safety Communications Officials is “discouraging” discussion of state opt-out of FirstNet because the procedures aren’t fully developed, Chief Counsel Jeff Cohen said at a National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors annual meeting in New Orleans. FirstNet’s success relies on states not opting out as well as the network containing costs and delivering the services, he said. Another challenge will be cost, said Charlotte Shared Services Director Chuck Robinson, who ran that city’s suspended public safety broadband network (CD Sept 5 p1). Cost for band 14 devices is “going to be a lot more -- and I can tell you that from personal experience,” he said. He estimated the cost is about double the cost of most current devices and that it will take many years for people to transition away from current technology. States may be able to save money through consolidation, said Ken Budka, senior director of advanced mission critical communications at Bell Labs-Alcatel Lucent. He emphasized “getting out of silos and looking into all of the assets that a state has."
Verizon is allocating access recovery charges differently among various states, and the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission wants an FCC ruling on whether that violates its rules against rate discrimination, the state said in a filing Thursday (http://xrl.us/bnrsga). The PUC said Verizon’s July tariff filing acknowledged it didn’t charge an ARC to residential customers in Virginia, New York or California. That would mean Verizon “must over recover the remainder” from other states “in order to make up the difference,” the PUC said. The PUC said it was “sympathetic” to Verizon’s arguments that imposing ARC rates on an exchange-by-exchange basis is “administratively burdensome.” But the state commission pointed to other alternatives, including implementing a “differentiated ARC rate” for single- or multi-line business customers, or implementing a residential ARC with a “preprogrammed credit” to automatically negate the ARC in exchanges where the total residential bill exceeds the FCC’s $30 limit.
Free Press thinks FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell is “flat out wrong” to back an end to a ban on combining a radio or TV station with a daily newspaper in the same market, as a way to possibly help minorities and women increase ownership of media, Policy Director Matt Wood said. “These protections are one of the only things preventing even more media concentration. As long as the FCC continues to sit on its hands instead of promoting diversity in broadcast ownership, the market will always be an uneven playing field for women and people of color. These are the voices that have been crowded out by runaway consolidation and by decades of discrimination in the capital markets.” McDowell on Thursday at a National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters conference reiterated his support for ending the cross-ownership ban, a policy change which Commissioner Ajit Pai also backed a day earlier (CD Sept 28 p18). Wood commented in an email after McDowell spoke.
A Wyoming telco, Silver Star, wants to correct FCC data on density, road miles and road crossings for its study area, it told the commission Thursday (http://xrl.us/bnrsfb). The data are used in the Wireline Bureau’s quantile regression analysis model used for limiting high-cost loop support.
More ITU-R studies aren’t needed for quantifying the evolution of International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) “through advances in technology and spectrally-efficient techniques,” and the technical conditions of use of bands identified for IMT to optimize use and boost efficiency, AT&T told an ITU-R working party in a submission to a meeting that starts Oct. 3. IMT is the international standard for advanced wireless communications. AT&T referred to a decision at the 2012 World Radiocommunication Conference, which called for their study in preparation for mobile service allocations in 2015 that likely would also be identified for IMT. AT&T referred to steps it and other operators have taken and the challenges they face.
FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn urged the commission to do something about high rates charged from “prison payphones” (CD Sept 26 p3), but the American Public Communications Council issued a statement Thursday to clarify that inmate phones are not the same as public pay phones. The rates, features and functionality are controlled by the inmate phone system provider under contract with the jail, the pay phone association said.
Seven lawmakers from Connecticut urged the FCC to protect their constituents’ access to free over-the-air television as it plans for a broadcast incentive auction. The letter, which was made public Thursday, was signed by Sens. Joe Lieberman, Independent, Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, and Democratic Reps. Joe Courtney, John Larson, Chris Murphy, Jim Himes, and Rosa DeLauro. “As you move forward, we believe that any plan the commission adopts should not negatively impact the ability of our constituents to continue to receive free local programming via free over the air service."
Comcast asked to be let out of local rate regulation in four Oregon local franchise areas. Comcast is subject to effective competition in those areas, because more than two competitors offer service to at least 50 percent of the homes in those areas, it said in a petition for special relief (http://xrl.us/bnro5c). Time Warner Cable asked to be let out of local rate regulation in 13 Ohio local franchise areas. Its petition for special relief (http://xrl.us/bnro4w) said the company is subject to effective competition in those communities because of its competitors’ or its own subscriber counts.
The U.S. government “unequivocally” opposes a European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association proposal to amend the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), Assistant Secretary of Commerce Lawrence Strickling said Monday during a speech in New York. ETNO’s proposal would be among those considered when delegates meet at the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), set to begin Dec. 3 in Dubai. The proposal would, among other things, establish a “sender-party-pays” principle for Internet data traffic compensation, which could require the sender of any Internet content to pay for its transmission (CD Sept 12 p5) . The U.S. opposes the proposal for two reasons, Strickling said, according to a transcript (http://xrl.us/bnroy8). “First, a treaty conference where only member states have a vote is the wrong place to debate a change of this magnitude,” he said. “Second, the proposal is a bad idea. It is a solution in search of a problem and it most likely would disadvantage the developing world which has the most to gain from continued growth and expansion of the Internet.” ETNO is introducing the proposal to help alleviate what its members feel is an imbalance between collected revenue and the amount of traffic being transmitted over European infrastructure, Chairman Luigi Gambardella told us in an interview earlier this month. “It may be the case that the regulatory framework the European incumbent carriers live under constrains their returns in a manner that reduces their incentive to invest -- I have not studied the matter and have no opinion on that,” Strickling said Monday. “But even if that is the case, that is no justification for upsetting the well-settled Internet interconnection regime with a proposal to raise revenues from other providers in the communications pathways as opposed to addressing the problem at its source.” Terry Kramer, the head of the U.S.’s WCIT delegation, has been similarly critical of the ETNO proposal, telling reporters Friday that while ETNO has been actively selling its proposal, the U.S. still believes it would be harmful (CD Sept 24 p3).
The Justice Foundation asked to be let out of closed captioning requirements. The nonprofit produces a weekly TV show called Faces of Abortion that is carried by Sky Angel and said it can’t afford the cost of providing closed captions (http://xrl.us/bnro3p). It said it would cost close to $6,000 to offer captions, a sum it has not been able to raise from donors. Furthermore, due to a decline in donations since 2008, the foundation has stopped producing new episodes of the show and is re-airing episodes that were previously exempted from closed captioning requirements, it said.