The House Rules Committee scheduled a meeting to consider the FISA Amendments Act (HR-5949) on Monday at 5 p.m. in Room H-313 of the U.S. Capitol. The bill aims to reauthorize provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for another five years.
The FCC should take swift and decisive enforcement action against video programming distributors (VPDs) that don’t comply with new Internet Protocol-video captioning rules that take effect Sept. 30, Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and a group of other advocates for the deaf wrote the agency this week. “There is no excuse for anything less than full and timely compliance with the Commission’s rendering requirements,” the letter said (http://xrl.us/bnoohe). “VPDs have been afforded a lengthy period of time to comply with the basic rendering requirement that lies at the heart of the Commission’s IP captioning rules.” The advocates also said the commission should not further delay a Jan. 1, 2014, deadline for VPDs to comply with other technical elements of the IP captioning rules. The commission granted a Digital Media Association petition to delay compliance with those requirements last month, but denied another that would have similarly pushed back the deadline for compliance with the rendering requirements (CD Aug 20 p4).
The FCC will soon launch a rulemaking proceeding on technical and services rules for the 700 MHz band in an effort to get rid of rules that are “out of date” as a result of the February spectrum law, David Furth, deputy chief of the FCC Public Safety Bureau, told the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council Thursday. The FCC will also address technical interference issues, he said. The rules will ensure that the proposed FirstNet can “co-exist” with other 700 MHZ licensees without interference problems, he said. Furth said the FCC has seen substantial progress on getting more licensees into compliance with a requirement that public safety and industrial/business land mobile radio systems in certain UHF and VHF frequencies migrate from 25 kHz channel bandwidth to 12.5 kHz or narrower technology by Jan. 1. Some 24 percent of systems have completed the transition, while 43 percent are “in transition” and 33 percent remain “wideband only” based on a review of FCC records, he said. “We certainly hope and expect that many of those licensees will be changing their status by the deadline,” Furth said. He warned that the FCC will pursue enforcement actions against systems that don’t comply with the rules or receive a waiver. More guidance will follow from the FCC over the next month or so, he said. Furth said the FCC is very focused on communications problems following the recent derecho wind storm, particularly 911 outages. “We're looking at this as a really important issue, more broadly, in terms of making sure we can derive lessons from this experience to help to make 911 systems more resilient and the carriers’ networks that deliver 911 calls to those systems more resilient so that we don’t have these types of outage problems in the future,” he said.
Comments are due Monday on an application by Paul Bunyan Rural Telephone Cooperative to be certified as an open video system in Big Falls, Minn., a public notice said (http://xrl.us/bnooeo).
Vermont will champion its new broadband initiative in a “Targeting Community Tour” meeting Thursday night in the town of Pittsfield, according to Broadband VT (http://xrl.us/bnoofp). Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) and the Vermont Telecommunications Authority have announced millions of dollars in new grants committed to bringing last-mile broadband to 544 areas of Vermont. “We have a goal of universal broadband by the end of 2013,” Shumlin said in a statement (http://xrl.us/bnoob7). “The total grant and docket commitments of $9.7 million over the past 90 days will bring Connect VT within striking distance of achieving that goal with our telecommunications providers.” VTA announced $330,200 will go to FairPoint Communications for service in three communities (http://xrl.us/bnoodt) and $1,347,840 will go to VTel Wireless for another 19 (http://xrl.us/bnoodr). The authority will provide about $3.1 million in grants, and FairPoint will add about $6.6 million, the governor said. Vermont hopes to expand broadband to 2,850 locations by the time the initiative ends in December 2013, Shumlin said. “The Target Community Tour is a series of meetings around the state, co-hosted by legislators, community libraries and town administrators, to share information with residents regarding the list of identified unserved and underserved locations, a means to identify any other remaining locations and the status of initiatives that will complete these connections by the end of 2013,” Broadband VT said in announcing the Thursday meeting.
Moody’s gave a B2 rating to FoxCo Acquisition Sub’s proposed debt. The company, a Local TV LLC subsidiary that was formed in 2008 to acquire some Fox-owned TV stations, plans to issue a $715 million first lien term loan and a $20 million first lien senior secured revolver, Moody’s said. “Beyond 2012, FoxCo will benefit from meaningful increases in retransmission revenues and related cash flow partially offsetting the absence of significant political revenues in 2013,” Moody’s said. “Lack of national scale, a station portfolio with mostly Fox affiliates and the potential for additional dividends constrain ratings,” it said.
DirecTV partnered with Brainstorm Media to deliver a series of what they called socially and culturally relevant documentaries on its Audience Network. The 12-part series will kick off Oct. 20, with the premiere of Battle for Brooklyn, followed by Big Boys Gone Bananas on Dec. 1, DirecTV said in a news release Thursday (http://xrl.us/bnoofa). The documentaries also will be available on DirecTV On Demand, DirecTV Everywhere, on home video and via electronic sell-through, it said.
Gannett said it acquired Mobestream Media, a company that makes the Key Ring smartphone app for managing retail loyalty cards and mobile coupons. The company will operate as a standalone business within Gannett Digital Marketing Services, Gannett said. Terms weren’t disclosed.
Brightcove said customers of its Video Cloud product can now use Google’s Widevine content security system. “Widevine support not only helps protect valuable content with studio-grade DRM [digital rights management software], it also helps ensure the integrity of the relationship between publishers and content owners with a vast reach across connected devices and platforms,” said Chris Johnston, vice president of digital media solutions at Brightcove.
Google Fiber added more networks to its channel lineup this week. The pay-TV provider in Kansas City, Kan., agreed to carry the NFL Network and NFL RedZone channel, the NFL said. Terms weren’t disclosed. Google Fiber also agreed to carry BlueHighways TV, the network said without disclosing the terms.