Charter Communications and Cox Communications each face a broadcaster complaint to the FCC alleging carriage-related violations, in filings from June posted Friday in docket 12-1. Charter stopped carrying WMYD Detroit last month “without providing any notice to Granite,” that company said (http://xrl.us/bnf9bd). “Charter also apparently failed to provide reasonable notice to its subscribers as required by Section 76.1603 of the Commission’s Rules.” Cox broke agency rules by not carrying KSQA Topeka, Kan., as Channel 12 on its system there, the station’s over-the-air channel slot, the broadcaster said (http://xrl.us/bnf9df). “The purported legal basis for the denial of over-the-air carriage is a deceptively edited version of the Commission’s Declaratory Order” in 2008 on carriage of DTV signals, the filing said. Spokespeople for the cable operators had no comment.
West River Cable said it will have to “discontinue operation of the four cable systems as soon as possible” if it doesn’t get a waiver of FCC emergency alert system rules requiring all EAS participants to have been able to get and receive common alerting protocol (CAP) warnings by June 30. The company “cannot afford to acquire and install the new equipment required to receive and forward CAP-formatted” alerts on those systems, the subsidiary of a rural phone co-op said in a filing posted Friday in docket 04-296 and dated two days before the deadline (http://xrl.us/bnf889). The systems in Faith, McLaughlin, Timber Lake, S.D., and Selfridge, N.D., have several hundred subscribers total, are outside the co-op’s local exchange service area and are “very small systems that have long been unprofitable,” the filing said. Other cable operators and broadcasters have also sought CAP waivers (CD July 6 p14).
The digital divide across Puerto Rico is the most acute of any in the U.S., representatives of the Puerto Rican government told FCC Wireline Bureau officials June 27, according to an ex parte filing posted Monday (http://xrl.us/bnf8z6). Fourteen percent of households are unserved by any fixed broadband networks, 43 percent have no access to broadband at speeds higher than 6 Mbps, and 443,000 children have no broadband at home, they said. “Unless the FCC incorporates into the models currently being developed to determine Connect America Fund Phase II funding levels factors such as expected low take rates and the ensuing low expected revenue from broadband investments, and backhaul, energy and other high-costs affecting the economics of broadband across the island, the people of Puerto Rico will not receive a fair share of these funds,” they said. Recent FCC decisions regarding disbursement of Connect America Fund Phase I funding “do not set a good precedent” in this regard; of the $300 million one-time capital injection for broadband expansion, nothing was allocated to Puerto Rico, they said.
Time Warner Cable began carrying STAR TV’s India PLUS, Life OK, India GOLD and ABP News channels, TWC said. The channels will be available in New York and New Jersey, including New York City, Mount Vernon and Staten Island, N.Y., and Bergen County, N.J., it said.
The FCC Media Bureau was right to reject Allbritton Communications’ “frivolous claims of bad faith directed at rural cable operator Shentel,” an American Cable Association member, ACA CEO Matt Polka said late Friday of the bureau’s order (CD July 9 p13). “The absolutely wrong lesson to draw from Allbritton’s failed regulatory gambit at the FCC is that the 20-year-old retransmission consent regime is serving the public interest,” Polka said (http://xrl.us/bnf843). Broadcasters say retrans rules work. An executive at Allbritton had no comment. Shentel is “pleased” with the order, Chief Operating Officer Earle MacKenzie told us Monday. “The steps we took to inform our customers, along with our offer to refund the basic service for any customer cancelling in January 2012 due to WJLA, were outlined in our filing and the order,” he said of Allbritton’s allegations that the cable operator didn’t give sufficient notice to subscribers that the Washington TV station might be dropped. “Based on our customers’ response, it appears they thought the notice was adequate."
The FCC is proposing to fine Geneva Walker, licensee of WMAF(AM) in Madison, Fla., $8,000 for violating Section 11.359(a) of the FCC rules, the Enforcement Bureau said in a notice (http://xrl.us/bnf8ux). It said Walker failed to “maintain operational Emergency Alert System (EAS) equipment and ... to keep records indicating why EAS tests were not received,” the notice said.
Mobile payments have become more popular, said new survey results released by IDC Financial Insights (http://xrl.us/bnf7wu). Thirty-three percent of respondents used mobile payments, of which 56 percent used PayPal mobile services and about 40 percent used Amazon or iTunes, it said. The survey also found that 50 percent of respondents used online bill pay sites and that physical goods were the most popular items purchased through mobile payment. IDC surveyed U.S. consumers in May.
The FCC issued Corr Wireless Communications a $20,000 forfeiture order for failing to include at least two hearing-aid compatible handset models in the digital wireless handsets it offers, said an Enforcement Bureau order (http://xrl.us/bnf8mz). It said such a failure violates Section 20.19(d)(2) of FCC rules. Corr didn’t respond by our deadline to a request for comment.
The launch of the Proton rocket with the SES-5 satellite was rescheduled for Tuesday from Kazakhstan. The satellite was designed by Space Systems/Loral and will be placed at 5 degrees east, SES said. It carries 36 Ku-band transponders and 24 C-band transponders and it “will cover Europe, Africa and the Middle East.”
New Jersey will get a chapter of the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA), the organization said Monday. The new chapter will be known as the Jersey Access Group and is the national organization’s 13th regional chapter. It will be formally welcomed into NATOA at the organization’s September conference in New Orleans. “This growth not only reinforces the importance of NATOA to local governments but bolsters our unified voice in our legislative and regulatory efforts,” said NATOA Executive Director Steve Traylor in prepared remarks.