The National Telecommunications Cooperative Association and TDS Telecom are concerned about the proposed use of collected revenue to calculate intrastate access revenue baselines, in light of certain collection challenges faced by some rural rate-of-return regulated ILECs, they told FCC Wireline Bureau officials Wednesday, according to an ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bm9ax5). The groups recommended the commission provide RLECs with “reasonable and sufficient opportunity to true-up access revenue baselines in the future to reflect sums that may be collected later due to such circumstances."
New intercarrier compensation and USF reform measures adopted in last fall’s FCC order and further notice create too much uncertainty to support future investment in network upgrades, representatives of the Iowa Telecommunications Association told an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bm9axr). They provided examples of Iowa companies that have “delayed or halted” plans to upgrade broadband networks to their customers because of this uncertainty. They also urged the commission to develop a “reasonable” waiver process, and to take strong action on the ongoing call completion problems faced by rural customers.
Public safety solutions provider Televate launched its FirstNet planning services which support state, local and federal public safety agencies and their partners in preparation for the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network, the company said. The service would provide implementation strategies, including NTIA Request for Information response preparation, asset inventory and evaluation, system design, financial analysis, partnership evaluation, grant support and program management, the company said. It claimed the service was developed over the course of several metropolitan area broadband projects, including a public safety broadband network in the District of Columbia in 2004.
The FCC International Bureau accepted an application from BFI Licenses to operate an additional 8.1 meter Ku band antenna. BFI wants to operate the antenna “at an existing transmit receive site prior to grant of pending license modification application,” the bureau said. The bureau also accepted EchoStar’s request for renewing its special temporary authority “to operate its transmit/receive earth station to provide telemetry, tracking and control and feeder link communications for the EchoStar 6 satellite at 76.95 [degrees] west."
RealNetworks will create a $2 million “claims-based pool” for all U.S. consumers who unwittingly signed up for paid subscriptions, in a settlement with Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna, his office said Thursday. The office and the Better Business Bureau have received more than 500 complaints since 2005 about “odd charges” appearing on consumers’ credit cards for “monthly subscriptions for premium television, sports or game content that they never ordered,” owing to “pre-checked boxes” on RealNetworks’ free trials that, in “fine print,” automatically charge the consumer once the trial ends, the office said. “People were charged for months -- sometimes years -- paying hundreds of dollars for subscriptions they knew nothing about,” McKenna said. The office said some consumers told it they had trouble getting RealNetworks to stop the charges, were offered more free trials when they tried to cancel, or were only given partial refunds even when they canceled service before the trial ended. As part of the settlement in King County Superior Court (http://xrl.us/bm9asw), the company said it will stop using pre-checked boxes to obtain consent, stop offering “free-to-pay conversions” that don’t clearly disclose automatic charges for subscriptions, provide an online method of cancellation, remind consumers by email that they're in a free-to-pay conversion and give instructions on how to cancel, and inform consumers who have called to cancel a subscription of “additional subscriptions on their account.” The $2 million pool will cover the three-year period prior to December 2009 when the alleged practices were “most common,” McKenna’s office said: RealNetworks voluntarily has made “numerous changes” since then. RealNetworks will also pay $400,000 in the state’s legal fees as part of the settlement. Consumers who unwittingly signed up through pre-checked boxes will get a postcard informing them of their eligibility for the pool, and they can also visit www.realnetworksrestitution.com to submit a claim. President Thomas Nielsen said separately the company disagreed with McKenna’s court complaint -- filed concurrently with the settlement -- but “we acknowledge that some aspects of RealNetworks’ e-commerce practices were not what our customers expected of us,” and “were not up to the high standards we expect of ourselves.” The company stopped the faulted practices “years ago,” before McKenna’s office reached out, Nielsen said. The company has created a “customer bill of rights” and start a new site, www.realnetworksfacts.com, so customers, employees and stakeholders can “understand the situation and all that we've done, and are doing, to make things right for our customers,” Nielsen said.
The FCC’s Technical Advisory Board for First Responder Interoperability published a set of recommended minimum technical requirements for FirstNet, the national network for first responders created by spectrum legislation signed into law in February. Among its conclusions is that the use of LTE will be critical to the success of the network. “The adoption of LTE technology will fundamentally change the way first responders communicate,” the report said (http://xrl.us/bm893w). “Additionally, the establishment of FirstNet will fundamentally change the ways public safety networks are built, operated and maintained. Adoption of LTE technology, a technology embraced by commercial service providers worldwide will bring significant benefits to first responders. Adoption of LTE makes the [Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network] part of a multi-billion dollar commercial technology ecosystem, allowing first responders to take advantage of current and future advances in wireless communications technology, wireless devices, applications, networking, security and network infrastructure.” The report also emphasized the importance of allowing FirstNet subscribers to roam on commercial LTE and 2G/3G networks. It stressed the importance of testing. “The ability to provide quantitative data for FirstNet for each of these interconnections among network interfaces should be determined by a specific and thorough test regimen that ensures not only interoperability but also operability of the network,” the report said. “This of course doesn’t assume that every piece of equipment deployed in the network itself has been tested. Instead, it is expected that a representative model of equipment has been tested and passed in a controlled environment under predetermined test conditions, before other models of the same type can be deployed in the network.” Adoption of basic interoperability requirements is the responsibility of the FCC board. Much of the remaining work will be done by the still-to-be-named FirstNet Board, under the supervision of the NTIA. “Two-Way Voice radio has been the predominant form of communication employed by public safety to date. With the advent of wireless broadband, we are at the beginning of the next major epoch in mission critical communication for first responders,” the report said. “The future wireless broadband network will offer additional data, video and voice services to further improve the effectiveness and safety of first responders."
Spectrum sharing between government agencies and commercial users is “the new frontier that across government we're working on now,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said following Thursday’s FCC meeting. Genachowski was asked if he supports Commissioner Robert McDowell’s calls for an executive order requiring government agencies to come to the table to discuss giving up federal spectrum (CD May 18 p1). “The president has issued an executive order setting goals and targets on spectrum recovery and there’s a strong commitment across the administration to unleashing new spectrum, including recovering spectrum from federal users for commercial use,” Genachowski said. Former NTIA Administrator Larry Irving, a Democrat, said Wednesday the White House has not done enough to force government agencies to make clear what spectrum they could give up and at what costs (CD May 24 p1). Genachowski said his remarks this week at the Cable Show on usage-based data pricing are in keeping with FCC policy (CD May 23 p2). “We've been consistent on these topics for two years, including” the net neutrality order, he said. “New business models, new services, can be a good thing for consumers, for example, ensuring that lower-using consumers aren’t subsidizing larger users,” he said. “New services shouldn’t come at the expense of competition, of increases in speed or capacity at affordable rates for broadband Internet access.”
Cablevision and the Game Show Network will try to settle the independent channel’s FCC program carriage case against the operator “through confidential settlement negotiations,” the companies said. Negotiations were to have started May 21 and would end June 20, the litigants said in a joint notice on alternative dispute resolution (ADR) posted Wednesday to docket 12-122 (http://xrl.us/bm9an9). The Media Bureau order sending to an administrative law judge the indie’s case that the operator favored its own channels over GSN gave the sides until May 21 to pick ADR (CD May 21 p10). The companies will “jointly update” the chief judge and the Enforcement Bureau head on the status of talks on June 20, unless they reach a deal or stop talks, the filing said.
Boston opposed Comcast’s request for the FCC Media Bureau (CD May 10 p15) to reverse a decision to again let the city regulate the company’s cable rates. Boston also sought a waiver so that the commission won’t include RCN’s subscribers there as counting toward competing video provider figures, which must pass 15 percent of households to meet a commission effective-competition threshold. “For over a decade,” the agency prevented the city “from regulating Comcast’s cable service rates because it believed that RCN offered service in the City that limited Comcast’s ability to charge excessive rates,” Boston said in its opposition (http://xrl.us/bm9ak3). “Unfortunately, this proved to be incorrect, and it led to serious, negative consequences for Boston’s consumers.” Boston disagreed with Comcast that the agency must count both DBS and RCN subscriber figures. “Because the Commission has concluded [in April] that RCN does not ‘offer’ service” as Section 76.905(f) of the Code of Federal Regulations defines it, “it certainly may conclude that households subscribing to ’services offered’ by the company should also be excluded from the test,” the waiver petition said (http://xrl.us/bm9amw). Both of Wednesday’s documents are in docket 12-1.
The Cable Show illustrated the industry “IS moving to a usage-based pricing model” for broadband, wrote an analyst who attended the event in Boston that ended Wednesday. As Internet Protocol-based “solutions become more prevalent, there is no question” operators “are moving to a tiered (i.e. usage based) pricing model,” Marci Ryvicker of Wells Fargo told investors on Thursday. “At this point, smaller operators are already there -- we heard from several groups who charge not only per speed but also per byte.” There are “more obstacles to an ALL IP-based solution than we realized,” she said. “There may be enough speed, but there is not enough bandwidth, which could ’tax’ the viewer experience.” And “not everyone WANTS to consume video over IP,” and video sent that way means operators won’t get to insert local ads in programming as they do now on some traditional cable channels, Ryvicker said. “Consensus is that this is a 7-10 year process” toward IP streaming by operators, she continued. On the TV Everywhere initiative by programmers to stream to cable subscribers their channels, it’s “apparent that both content and distribution are embracing” it, the analyst said. “The key to this concept becoming a real catalyst lies with an enhanced measurement system that captures viewership regardless of distribution platform,” which is “getting closer,” she added. Retransmission consent negotiations between operators and TV stations, which some cable executives say is “the worst yet,” won’t likely change “anytime soon,” Ryvicker said, “as regulators remain relatively hands-off with the exception of shared service agreements, which are currently under review via an NPRM at the FCC."