The Broadband Technology Opportunities Program partially suspended seven public safety grants, and plans to ask the Office of Management and Budget for an extension for the project deadlines, the NTIA said Friday. NTIA sent letters to the grantees Friday notifying them of the suspension. A February law to establish a nationwide public safety broadband network based on a single nationwide architecture “dramatically changes the assumptions on which we awarded the public safety grants in 2010,” reads one of the letters (http://xrl.us/bm69nj). NTIA will reassess how to proceed with the projects, it said. The agency said it wants to keep the grant money in the communities that received the grants, to be used for facilities and equipment that will be incorporated into the first responder network authority single nationwide public safety network. The suspended grants were for the Adams County (Colo.) Communications Center; the City of Charlotte, N.C.; the Executive Office of the State of Mississippi; the Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications System Authority; Motorola Solutions in Illinois; the New Jersey Department of Treasury and the New Mexico Department of Information Technology.
The FCC Wireline Bureau granted a Section 214 transfer of control of AboveNet to Zayo Group, it said in a public notice Friday (http://xrl.us/bm69k2).
Suddenlink Q1 sales rose 13 percent from a year earlier to $505 million largely on its acquisition of NPG Cable in April 2011. Including the acquisition last quarter and in the year-ago period, sales would have increased 6.2 percent, while the net loss would have widened 73 percent to $26.5 million. Average revenue per user increased 10 percent from a year earlier to $134.80, it said. Suddenlink lost about 2,000 basic video customers during the quarter on a net basis from Q4 and added 31,200 broadband customers and 14,600 phone customers. The company had as of March 31 1.25 million basic video customers, 982,600 broadband subscribers and 453,000 phone customers.
U.S. Cellular would consider acquiring A- and B-Block licenses from Verizon Wireless as part of a divestiture, it told FCC Wireless Bureau officials last week, said an ex parte filing posted Friday (http://xrl.us/bm69ji). Verizon’s proposed sale of A-Block licenses “holds the potential for positive impact on the Band 12 ecosystem,” U.S. Cellular said. An acquisition of licenses by AT&T, along with a commitment to build a Band Class 12 network, would have a positive impact on the competitive handset ecosystem, as would a decision by Verizon to build out those same A-Block licenses, the carrier said. On Thursday, Verizon Wireless hand-delivered to the FCC all the documents it had given the Department of Justice regarding its second request in the purchase of AWS licenses from SpectrumCo and Cox, according to an ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bm69i4). FCC staff had requested the supplemental production, and agreed to temporarily designate the documents “highly confidential” until Verizon Wireless downgrades some of the documents to “confidential” or “public,” pending the results of the carrier’s own document review. Public Knowledge challenged the “highly confidential” designation of certain portions of the Joint Operating Entity agreement between Verizon Wireless and SpectrumCo, arguing the governance structure of the JOE is “critical to assessing the public interest impacts of the proposed transactions; understanding the connections between the Applicants’ spectrum, marketing, resale, and JOE agreements; and determining whether the JOE will establish the basis for a future cartel between its members” (http://xrl.us/bm69i6).
Comcast and TiVo’s rollout of full Comcast service for subscribers who own TiVo’s Premiere box in the San Francisco Bay Area is complete and TiVo said it expects subscribers in additional markets will be able to access VOD on their DVRs soon. “This deployment demonstrates that some pay TV providers are taking steps to work cooperatively with consumer electronics manufacturers in an effort to deliver exciting new solutions to their mutual customers,” Matthew Zinn, TiVo’s general counsel, wrote in a letter to the FCC (http://xrl.us/bm69h3). “We hope other pay TV providers follow Comcast’s lead to deliver greater device choices to the benefit of consumers,” he said. Along those lines, he pointed to recent CableCARD deployment statistics from the NCTA that show the number of customers using CableCARDs continues to grow. “We are hopeful that the rollout of Xfinity On Demand to TiVo premiere DVRs will accelerate the use of CableCARDs in Comcast markets,” he said.
An online video and audio industry association wants an FCC delay of 16 months until Jan. 1, 2014, of enforcement of some rules for video programming distributors (VPDs) captioning broadcast TV and cable video transmitted by Internet Protocol. “These requirements concern only configuration settings such as the ability to customize caption background, color, opacity, and font, but not the core requirement to ensure that consumers receive captioned video content,” a Digital Media Association (DiMA) petition last week said. The “narrow, time-limited waiver request” will “still ensure that consumers receive captioned video content in the timeframe set by the Commission,” DiMA said. Some VPDs the association represents “simply cannot overcome the significant technical challenges” in the “mere six months” the IP captioning order allowed, DiMA said (http://xrl.us/bm69ef). Another petition also in docket 11-154 (http://xrl.us/bm69eh) sought a delay also to Jan. 1, 2014, for VPDs that don’t provide captions to begin rendering them. The petition said DiMA member Google didn’t join either request, while Apple sat out the rendering petition. “The challenge facing VPDs that have never offered closed captioning is at least as great as the challenge facing apparatus makers, and yet” the agency gave the manufacturers two years for their products to comply, the association said. CEA is among three others that have asked the commission to revisit the IP captioning rules (CD May 3 p12).
WRGB Schenectady, N.Y., wants FCC permission to change channels from 6 to 19. It’s “the only full-power low-band VHF station” in the market, and “at a distinct competitive disadvantage with respect to viewer reception,” said in a petition for rulemaking posted Thursday to PRM12MB (http://xrl.us/bm69a6). Moving to a UHF channel will let Disney’s WPVI-TV Philadelphia boost power on its Channel 6 “to address reception issues” that began in the 2009 DTV transition, because there won’t be interference with WRGB, the Schenectady station said. It included a statement from the Philadelphia ABC broadcaster backing the move. The Media Bureau’s freeze on DTV channel changes should be lifted in this instance because it’s a “unique situation that presumptively serves the public interest,” WRGB said.
The Tennis Channel got FCC permission to discuss with the Office of General Counsel (OGC) a program carriage appeal. The independent network had said Time Warner Cable and NCTA’s appeal last year at the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals raised similar issues as Comcast did in the indie’s program carriage complaint against that company (CD May 3 p17). An exception to FCC ex parte rules, “as we previously advised you orally,” allows “you to discuss with the staff of OGC” issues raised in the 2nd Circuit case “for purposes of assisting the Commission as amicus curiae or deciding whether to file an amicus brief,” OGC Administrative Law Division Chief Joel Kaufman wrote a lawyer for the Tennis Channel. “You should not discuss these issues with any Commission decision-making personnel other than the staff of OGC, nor should you discuss the Tennis Channel litigation, which is not subject to judicial review.” The letter was posted Thursday in docket 10-204 (http://xrl.us/bm689z).
The Federal Aviation Administration awarded a $2.77 million contract to ITT Exelis and General Electric’s Naverus to help develop satellite-based procedures allowing aircraft to fly more directly to their destinations. The two contractors will develop required navigation performance approach procedures into five airports, including in Alaska, Missouri and Wisconsin, the FAA said.
Communications between Google and the National Security Agency concerning encryption and cybersecurity, should they exist, won’t be turned over to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled Friday. The D.C. Circuit affirmed a trial court order in favor of the NSA. EPIC had sought records of communications and agreements between Google and the NSA following the January 2010 attacks on the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, after which the company started routinely encrypting Gmail traffic. A Google executive had said publicly that the company was working with “relevant U.S. authorities,” and NSA Director Mike McConnell said in the media that cooperation between the agency and private companies like Google was “inevitable.” EPIC’s FOIA request to the NSA had asked in particular what role if any the agency played in Google’s decision not to routinely encrypt before the January 2010 attacks. Judge Janice Brown wrote for the three-judge panel, upholding NSA’s explanation that the sought information -- whose existence NSA neither confirmed nor denied, known as a “Glomar response” -- would pertain to its “organization, functions or activities,” and thus qualify for an agency-specific FOIA exemption. She said NSA’s explanation was “logical” and “plausible” about the benchmarks for qualifying for the exemption. EPIC’s claim that some of the sought information was “unsolicited” -- potential Google communications to the NSA -- and thus doesn’t fall under a pertinent exemption, didn’t convince Brown, who said the “broad language” in the NSA exemption applied to NSA’s vetting of commercial technology used by the government for “security vulnerabilities.” Potential communications between Google and the NSA could reveal “protected information about NSA’s implementation” of its information-assurance mission, and constitute a protected agency “activity” under the exemption, Brown said. It could also make companies “hesitate or decline” to contact the NSA for help if they knew the records could be revealed under FOIA, she said. EPIC’s citation of a previous D.C. Circuit rejection of a FOIA exemption for the NSA isn’t relevant, because the agency had made “conclusory” statements in that case, as opposed to the specific warnings about what would be compromised in EPIC’s request, Brown said. Simply because NSA discloses “basic information” about its information-assurance activities doesn’t mean it forsakes the exemption in response to EPIC’s “blanket request” for “all records,” nor does Google-NSA collaboration “widely reported in the national media” have any bearing, the judge said. Brown said EPIC’s assertion is “inaccurate” that the D.C. Circuit had only upheld Glomar responses where it was apparent the NSA “first conducted a search and segregability analysis” to locate potentially relevant records for disclosure: The NSA did those searches voluntarily, and the court never held or implied that search was “required.” EPIC Executive Director Mark Rotenberg told us the ruling should give lawmakers pause. “The NSA has become a black hole for cybersecurity activity,” he said. “If the agency cannot acknowledge the existence of records responsive to a FOIA request about a relationship with Google that was widely reported in the national media, then it would be absurd for lawmakers to give the agency any further authority for cybersecurity. Transparency, not secrecy, is the prerequisite for effective cybersecurity.”