The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a FOIA request for the unredacted version of the FCC’s Google Street View report (http://xrl.us/bm4ho4). The FCC said it will fine Google $25,000 for obstructing an investigation concerning Google Street View and federal wiretap law, EPIC said. A “heavily redacted” report from the commission said Google impeded the investigation by “delaying its search for and production of responsive emails and other communications, by failing to identify employees, and by withholding verification of the completeness and accuracy of its submissions,” the group said. But the redacted report “also raised questions about the scope of the FCC’ Street View investigation,” it said. “Surprisingly, the FCC concluded that Google had not violated the federal wiretap act, even though a federal court recently held otherwise.” EPIC Tuesday sought a Justice Department investigation into Google’s collection of Wi-Fi data” from residential networks by means of “Street View” vehicles.
Representatives from Amazon and Microsoft plan to testify at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on online video that the committee announced Thursday. Scheduled witnesses are: Microsoft Vice President-Media and Entertainment Blair Westlake, Amazon Vice President-Global Public Policy Paul Misener, Nielsen Company Vice Chairman Susan Whiting and IAC Chairman Barry Diller. Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said the hearing will focus on what online television changes mean for consumers, “especially in rural areas, and if this evolution of video can bring them higher quality content at lower rates.” The hearing is scheduled for April 24, 10 a.m., Room 253, Russell Building.
Thirteen international broadcasting groups started the future of broadcast TV initiative at the NAB Show in Las Vegas, member European Broadcasting Union (EBU) said Thursday. “Participants want to facilitate the evolution of broadcasting technology to ensure its long term viability and relevance.” As in the U.S., where broadcasters have said terrestrial TV complements wireless service but won’t be replaced by it, the initiative is stressing the import of both technologies. “Neither technology alone will be able to meet future demand for wireless media,” EBU Director Lieven Vermaele said. Goals include developing standards for next-generation terrestrial broadcast systems that are “maximizing the efficient use of spectrum” and standardization of technologies such as DVB, ATSC and ARIB, EBU said (http://xrl.us/bm4hj4).
Mergers and acquisitions were “all the buzz” at the NAB Show ended Thursday in Las Vegas, and revenue at radio and TV stations generally seems to be picking up this quarter compared to Q1, said an analyst who attended the convention. “January was a tough month, particularly in national” ad sales for radio and TV stations excluding political spots, “and it sounds like March may have also ended less robust than expected,” Wells Fargo’s Marci Ryvicker wrote investors. “May and June in particular look good.” Some TV stations are getting from multichannel video programming distributors $1 a month per subscriber in retransmission consent fees, although broadcast networks eventually hope to get half of affiliates’ retrans fees, she wrote.
Verizon is concerned about the results of granting Windstream and Frontier’s petition to clarify the FCC USF/intercarrier compensation order didn’t flash cut originating access charges for certain calls from VoIP to the public-switched telephone network, it told an aide to Commissioner Robert McDowell, said an ex parte notice (http://xrl.us/bm4hd2). Verizon urged the commission to “not undo” the “balance” it achieved when the USF/ICC order avoided “extending the legacy intrastate access regulatory regime to VoIP."
The FCC’s rural healthcare pilot program should “continue existing funding opportunities until all rural and underserved areas have sufficient, affordable bandwidth to make them competitive with urban counterparts,” Geisinger Health System wrote the commission in a letter posted Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bm4hdh). The Pennsylvania health services organization said it exhausted all allocated funding during fiscal 2012. It proposed the FCC maintain the existing 85 percent level of support “by calculating the yearly average amount of support for recurring costs that participants have received over the life of their Pilot projects and base funding on that amount."
Big Bend Telephone Co. filed its 2011 audited financial statements as supplemental support for its petition for waiver (CD April 6 p1) of certain USF rules limiting reimbursable support (http://xrl.us/bm4hc3). Big Bend requested confidential treatment of the 56-page financial statement.
The Ad Hoc Coalition of International Telecommunications Companies supports USTelecom’s call for long-term, comprehensive changes to the FCC USF contribution system, the group said in a letter to the agency Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bm4ha3). The group, which includes several domestic and foreign long distance service providers, called out the “Carrier’s Carrier Rule” as “one of several irrational and inefficient processes in need of immediate reform.
Questions exist over whether the FCC’s use of “rebuttable presumptions” is a defensible and practical option for setting special access rates at reasonable levels in geographic areas no longer subject to the constraints on excessive prices established by the commission’s price cap rules, counsel for the Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users Committee, a group of enterprise purchasers of telecom services, told Wireline Bureau officials (http://xrl.us/bm4g92).
The “dust has not even started to settle” on the “sweeping reforms” adopted in the USF/intercarrier compensation order, and the FCC should answer the many pending questions carriers have with respect to implementation before making additional changes, the NTCA told an advisor to Chairman Julius Genachowski on Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bm4g9j). NTCA also expressed concern with rural call completion issues, urging the FCC to take action. “These problems are unlikely to be resolved unless and until a provider that has failed materially and repeatedly to route calls to destinations as sought by originating callers faces some consequence for such failures,” the association said. Its representatives also met with Wireline Bureau officials Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bm4g96) to request changes to financial reporting requirements, raise concerns about conditions needed to be met to grant waiver requests, and discuss the “inequitable and improper” elimination of safety net additive support for carriers which deployed broadband-capable networks in 2010 and 2011. NTCA reiterated its continuing concern about the use of a regression analysis to establish caps on USF-supported capital and operating expenses.