New Day Broadband has been carrying KIRO-TV Seattle without permission since Aug. 1, 2010, the station’s owner Cox Enterprises said in an enforcement complaint filed with the FCC March 12 and posted online Thursday. It asked the commission to order New Day to come into compliance with retransmission consent rules and to level any sanctions the Media Bureau deems necessary. The dispute stems from the sale of some of Broadstripe’s systems to New Day in 2010. The station was carried through a retrans agreement with Broadstripe, but Cox said it stopped receiving payments after New Day took control of the systems (http://xrl.us/bmzu3o). “New Day does not have Cox’s consent to retransmit KIRO-TV on its Systems,” but it apparently continues to do so, the complaint said. “The only question is how long it has retransmitted KIRO-TV’s signal without Cox’s consent.” New Day hasn’t responded to Cox’s recent letters of inquiries about settling the matter, it said.
An FCC proposal to suspend LightSquared’s ancillary terrestrial component authority would not serve the public interest, the company said in replies (http://xrl.us/bmzxei) in docket 11-109. Replies were due Friday. The proposed ruling would revoke LightSquared’s license to operate its network and it is “entirely unsupported by the law, science and FCC policy and precedent,” Executive Vice President Jeff Carlisle told reporters. The FCC “need not and should not embrace the false choice presented by the GPS industry between preserving LightSquared’s ancillary terrestrial component authority to deploy a wireless broadband network and maintaining GPS service,” the filing said. The company invested $4 billion in its network, Carlisle told reporters: By calling for the revocation of the company’s ATC authorization, the GPS industry “wants the network to be demolished.” Carlisle said it’s important for ATC authority to be retained: Revoking it “makes it impossible for us to do business and it would be a reversal of 10 years of work that the FCC and our company put into this business plan.” The issue at hand is the inability of a limited number of GPS receivers “to operate properly in spectrum that has not been allocated for GPS use, and instead has been licensed to LightSquared for different purposes,” the filing said. LightSquared suggested ways to address this, including the FCC and NTIA working to develop spectrum solutions “to enable LightSquared to deploy its broadband wireless services in alternative spectrum.” The Coalition to Save Our GPS plans to file a reply urging LightSquared’s authorization to be revoked. LightSquared’s arguments are “requests for changes in the rules after the game is over, or requests for special treatment to avoid the consequences of its ill-conceived plans,” the coalition said in a news release. It said evidence demonstrates LightSquared hasn’t satisfied the condition “requiring that it demonstrate that it will not cause harmful interference to GPS receivers.” Testing conclusively shows “that LightSquared’s proposed terrestrial operations will cause harmful interference to GPS and that migration is not possible at this time,” the coalition said. The company is incorrect to describe ATC as an allocated service of mobile satellite service, the U.S. GPS Industry Council said in its reply: “ATC is authorized only as a component of the MSS allocation” under strict rules prescribed by the commission. Because LightSquared’s proposal would de-couple terrestrial use from the primarily allocated MSS service, it’s not ATC, “but a standalone ubiquitous, terrestrial mobile broadband offering,” the council said. Deployment of such a service would eviscerate the MSS allocation in the 1525-1559 MHz band and “replace it with operations of a wholly different character for which there is no spectrum allocation, and which are fundamentally incompatible with both co-frequency and adjacent frequency primary services,” USGIC said.
FCC inspectors apparently sought full copies of TV station public files at the same time a rulemaking proceeding was under way(CD March 28 p5) that may require all of them to post online some or all of the information, a broadcast attorney said. The stations have been asked to produce full copies of the files within a short time frame, said Scott Flick of Pillsbury Winthrop. “At many stations the initial request was for 24 hours” to produce the copies, but FCC officials seem to have settled on 48 hours after getting some push back from stations, he said. It’s doubtful the commission is interested in the substance of the files, and is probably looking to gauge the cost and time it would take to make copies, Flick said. The requests may indicate the commission may be trying to prove the point that scanning and uploading documents in the public file would not be as onerous a task as broadcasters have suggested, Flick wrote on his law firm’s blog last week (http://xrl.us/bmzw89). Or, it could be that the commission may be trying to call station’s bluff about the actual size of the files, he said. A Media Bureau spokeswoman had no comment. If FCC officials are seeking copies of stations’ files, they may want to see for themselves whether stations are mistakenly inflating their size, by including older material they are not required to maintain, said Senior Policy Counsel Corie Wright of Free Press, which has said broadcasters overstate the size. “I think it’s a really good thing if the people who are making decisions at the FCC see what these files look like,” she said. “We've done it ourselves, but I think there is some value to having the FCC staff go in there and say, ‘Oh, this is what a public file looks like.'”
The U.S. Navy selected Oceus Networks’ Xiphos mobile communications networking solution for a mobile broadband pilot project, the company said. The pilot marks the first operational deployment of 4G LTE by the Department of Defense, Oceus said. The project will be run out of the Kearsarge Expeditionary Strike Group, based in Norfolk, Va. “The Xiphos tactical cellular solution will provide high capacity secure wireless broadband for real time access to Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) data for intra-ship communications … and inter-ship communications via commercial hand-held devices,” Oceus said. “Oceus’ mobile ruggedized networks can be placed aboard ships, installed in tactical warfighter vehicles, mounted on UAV’s [unmanned aerial vehicles] and other aerial platforms, and can be soon soldier back-packed into austere environments.” The system offers data rates scalable from 37 to 350 Mbps and a range of up to 62 miles.
NTCA filed early replies on the quadrennial media ownership review, seeking an order barring broadcasters from working together in the same market to get retransmission consent deals from pay-TV systems and prohibiting multicasting affiliates of multiple networks. “Any formation of bargaining groups or in-kind arrangements that enables broadcasters to collude to set retransmission consent fees, rather than compete against one another, is contrary to the public interest,” the association said Thursday in docket 09-182 (http://xrl.us/bmzwwt). The Media Bureau has delayed the reply deadline to April 17 (CD March 27 p13).
The American Conservative Union falsely states the TV marketplace is free of regulation, Free State Foundation President Randolph May said Friday on the FSF blog (http://xrl.us/bmzwpj). “It is true that there is an element of a market negotiation in the current retransmission consent regime, which is why, I suppose, that the ACU calls it a ‘marketplace,'” he said. “But in light of all the various legacy laws and regulations that together overlay the video marketplace -- must carry, network non-duplication and syndicated exclusivity, compulsory licensing, and others -- the retransmission regime operates in the overall context of an ‘unfree’ market.” ACU last week asked congressional Republicans to oppose S-2008 by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and HR-3675 by Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., because the retrans system shouldn’t end as the bills seek. “Despite what you might hear, under the present system there is no epidemic of service interruptions that adversely affect consumers and cause them to miss widely-viewed events like the Super Bowl,” Cardenas said. “The reality is that today we have a functioning market in which opposing parties are able to bring value to the negotiating table. By stripping away the right to compensation for the use of the signal the government would be tipping the scales heavily to the side of the pay-tv companies.” Cardenas said DeMint should be “commended for trying to reduce unnecessary regulations and there are provisions in the bill we would consider supporting.”
Law enforcement agencies in New England are investigating a phone scam targeting the elderly. FairPoint also began a campaign warning the public about the lottery scam originating from Jamaican area code 876. FairPoint said the scam works like this: Seniors receive calls from an 876 area code, often mistaken for a toll-free number, and are told they have won a Jamaican lottery prize or automobile but are required to pay cash up front to claim the purported prizes. “In many cases the scammer befriends the victim, going as far as professing their love, intent to marry or even praying with them,” said FairPoint Senior Manager of Security Larry Caruso. “Once a victim is scammed out of money for the first time, the scammers work to get more and more money, including access to bank accounts and credit card information.” The telco created www.bewareof876.com, with an informational video, directions on how to report a scam and tips to avoid being the victim of one.
WSBS Key West, Fla., sought FCC OK to supplement a 2008 petition for exemption of TV captioning rules because the request is still pending. Owner Spanish Broadcasting System has lost $104.7 million from TV operations since 2006, the company said in a request to submit new information that was posted Thursday in docket 06-181 (http://xrl.us/bmzwvm). “The additional hundreds of thousands of dollars it would cost to close caption its programming would constitute an undue burden upon WSBS."
Time Warner Cable and Verizon Wireless’s marketing deal should be delayed in Hawaii so that’s the last place it’s implemented, said the state’s top telco, which has opposed the transaction (CD March 14 p14). Hawaiian Telcom Communications Inc. said that’s the “less desireable [sic] alternative” to deny outright the sale to Verizon Wireless of 122 advanced wireless services licenses from SpectrumCo, which Time Warner Cable and two other operators own, or block the deal in the state. “The related joint marketing and research and development agreements between Verizon Wireless and Oceanic Time Warner Cable will harm the market for voice, high-speed Internet (wireless and wire line) and paid video programming services in Hawaii as well as harm HTCI,” the telco said in reply comments on the carrier’s buy of SpectrumCo and Cox’s AWS licenses posted Thursday to docket 12-4 (http://xrl.us/bmzwua).
Expect more acquisitions of content providers by telecom companies, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., predicted in a speech Thursday night to the American Bar Association’s antitrust section. The Comcast-NBCUniversal transaction “was just the tip of the spear,” he said. “It won’t be long before Verizon or AT&T starts thinking about buying ABC or DirecTV, creating fewer and bigger media conglomerates with more and more control over the delivery of content.” That will mean higher prices for consumers and less content, he said. Small companies may be afraid to stand up against big company mergers, Franken said. “You know, during the NBC/Comcast debate, I heard from smaller companies that opposed the merger but were afraid to do so publicly because they worried about the retribution they might face from Comcast,” he said. “I heard the same thing during AT&T/T-Mobile, and I'm hearing it again now from companies concerned about Verizon’s deals with the big cable companies. What better proof could there be that too much consolidation in the market is going unchecked?” Google and Facebook also came under fire by Franken. “The more dominant these companies become over the sectors in which they operate, the less incentive they have to respect your privacy,” he said. “Google and Facebook are, essentially, tremendously innovative and profitable advertising companies. … These companies’ profitability depends in large part on their ability to target ads to you, which in turn depends in large part on what they know about you. And so when companies become so dominant that they can violate their users’ privacy without worrying about market pressure, all that’s left is the incentive to get more and more information about you."