A draft order to make effective competition a rebuttable presumption for all cable companies circulated at the FCC, as expected (see 1505140063), agency officials said Friday. As also expected, the proposal is largely unchanged in scope from what was proposed in the NPRM, they said. As was originally put out for comment, the item would make all cable companies exempt from rate regulation unless a local franchising authority challenged their status as facing effective competition. The proposed rule change is moving forward in the face of a concerted opposition from broadcasters and some lawmakers.
Monty Tayloe
Monty Tayloe, Associate Editor, covers broadcasting and the Federal Communications Commission for Communications Daily. He joined Warren Communications News in 2013, after spending 10 years covering crime and local politics for Virginia regional newspapers and a turn in television as a communications assistant for the PBS NewsHour. He’s a Virginia native who graduated Fork Union Military Academy and the College of William and Mary. You can follow Tayloe on Twitter: @MontyTayloe .
A draft FCC order that would significantly broaden the number of cable companies exempt from rate regulation is expected to go on circulation Friday, agency officials told us. The effective competition draft order was expected to be shared among eighth-floor offices at the start of the week, but that didn’t happen, commission officials told us. A wave of broadcaster opposition and legislator letters opposing the rule change’s breadth may be connected to the item's not being circulated when it was expected, industry officials said.
Broadcasters, DBS providers and members of the House of Representatives support an FCC proposal to let designated market areas (DMAs) be modified so satellite subscribers can have access to locally focused programming they might not be able to currently receive, according to comments in docket 15-71 posted Wednesday. The NPRM that inspired the comments from Dish Network, NAB and others is a result of Section 102 of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act Reauthorization, and the rule change is intended to address the issue of “orphan counties” that are in a DMA primarily based in another state. “It is paramount for public safety and fairness reasons that counties have access to in-state broadcast television stations,” said Alabama GOP Reps. Mike Rogers and Robert Aderholt, who together represent three orphan counties in Alabama. The act requires the FCC to approve final rules for DBS market modification by September.
Though the Downloadable Security Technology Advisory Committee had its shortest, least contentious meeting Wednesday, opposing letters to the FCC from its member groups (see 1505110060) and an after-meeting tech presentation that turned contentious show that the DSTAC is still divided along industry lines. While multichannel video programming distributors favor an approach that concentrates narrowly on downloadable security solutions, Google, Public Knowledge, TiVo and others want a more comprehensive product that promotes competitive third-party devices and user interfaces, they said in a letter Monday.
Verizon and Sprint agreed to consent decrees requiring them to pay $158 million in penalties and redress for wireless cramming, said the FCC, FTC, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and state attorneys general in a news conference Tuesday. Sprint will have to pay $68 million under the settlement, while Verizon will have to pay $90 million, said the consent decrees. Sprint and Verizon set up a third-party billing system that included consumers without their approval, allowed them to be billed for questionable services, and ignored “red flags” about the issue, Vermont Attorney General Bill Sorrell said Tuesday. Companies representing “98.5 percent of the wireless market” were charging consumers “for things they didn't buy,” said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. Last year regulators reached consent decrees with AT&T and T-Mobile addressing alleged cramming.
An FCC order on the agenda for next Thursday’s meeting is expected to require multichannel video programming distributors to pass through a secondary audio stream of emergency alerts which appear as an on-screen crawl on TV sets to tablets and smartphones streaming MVPD content through the companies' apps, said agency officials. It's "my hope and expectation that these new rules will enable individuals who are blind or visually impaired to more quickly respond to time-sensitive emergency situations,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in an April 30 blog post on the items.
CAMBRIDGE, Md. -- A new FCC website and an updated electronic comment filing system (ECFS) are in the works, said Gigi Sohn, Chairman Tom Wheeler's counselor, on a panel Saturday at the 2015 FCBA annual seminar. The beta version of the new fcc.gov is expected to launch this year. Sohn declined to offer a date for what she called “ECFS 2.0.”
An FCC order that would have let participants in the commission's AT&T/DirecTV transaction proceeding review confidential programming and retransmission consent contract data is “substantively and procedurally flawed,” U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Judge David Tatel said in a unanimous opinion in CBS et al. v. FCC, vacating the order. The Comcast/Time Warner Cable proceeding had been part of the case, but that portion was rendered moot by the collapse of that deal. The court loss is seen as putting the FCC in a difficult position in its review of AT&T/DirecTV, industry officials connected with the court proceeding told us. Though the opinion leaves the door open for the FCC to issue a new protective order, doing so could further delay AT&T/DirecTV, while not doing so could expose an agency decision approving the deal to court challenge, said industry officials.
CHICAGO -- All four FCC commissioners believe Wi-Fi should be permitted in the 5 GHz band, said Mignon Clyburn, Mike O'Rielly, Ajit Pai and Jessica Rosenworcel during a panel at INTX 2015 Wednesday. “I think this is something we all agree on,” said O'Rielly, saying such cohesion is rare among the commissioners. The FCC members, their aides and bureau chiefs participated in nearly back-to-back panels Wednesday.
CHICAGO -- Cable companies are now principally broadband companies, and the importance of their product means they have bigger obligations and responsibilities, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said at INTX 2015 Wednesday. The industry deserves “straight talk” about the net neutrality order, Wheeler said. "I take you at your word to protect an open Internet, but what about those that follow you?” he said in defense of his Internet conduct rules, a focus of his talk. Wheeler's speech also included a brief mention of the Comcast/Time Warner Cable transaction review and indications that the FCC might act to keep cable companies from suffering higher pole attachment rates.