The FCC “roadshow” information sessions on the incentive auction kick off in Philadelphia Monday, and the commission released an updated version of its “Greenhill book” information package Friday to coincide with the beginning of the outreach effort. Along with using the AWS-3 auction as an illustration of auction success, the new information package lists opening bid information for every market for broadcasters relinquishing their spectrum -- the previous edition (see 1410020029) gave broadcasters their estimated auction value, senior FCC officials told reporters speaking on the condition of anonymity.
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 .
Proposed new net neutrality rules based on classifying the Internet as a Title II utility under the Communications Act look like they'll disproportionately burden smaller cable operators and leave cable ISPs open to blocking by leaving out edge providers and content companies, officials at several cable companies and American Cable Association President Matt Polka said in interviews Wednesday. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler indicated in unveiling some details of the draft net neutrality order that day that forbearance will relieve many of the more burdensome aspects of Title II regulation (see 1502040055). But Polka said that might not immediately alleviate the rule's effect on cable operators. It also remains unclear how Title II rules will affect satellite broadband providers, industry officials said.
The FCC should reject a proposal that low-power TV stations be subject to mandatory channel sharing, said the Advanced Television Broadcasting Alliance (ATBA), NAB and others in reply comments filed in docket 03-185 in response to the FCC’s request for comment on proposals on the incentive auction’s effect on LPTV. “Coercing LPTV and translator stations into involuntary channel sharing arrangements to provide more white space channels” would be equivalent to “strip-mining” licensed stations for unlicensed uses, NAB said. Commenters also clashed over whether some LPTV stations should be allowed to use part of the FM band and whether the analog tuner requirement should be relaxed as the last stations transition to digital.
ITTA, NTCA and Comptel banded together as expected to launch a campaign opposing the Comcast/Time Warner Cable deal. The Don’t Comcast the Internet campaign brings together competing Internet, video and voice companies seeking an unconditional denial of Comcast/TWC by federal regulators, the associations said at a news conference Monday.
The FCC’s Downloadable Security Technological Advisory Committee doesn’t include a correct balance of views and excludes viewpoints important to the set-top box industry, said officials at some companies that aren't represented on the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Reauthorization Act-mandated body.
The expected FCC increase of the standard for what’s considered broadband (see 1501280056) could affect the review of Comcast’s proposed buy of Time Warner Cable, but not very much, attorneys involved in the proceeding and industry analysts said. Though a 25 Mbps downstream threshold would mean Comcast controlled close to half of U.S. broadband, the use of that benchmark in the FCC broadband progress report doesn’t automatically mean the same number is used in the transaction review process, said Public Knowledge Senior Staff Attorney John Bergmayer. He has asked the FCC to deny the deal.
Comptel, ITTA and NTCA are uniting in opposition to the Comcast/Time Warner Cable transaction, a wireline industry official told us Wednesday. The groups had been set to announce their new organization Wednesday, but the Washington, D.C., event was rescheduled to Monday, Feb. 2, due to inclement weather. The new organization will be wireline-centric, and the event will include briefings on how the merger would harm competition, the industry official told us. Comptel, ITTA and NTCA didn't comment.
Projected difficulties with interference between wireless and broadcast signals after the incentive auction and repacking are largely caused by FCC use of a variable rather than nationwide band plan, said NAB in comments in docket 14-14, responding to a public notice on interservice interference, called the ISIX PN. CEA, CTIA and engineering firm Cohen Dippell made suggestions on how the problems associated with interservice interference could be addressed. NAB’s suggestion that the FCC completely redo the band plan was the most sweeping. The FCC “could make its own job simpler, reduce the number of points of potential failure during the auction, present clearer, more attractive offers to bidders, and avoid an unnecessarily jumbled post-auction interference environment by pursuing a nationwide band plan,” said NAB.
The FCC Incentive Auction Task Force will take its “roadshow” outreach efforts to broadcasters to Georgia, Louisiana, New York, Pennsylvania and Tennessee between February and May, it said in a public notice Wednesday. The first session will be in Philadelphia Feb. 9. Subsequent locations will be announced in future public notices, Task Force Chief Gary Epstein told us at an otherwise off-the-record FCBA event Wednesday. “Broadcasters in markets where we have not scheduled an information session are encouraged to attend the closest session,” said the PN. The information sessions will be in several cities in most states, including Nashville, New York and New Orleans. In each city, members of the Task Force and representatives of investment banking firm Greenhill & Co. will hold a general session on the auction and repacking, and also be available to meet with individual broadcasters confidentially, the PN said. The sessions are limited to broadcasters and their representatives, it said: “Presentations to Commission personnel directed to the merits or the outcome of the matters raised in the Comment Public Notice or other pending proceedings will require the filing of an ex parte notice, but any broadcaster that must make such a filing need not disclose its identity.”
An early settlement of NAB and Sinclair’s petition for review of the FCC incentive auction order seemed possible earlier in the proceeding but now seems unlikely, officials involved in the case said in interviews Tuesday, the day that NAB and Sinclair filed a joint reply brief in the case. The FCC has treated congressional instruction that it preserve broadcaster coverage areas as “an inconvenience to be minimized or ignored in the Commission’s myopic quest to transfer spectrum to wireless companies,” said NAB and Sinclair's joint brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. “We are confident that our incentive auction rules fully comply with the statutory requirements to preserve the coverage area and population served of stations that elect to remain on the air after the auction,” an FCC spokesman told us.