CTIA’s top priority is getting Congress to pass spectrum legislation, and the association thinks it’s not a question of if, but when a bill will be approved, CTIA President Steve Largent said during a press conference Wednesday. CTIA officials also said Universal Service Fund reform remains a significant issue for wireless carriers, with the FCC poised to take up an order at its Oct. 27 meeting. Largent said he’s confident the 1755-1780 MHz band will be reallocated for wireless broadband.
Due to a decrease in landline customers, Verizon is telling 68 municipalities in New Jersey that it’s no longer required to file tangible telephone property tax returns. Municipalities like Hopewell Borough in Mercer County disagreed, bringing the telco to state tax court.
Rural telcos and state regulators worry the pending universal service and intercarrier compensation regime reforms will result in consolidation in their sector. Earlier this week, ex-FCC commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth accused the agency of pushing rural telcos toward consolidation in the Universal Service Fund rulemaking notice (CD Sept 26 p13).
The FTC needs to commit more resources to understand rapidly evolving technologies, despite the trend of heightened fiscal scrutiny, said former Commissioner Bill Kovacic in an exit interview Wednesday. His term, a Republican slot, ended Sept. 25 after five years on the commission, including a year as chairman from March 2008 to March 2009. Kovacic returns to his former job as a law professor at the George Washington University Law School in Washington.
SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- The government’s handling of personal information will be the subject of a House Commerce Committee privacy bill, which also will have provisions on business practices, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., told us Wednesday. She didn’t elaborate, including about when the measure will be introduced, and a committee spokeswoman didn’t get back to us right away. Blackburn is a member of the Communications Subcommittee.
NAIROBI -- NTIA Administrator Lawrence Strickling sent a strong warning at the Internet Governance Forum Tuesday: “The future of the Internet is at risk. The multi-stakeholder model is being challenged.” Strickling pointed to “more and more instances of restrictions on the free flow of information, disputes between standards bodies and even appeals from incumbent carriers for government intervention on the terms and conditions for exchanging Internet traffic."
AT&T made its “first big tactical mistake” in seeking to keep Sprint Nextel from joining the Department of Justice’s case against the AT&T/T-Mobile deal, said Allen Grunes of Brownstein Hyatt, a former DOJ Antitrust Division attorney, during an American Bar Association panel Tuesday. Antitrust lawyers on the panel agreed that the efficiencies produced by the merger will be the critical question if DOJ and AT&T don’t settle and ultimately try the case before Judge Ellen Huvelle.
Increased government efforts to shut so-called pirate radio have put a dent in the prevalence of unlicensed FM stations, industry executives and FCC officials told us. The agency has shut down 97 such stations in 2011, commission officials said. That number surprised both foes and proponents of such operations, who said the actual number of stations that have ceased all operations seems smaller. They nonetheless agree that enforcement activity has been vigorous, but still not enough to end all unauthorized radio transmissions in the U.S.
The FCC should formulate its position on closing down the public-switched telecommunications network “really quickly,” said Wireless Network Communications Research Center Vice-Provost Dennis Roberson Tuesday. “The firestorm is already really now. The conferences are all now really homing in on this point,” he said at an FCC Technology Advisory Council meeting. “We've really got to be crisp, really quickly. We're going to need a position from the FCC really quickly. This is spinning up really fast.”
The FCC ought to examine content access hurdles faced by multichannel video programming distributors big and small, or the deals’ effect on the availability of pay-TV service and prices, said two major MVPDs and five groups representing rural telcos. If the agency is concerned about carriage of regional sports networks, it should look to all types of “must-have” sports programs, Time Warner Cable said. An agency report is due in January on access to RSNs under the 2006 commission order approving the purchase of Adelphia by Comcast and Time Warner Cable. TWC and the rural telco groups’ first-time comments on the RSN proceeding were posted to docket 11-128 Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bmenqf).