Utility lawyers at Keller and Heckman are putting together “a coalition” of power companies to challenge the FCC’s pole attachments order (CD April 8 p3), lawyers Jack Richards and Tom Magee announced Monday. The order, which set deadlines for make-ready work, also lowered pole attachment rates for CLECs and gave ILECs a chance to lower their rates through FCC review. The order was published in the Federal Register Monday. “It’s contrary to the Pole Attachments Act and we just don’t think the FCC has the authority to do it,” Magee told us.
The Federal Trade Commission and three Utah film companies have each gone to federal courts over the companies’ marketing practices. Feature Films for Families, Corporations for Character, and Family Films of Utah filed a complaint in the federal district court for Utah last week, alleging that the FTC is trying to violate their free speech rights. On Monday, the FTC announced that it had filed a lawsuit against the three companies, alleging that they routinely violated the Do Not Call list rules and illegally signed a marketing agreement with a coalition of conservative family activists who try to identify and rate family-friendly films.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., introduced the Do-Not-Track Online Act of 2011 Monday, to a chorus of support from consumer protection groups. The bill would give individuals more control over how companies track their online and mobile activities and gives the FTC enhanced enforcement and rulemaking authority.
SAN FRANCISCO -- Cloud-based subscription music services remain a niche business but they could become mainstream with the support of wireless carriers and ISPs, who could integrate billing and help market the services, streaming music executives said Monday at the SF Music Tech summit. More than Apple, Google or Facebook, which are all expected to introduce cloud-based music services soon, ISPs have the ability to take subscription cloud music mainstream, said Jon Irwin, president of Rhapsody.
The FCC should redo an order making it harder to move radio stations from rural to urban areas, owners of hundreds of outlets said in petitions for reconsideration. A group of 45 station owners and other industry entities asked the agency to adopt what they called a “consistent standard” and update criteria of Tuck studies for such move-in requests (CD March 4 p10). Entravision, owner of 48 stations, said a presumption in the order, making such applications harder to get approved, should only apply when licensees outside an urbanized area seek to move to one and to transmit to much of one. A broadcaster with 10 radio stations that has a move-in request pending said the commission should change the new rules so they don’t apply to applications pending when the order was approved March 3.
Look for stepped-up FCC enforcement of its ex parte rules, on which the first significant revision since 1997 takes effect June 1 (CD May 3 p5), commission officials said Friday. They said the revamp requiring filings to be made anytime agency officials are lobbied, and for more specific ex partes disclosures to be made, is part of making the agency more transparent. Those ex parte rules approved by commissioners in February needing Office of Management and Budget approval should get that OK soon, said Deputy General Counsel Julie Veach at an FCC and FCBA tutorial. The green light should come in time for those rules too to take effect June 1, she said. Other parts of the new rules don’t need OMB approval.
The FCC Media Bureau dismissed part of Dish Network’s program access complaint against Madison Square Garden and Cablevision. The bureau dismissed the third count of Dish’s complaint, in which Dish alleged Cablevision was using improper influence over MSG’s decisions on the licensing of regional sports networks to the DBS provider. Cablevision was dismissed as a defendant, said an order released Friday afternoon and signed by bureau Chief Bill Lake. Verizon and AT&T have filed program access complaints against Cablevision and MSG, though no decision has been made public.
Operators are expecting a wave of help desk calls from customers on World IPv6 Day June 8 because they will have difficulties reaching Google or Facebook that day, said Ruediger Volk, a Deutsche Telekom senior routing specialist. That day, several big content providers like Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Akamai and Limelight Networks will serve their sites over IPv6 numbers, alongside the currently used IPv4.
The FCC should demand quarterly reports from AT&T on the company’s “especially aggressive” broadband pricing plan, said the New America Foundation and Public Knowledge Friday. “Unlike competitors whose caps appear to be at least nominally linked to congestions during peak-use periods, AT&T seeks to convert caps into a profit center by charging additional fees to customers who exceed the cap,” they said in an open letter to Wireline Bureau Chief Sharon Gillett. “In addition to concerns raised by broadband caps generally, such a practice produces a perverse incentive for AT&T to avoid raising its cap even as its own capacity expands."
T-Mobile USA’s Q1 profit dropped more than 60 percent year-over-year to $135 million as the carrier lost 99,000 subscribers. Parent company Deutsche Telekom CEO Rene Obermann blamed the decline in part on the intense competition in the U.S. market and said he’s confident the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile deal would get approved.