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.
Broadcasters would benefit if the FCC delays the TV incentive auction, Matthew Berry, chief of staff to FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, said Wednesday at a conference sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute’s Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy. “It’s simple,” Berry said. “If broadcasters want to receive top dollar for their spectrum they’re going to need wireless carriers to come to the auction with as much money as possible.” That means giving carriers enough time between the AWS-3 auction and the incentive auction to raise capital, he said. More time also will give the FCC time to change its proposed rules on dynamic reserve pricing and in other areas that will mean more compensation for spectrum sold in the auction, he said. Berry also said it's not too late for the FCC to simplify rules for the auction. “There are no mulligans,” he said. “The law passed by Congress gives us one chance to get this right.” Berry said even without process reform, the FCC could operate much more smoothly than it does today. Berry cited complaints by his boss on the sharp partisan split at the agency (see 1501210046). “Reaching consensus in an unanimous vote on contentious issues is hard, hard work,” he said. “But you can do it.” The politicization of the FCC raises major questions about the agency's legitimacy, said Gus Hurwitz, a professor at the Nebraska College of Law, who also spoke at the conference. “This is an expert agency -- we have it for its expertise,” he said. “It’s not acting as an expert agency.”
A group of content and edge providers, led by Aquto, asked the FCC not to clamp down on zero rating, the practice of giving some apps an advantage over others on wireless networks, as a part of broader net neutrality rules. The issue is widely viewed as among the trickiest facing the FCC as it finalizes rules (see 1411140046). “Sponsored data and zero-rating arrangements hold great promise for content and edge providers, whether they are new entrants or incumbents, who can use them to promote innovative offerings, attract new customers, and grow a robust subscriber base,” the companies said. “Sponsoring the delivery of Internet data is merely a more modern incarnation of toll-free calling or free shipping, which for decades have provided undisputed benefits to businesses and consumers alike.” The companies urged the FCC to “avoid taking any action that would limit the flexibility of Internet service providers to offer, or of content and edge providers to use, plans of this sort.” BBA Studios, DataMi, LotusFlare, Syntonic and Wazco also signed the letter.
Louisa Terrell, formerly of Facebook and Yahoo, was named adviser to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. Terrell “will lead a number of long-term planning initiatives and will serve as a liaison with federal agencies and stakeholders,” said a Friday news release. She also worked for the Obama White House as a special assistant for legislative affairs and was chief of staff for Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. She replaces Sagar Doshi, special assistant to Wheeler, who is leaving.
The FCC should reconsider its plan for dealing with interservice interference after the incentive auction, said NAB and Sprint in reconsideration petitions posted Friday in docket 12-268. The commission's method for predicting interference from TV stations to wireless uses “severely underestimates the real-world level of interference that could result,” Sprint said. FCC methodology is “unnecessarily complex, will not lead to accurate predictions and creates needless uncertainty and risk for bidders in the forward auction,” said NAB. The association also took the commission to task for not instituting a cap on interference and population losses in the repacking, a complaint in tune with its ongoing court challenge against the incentive auction order for not sufficiently protecting broadcast coverage areas. The NAB petition also uses language commonly associated with the threat of litigation: “The Commission should revisit its arbitrary and capricious treatment of aggregate caps on such losses.” Sprint wants the FCC to use a different statistical measure for calculating interference within a 600 MHz spectrum block, while NAB wants to completely revamp the commission's approach to the problem. Adopting a simpler methodology would “increase confidence that winning bidders in the forward auction will actually be able to deploy service using the licenses they have won,” NAB said.
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.”
President Barack Obama framed broadband as one of his “bread-and-butter issues,” previewing his State of the Union address slated for Tuesday night. “We’re working with the private sector to increase Internet access for communities that feel left out, to increase competition and to protect our privacy and security -- and that’s just been in the last month,” Obama said in a video released Monday. Obama has outlined major goals in this space, pressing the FCC to develop strong net neutrality rules and to pre-empt state laws restricting municipal broadband.
The FCC should make public draft texts of proposals to be taken up at commission meetings at the same time they're circulated to commissioners, Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said in a blog post Friday. O’Rielly called for the change in August (see 1408080031). He said now he understands the texts of items aren’t posted in advance of meetings because “it could be harder to comply with the Administrative Procedure Act,” and that “it could be more difficult to withhold documents under the Freedom of Information Act,” the post said. Neither argument is “persuasive or insurmountable,” O’Rielly wrote. His spokeswoman declined to detail who at the agency made those arguments. The agency didn't comment on O’Rielly’s blog. The concern about the APA, O’Rielly wrote, is that it requires the commission to review all comments and ex partes in a proceeding and respond to any substantive issues. “The concern is that, if we provide a copy of the draft item, we will get more specific comments and ex partes that staff will have to address when finalizing the item," said O'Rielly. "That is, we might actually get constructive feedback based on facts about what is in a draft that require us to roll up our sleeves and explain why we’ve made certain decisions and discarded alternatives.” Calling it a “logistical issue” and not a legal one, O’Rielly said the commission’s “capable and hardworking staff and managers” would be “up to the task” of dealing with it. O’Rielly also disputed a concern that releasing a draft of an agenda item “would make it harder to justify withholding other drafts or even internal emails about various drafts. … I am confident that our talented lawyers at the agency can handle it.” O’Rielly also said he has a sense that there are “some unspoken objections to the proposal” -- that “parties could be in a better position to figure out which edits have been requested by which offices.” He’s not troubled by that prospect, O’Rielly said. “Having worked on the Hill where members put their names on amendments, I am comfortable being associated with my requested edits,” the post said. The current process, O’Rielly said, can lead parties to have “limited or even incorrect knowledge of what is in a draft item, and therefore raise arguments that may be, through no fault of their own, untimely, unnecessary, or misdirected. That, in turn, requires staff to spend time sifting through red herrings rather than considering focused input that could strengthen the reasoning and ultimately the legal sufficiency of the item.”
Comments on how the proposals in the incentive auction comment public notice could affect the FCC’s Regulatory Flexibility Act analyses of the auction’s effects on small business are due Feb. 13, the same day as other comments on the PN, the Wireless Bureau said in a notice Thursday. Replies, like replies on the auction PN, are due March 13. Paperwork Reduction Act comments on the information collection procedures connected with the auction will be due 60 days after Thursday’s notice is published in the Federal Register, the bureau said.
The Minority Media and Telecommunications Council (MMTC) said it supports the goals of the White House’s plans to increase access to affordable high-speed broadband (see 1501140048), but said the plan doesn’t adequately address “the much larger challenge of broadband adoption that continues to promulgate second class digital citizenship among more vulnerable populations that include people of color, seniors, people with disabilities, and the poor.” The White House’s plan also doesn’t address how to end digital redlining, the practice of refusing to deploy broadband in low-income communities on par with service to wealthier communities, MMTC said in a statement. Industry groups continued to react Wednesday and Thursday to the White House’s plan, with Comptel CEO Chip Pickering saying in a statement that the “renewed focus on removing regulatory barriers and improving investment incentives are more steps in the right direction to ensure that American consumers can enjoy faster broadband services and lower costs.” The plan means Obama has joined with “Americans who are standing up for the right of local communities to bring high-speed broadband to their residents, no matter how small their community is,” Public Knowledge Vice President-Government Affairs Chris Lewis said in a statement.