The National Congress of American Indians wants a third of the FCC’s proposed Mobility Fund for building out broadband to be set aside for a tribal mobility fund, the group said in a filing posted Wednesday to docket 10-208. “Since Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) in Indian Country lags over 30 percent behind national deployment (less than 68 percent of residents in Indian Country have telephones, while deployment in the rest of the United States tops 98 percent), setting aside” 33 percent of the mobility fund would spur broadband deployment in such areas, the group said. It met last Thursday, at a Native Nations Day held at the commission, with officials including Geoffrey Blackwell, chief of the Office of Native Affairs and Policy.
The Rural Utilities Service is accepting applications for its $25 million Community Connect grants to offer broadband access in unserved rural communities, RUS Administrator Jonathan Adelstein said during a conference call Friday. Emphasis will be placed on bandwidth when the applications are scored for the “community-oriented connectivity benefits derived from the proposed services,” said the Notice of Solicitation of Applications (NOSA), published in the Federal Register.
The Bureau of Industry and Security has issued a final rule, effective March 2, 2011, to amend the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) by revising the Application Processing, Issuance, and Denial provisions concerning BIS's authority to revise, suspend or revoke licenses.
A key and closely watched question was added by FCC members during the final stages of drafting a notice on retransmission consent, and it was unanimously approved at Thursday’s commission meeting. The rulemaking notice now asks whether the commission can require binding arbitration or carriage when either TV stations or subscription-video providers are found by the regulator to have not negotiated in good faith for a retrans contract, Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake told us at a media briefing. Chairman Julius Genachowski and the other commissioners styled the notice as a way to see if the FCC can take more measures within the authority it already has under the 1992 Cable Act when talks over carriage deals for TV stations on cable, satellite and telco-TV systems break down.
The FCC Thursday unanimously approved three items aimed at improving communications and radio service on tribal lands. Commissioners also heard testimony from tribal leaders about the state of communications in Indian country. The meeting came as the White House held a follow up meeting on last year’s Tribal Nations Summit.
Tribes without ancestral lands will now receive the FCC’s assistance in getting AM and FM stations, under an order approved 5-0 at Thursday’s meeting (CD March 3 p9). Also under the order, radio move-ins from rural to urban areas will become harder, as had been expected (CD Feb 22 p6). New procedures will apply to the pending applications to amend the FM allotments, AM allotments and non-final FM allotment orders, a commission official said. The upshot of the order is that many of the 96 pending applications for radio stations to move from rural to more urban areas may not be approved, industry and agency officials said.
With the FCC set to approve Thursday a notice of inquiry about spectrum on tribal lands, AT&T Vice President Joan Marsh reminded the commission of a step it can take now to guarantee continued wireless coverage on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota: approve the company’s application to become an eligible telecom carrier there. “At this point there is only one thing that threatens AT&T’s ability to continue to provide high quality wireless services to the Pine Ridge Reservation: the FCC,” she wrote on the carrier’s policy blog. “Eight months have passed since AT&T filed a Petition to Transfer to AT&T the ETC designation previously held by Alltel, which covers the Pine Ridge Reservation. We're not asking for special treatment here. Rather, we just want to receive the same ETC designation previous carriers have held for serving this high cost area."
Tribes without ancestral lands would receive an assist from the FCC in getting AM and FM stations, under a draft order set for a vote at Thursday’s meeting, agency officials said. A landless tribe could get a waiver of commission rules by showing that it should receive a priority now reserved for tribes with lands, FCC officials said. That part of the radio order is not controversial inside the commission or out, agency and industry officials said.
The FCC might not put off a vote on making it harder for radio stations to move from rural to urban areas, even after a group of more than 500 broadcasters last week formally sought a delay, agency officials said. They said that, as of Monday afternoon, the move-in part of a tribal radio order remained set for a vote at Thursday’s FCC meeting. It’s the only controversial part of a Media Bureau order that otherwise seeks to make it easier for tribes to get AM and FM licenses (CD Feb 22 p6). Broadcasters have no objections to the rest of the order, said a filing posted Friday to docket 09-52.
Moving AM and FM stations from rural to urban areas would become harder under a draft FCC order that also deals with tribal radio issues, agency and industry lawyers said. Among the many items tentatively set for a vote at the March 3 meeting (CD Feb 14 p6), the Media Bureau order circulated by Chairman Julius Genachowski sets up a rebuttable presumption against what are called move-ins, an agency official said. AM and FM stations seeking to change their community of license to reach a service contour that was half or more urbanized would need to make a case why they should be able to make such a move, FCC officials said.