Congress could move on spectrum legislation next year no matter which political party is in control, a telecom aide to Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, told a Law Seminars International conference Monday. A package of noncontroversial spectrum items could be attached to a reauthorization of the FCC’s auction authority, said the aide, Matthew Hussey. FCC Wireless Bureau Chief Ruth Milkman urged Congress to quickly authorize incentive auctions to free up broadcaster spectrum.
LightSquared said it will provide satellite phone service for healthcare providers in American Indian and Alaska Native communities through a partnership with the Indian Health Service. Participants may gain access to LightSquared’s wireless network once it’s built, depending on the program’s needs, a company spokesman said. LightSquared said it will donate up to 2,000 phones and provide free service through 2020.
The Minority Media and Telecommunications Council urged the FCC to address broadband issues in Puerto Rico, President David Honig said, citing the most recent FCC broadband report. The entire population of Puerto Rico lacks access to the advanced broadband services available to other Americans (4 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up), he said. Data from the report shows that 3,954,000 of the 24,042,000 Americans that don’t have access to broadband live in Puerto Rico, he said. The report shows that Puerto Rico has “dramatically lower income levels,” is “dramatically higher in population density than other unserved areas” and isn’t rural in nature, Honig said. MMTC is concerned about the FCC’s “historic disregard of the unique conditions in Puerto Rico,” he said. So far, the agency hasn’t proposed a plan to address the digital divide in Puerto Rico, he noted. The commission’s National Broadband Plan doesn’t address the situation in Puerto Rico or provide a strategy for remedying it, he said. The FCC’s NOI and NPRM concerning a new Connect America Fund also doesn’t address the unique needs of Puerto Rico, he said. The Broadband Report doesn’t mention Puerto Rico once in the text of the report -- the text focuses instead on rural and tribal areas, he said. The commission’s recent Seventh Broadband Deployment Report NOI doesn’t mention Puerto Rico. Additionally, interactive broadband maps posted recently on the FCC website don’t contain data for Puerto Rico -- instead depicting the island like Cuba and Mexico, he said.
Shared Spectrum, developing sensing technology for white spaces devices, is “disappointed that sensing-only devices will have to get full commission review” under a new FCC order (CD Sept 24 p1) and that it requires sensing devices to run at lower power levels and under other constraints, General Counsel Peter Tenhula said. But the company hopes that the provisions “won’t scare off investors,” he said by e-mail Friday.
Members of the newly reconstituted Wireless Innovation Alliance said in a call with reporters Wednesday the FCC shouldn’t weaken its white spaces rules through changes sought by broadcasters and others. Representatives of Public Knowledge, Google and Dell spoke on the call. A vote on the white spaces order is scheduled for Thursday, though aspects of it were still being worked out at our deadline, agency officials said. The FCC released its sunshine notice last Thursday, cutting off lobbying, though industry officials can still answer questions sent their way by the FCC.
The FCC should approve TV white spaces rules that offer certainty and guarantee “assured access to adequate spectrum … on a long term basis” for the band to be commercially viable, the Communications Finance Association (CFA) said in an FCC filing. Numerous industry groups and companies trooped to the agency to make their final arguments on the order, before it was placed on the sunshine agenda Thursday night for the Sept. 23 meeting, cutting off further lobbying. Various parties made a total of more than 150 ex parte filings in 04-186, the main white spaces docket, last week alone.
The Rural Utilities Service and NTIA have made broadband deployment in Indian Country a top priority, officials with the agencies said Thursday during the Native American Broadband Teleconference. Leaders of the Native American Broadband Association (NABA) previously expressed concerns that Indian applicants got relatively little early funding, in particular from RUS’ Broadband Infrastructure Program (CD Feb 12 p2).
FiberTower, Sprint Nextel and the Rural Telecom Group are open-minded about the best location in the TV band for the FCC to choose for dedicating a few channels of the white spaces to fixed licensed use for wireless backhaul, representatives said in a meeting at the commission. Alternatives include UHF channels 14-20, the VHF channels and “the possibility of limiting fixed licensed use to a percentage of vacant available channels in rural areas,” said an ex parte filing. “We also noted that the instant proposal can largely accommodate any subsequent ‘repacking’ in the TV White Spaces because dozens of vacant channels exist in the rural and tribal areas at issue in our proposal, and we propose utilizing at most a limited amount of vacant channels in those areas."
The President has issued Executive Order 13549, which establishes a Classified National Security Information Program designed to safeguard and govern access to classified national security information shared by the Federal Government with State, local, tribal, and private sector entities.
Only a handful of public safety agencies seeking Broadband Technology Opportunities Program funds got money to build early 700 MHz networks, as the White House unveiled $1.8 billion in awards Wednesday -- the biggest set of announcements in the history of the stimulus program. Many of the 21 governments and government groups that got waivers from the FCC to launch systems in 700 MHz spectrum had applied for BTOP funding. It’s unclear how many more public safety grants will be awarded and how many systems won’t get built without federal funding. New York City, Washington, and Boston were among grant applicants that did not get awards in Wednesday’s round.