The second “derecho” of the summer hit the East Coast Thursday night, rolling across hundreds of miles throughout New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio, among other states, although the impact appears to be far less than the June 29 derecho that devastated the Mid-Atlantic region and caused millions to lose power, as well as some in Northern Virginia and elsewhere to lose 911 service (CD July 3 p1). The Thursday storm, although less extreme than June’s, caused many of those same problems in limited locations.
The Rural Cellular Association asked the FCC to extend the buildout deadlines for lower 700 MHz A-block licenses for at least two years, in a petition released Friday. The extension is needed, RCA said, because at this point small carriers are having difficulty buying handsets without an interoperability mandate. RCA said the buildout deadlines should be extended for at least two years after the FCC wraps up a rulemaking on whether to impose an interoperability mandate. Without an extension, carriers face a June 13, 2013, buildout deadline for the licenses, which were sold in a 2008 FCC auction.
With more than $1 billion of TV station asset deals announced recently (CD July 20 p8), one question was top of mind for stock analysts who cover the publicly-traded broadcasters reporting earnings last week: Why didn’t their companies buy any of the stations? Answers varied a bit. Executives in general said the outlets sold by Newport TV were packaged in batches of stations that didn’t fit with their portfolios or were more attractive to other buyers. Newport, backed by Providence Equity Partners, bought Clear Channel’s TV station group in 2008, and it’s now selling those properties.
Allband got a three-year waiver of a new FCC rule limiting per-line USF support to $250 a month, in an order released by the Wireline Bureau Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bniaq3). The bureau said a limited waiver was necessary to ensure that consumers in the area would continue to receive voice service where there’s no terrestrial alternative. By granting Allband’s request, the bureau said it hoped “to provide it additional time to take cost-cutting and revenue-enhancing actions in order to improve its financial position and lessen its dependence on high-cost universal service support.” This is the first waiver granted in the “support reductions” category.
Broadcasters and carriers and wireless vendors are no closer on whether more types of mobile devices should have FM chips in them to get terrestrial radio transmissions, after the FCC convened a meeting on the subject, participants told us. They said commission staff and executives from the top four U.S. carriers, some makers of consumer electronics and a broadcast CEO and their trade groups met last Friday in an FCC-convened meeting (CD July 6 p9).
The meeting of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) of the World Intellectual Property Organization ended Thursday without a recommendation to the General Assembly to convene a diplomatic conference on limitations and exceptions for the visually impaired. SCCR members could only agree to return to the negotiating table in November. Representatives of non-government organizations were highly critical of what they called a missed opportunity.
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- Cable operators are starting to introduce small digital terminal adapters (DTAs) that can bring HD TV channels to analog subscribers’ homes, almost two years after the FCC approved the use of HD-DTAs with integrated security and navigation functions. BendBroadband, a small Oregon cable provider, is one of the operators leading the way, rolling out a new “universal” HD-DTA from Evolution Digital that can work on the digital video platforms of both Motorola Mobility and Cisco. Evolution and Motorola Mobility have emerged as the two winners of a request-for-proposal (RFP) from the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC) to produce both standard-definition and HD-DTAs for small and mid-sized operators seeking to convert systems to all-digital video.
ICANN’s expensive and controversial generic top-level domain (gTLD) expansion program is not for naught as mobile applications and social media become more popular alternatives for developers and consumers, the group’s recently-departed CEO said. Rod Beckstrom, who joined ICANN from the Department of Homeland Security after a public spat with the National Security Agency (NSA), said in an interview for C-SPAN’s The Communicators that the “netizens” of the world would rise to challenge future Internet regulation in the image of the U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). His temporary successor, Chief Operating Officer Akram Atallah, will be replaced by Fadi Chehade this fall.
The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology’s controversial spectrum sharing report is about spurring economic growth and creating opportunities for making money, PCAST member Mark Gorenberg of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners told the International Symposium on Advanced Radio Technologies (ISART) Thursday. Gorenberg, managing partner of the venture capital firm, acknowledged that he knew little about spectrum before he was named to chair the PCAST working group that wrote the report and leaned heavily on the expertise of industry experts. Tom Power, the federal government’s deputy chief technology officer for telecommunications, warned that making the report federal policy isn’t a slam dunk.
The Senate agreed Thursday to begin debate on the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 (S-3414), but members were quick to trade barbs over the current bill’s ability to protect U.S. critical infrastructure systems from cyberattack. Sponsors of an alternative cybersecurity bill, the SECURE IT Act (S-2151), said they did not support the bill in its current form but agreed to move forward as long as there was an open amendment process.