The FCC said it’s collecting data for the first time about how online video distributors operate and the extent to which they compete with or complement traditional pay-TV service. The questions are in a further notice of inquiry about the state of video competition released Thursday. The commission is required to submit a video competition report to Congress each year, but hasn’t produced one since January 2009. The forthcoming report, the FCC’s 14th, will look at the state of video competition from 2007 through June 30, 2010, the notice said. It also seeks comment on developments in the traditional pay-TV sector, and the prospects for broadcasters to build new businesses around delivering video on their digital spectrum.
Lawmakers are asking Apple for answers following the discovery that its iPod and iPad devices are regularly storing a list of its users’ locations. The findings were revealed Wednesday by Alasdair Allan, a senior research fellow at the University of Exeter, and Pete Warden, a former Apple programmer and founder of OpenHeatMap.com. The researchers claim “there’s no immediate harm” from the data records, but lawmakers are up in arms about the privacy implications of the discovery.
Public safety spending on 700 MHz D-block lobbying more than quadrupled in Q1 2011 compared to the same quarter last year, according to Q1 lobbying reports. The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials spent $80,563, 303 percent more than what the group spent in Q1 2010 and 66 percent more than Q4 2010. Meanwhile, the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association spent nearly five times what it did last year, and NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield said she expects the association of small rural telcos to continue spending at that level.
AT&T’s Q1 profit jumped 39 percent year-over-year to $3.4 billion though the company’s postpaid net additions plummeted 88 percent from a year earlier to 62,000. Executives insisted that customers stayed with AT&T despite Verizon’s iPhone launch. AT&T remains concerned about long-term capacity constraints as it relates to spectrum, “and that’s one of the things that will hopefully be relieved with the T-Mobile transaction,” Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T’s mobility and consumer markets, said on a conference call Wednesday.
A federal appeal court ruling that EchoStar violated an injunction barring it from continuing to sell satellite receivers/DVRs that infringed a TiVo patent leaves EchoStar with a range of options, analysts said. EchoStar said it will likely appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s finding that it’s in contempt of the injunction. But the ruling could also represent table stakes for a possible settlement, analysts said.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski reiterated the importance of holding voluntary, incentive auctions as an available tool to free up more spectrum, during a Q-and-A with David Rubenstein, co-founder of the Carlyle Group, at the Washington Economics Club Wednesday. The FCC is focused on tackling two big spectrum issues: How to free up more spectrum and how to reduce barriers to deploy infrastructure, Genachowski said.
The Federal Trade Commission will complete its analysis of the news business within “the next month or so” and the tone of the report may not be as bleak as it first appeared, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said at a Federal Communications Bar Association luncheon Wednesday. “I'm not so worried about that,” Leibowitz said. “There are a lot of great stories about new start-ups.” The report will likely suggest that the government help the news industry by putting more information online and may look at competition rules, Leibowitz said.
Sprint Nextel and Cellular South turned up the heat on federal regulators to reject AT&T’s $39 billion buy of T-Mobile, a deal announced one month ago on March 20. Critics and supporters of the deal told us they expect to see opposition intensify, especially after AT&T formally seeks approval of the transaction in a filing at the FCC expected to be made Thursday.
The FCC should use its ancillary authority under Section 154(i) of the Telecom Act to apply anti-Caller-ID “spoofing” rules to VoIP providers, the Department of Justice said in a filing at the FCC. “Although the Commission has not classified interconnected VoIP service as a telecommunications service for the general purposes of Title II, it has previously used its ancillary authority … to extend many common carrier obligations to VoIP providers,” said criminal division Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein in Justice’s comments. “Here, the Commission’s ancillary authority under Section 154(i), in conjunction with the provisions of the Truth in Caller ID Act, is sufficient to empower the Commission to regulate such providers.” The commission is in the midst of a rulemaking on how to implement the 2009 Act, and comments came pouring into docket 11-39 this week.
The FCC’s proposal to revamp the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation apparently could benefit some states while hurting others, according to comments in the proceeding. But states in general supported retaining and enhancing a state role in any rewrite. The FCC is expected to complete some of the USF overhaul by late summer (see separate report in this issue).