FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski abandoned trying to use Title II authority in the net neutrality order, but his proposed overhaul of the Universal Service Fund may revive the reclassification debate, an industry official and a former Obama administration adviser each told us. Genachowski wants to refocus the fund to support high-speed broadband, and his staff has drafted a notice of proposed rulemaking that the commission is expected to vote on next week. Congress is poised to jump into the universal service deliberations (CD Jan 28 p4).
A Time Warner Cable executive’s comments show the company is “warehousing spectrum” that could be used to build out Internet service to underserved markets, NAB President Gordon Smith wrote the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Commerce committees. Statements by Time Warner Cable Chief Operating Officer Rob Marcus on a conference call last week to discuss Q4 results (CD Jan 29 p7) amounted to a “surprising admission,” Smith wrote. It comes “at a time when other press reports have indicated that wireless carriers are sitting on as much as $15 billion in spectrum that has yet to be deployed,” he wrote in a letter Friday. Hours after the NAB released the document Monday, CTIA criticized it as “baffling.” The wireless and broadcast industries have been at odds over whether a spectrum shortage is approaching.
Another wireless bill to give the 700 MHz D-block to public safety is in the works, from Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, the Commerce Committee’s ranking member, a GOP committee staffer told us Friday. A White House endorsement late Thursday of D-block reallocation brought cheers from lawmakers with reallocation bills and silence from House Commerce Committee leaders who have supported a commercial auction.
TORONTO -- With Canada’s DTV transition seven months away, broadcasters are fighting over the government’s plans to make stations air two different public service announcements (PSAs) about the switchover several times each day. In recent comments to the Canadian Radio-TV and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), national broadcasters CTVglobemedia Inc. and Shaw Media and Quebec broadcaster V Interactions Inc. complained about the potential revenue loss of running the pair of PSAs. Other major broadcasters, such as CBC/Radio-Canada, complained that the government’s proposed PSAs could confuse viewers by overloading them with too much information at once. Consumer groups complained that the government’s plans wouldn’t go far enough in educating the public.
A senior FCC official said Friday Verizon and MetroPCS filed challenges to the net neutrality rules too early, because the text of the order hasn’t been published in the Federal Register. The commission asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to put off a deadline to respond to a motion by Verizon that the case go to the panel that heard the Comcast case.
SAN FRANCISCO -- Vendors and conference organizers at the annual tribute to Apple products said they remain confident that the company will continue to churn out successful products, with or without Chairman Steve Jobs, who is on his second medical leave from the CEO position since January 2009. They said they're confident Jobs has created a team and corporate culture that will keep introducing products that can follow the success of devices such as the iPhone and iPad, and they said many of the products probably bear Jobs’ stamp.
Four months after the FCC approved final white spaces rules Sept. 23, the Office of Engineering and Technology said nine companies have been selected as geolocation database providers. The order was announced quietly, compared to the fanfare that marked the September order. But it marks a critical step toward the sale of the first devices designed to use the TV band to surf the Internet.
A delayed FCC proposal to let all pay-TV subscribers connect video devices, such as set-tops boxes and DVRs, bought from retailers or other third parties seems to have been slowed by concerns expressed by many multichannel video programming distributors and their content suppliers, said commission, industry and nonprofit officials on both sides of the issue. An AllVid rulemaking notice on a gateway device to connect consumer electronics to all MVPDs was supposed to have been voted on by commissioners last quarter, under the National Broadband Plan’s agenda. The item may not circulate until later this quarter or Q2, said officials inside and outside the commission watching development of the item.
AT&T’s Q4 profit of $1.1 billion represents a 60 percent drop year-over-year and is a result of a previously announced accounting changes, it said. The carrier added fewer contract customers in the quarter. AT&T is confident it will “grow through the disruption” of losing iPhone exclusivity, executives said on a conference call Thursday.
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