Industry executives and disability rights advocates should continue to strive toward consensus, as they begin work on recommending implementation of legislation signed into law last fall that updates the Communications Act to make new technologies accessible, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said Thursday. “A spirit of consensus and partnership among the disabilities community and the industry” preceded passage of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, he said. “The law is not something that was done to industry, it was done as something with industry,” he told the first meeting of the Video Programming Accessibility Advisory Committee.
Those concerned about Comcast-NBC Universal intensified their FCC lobbying, as a nonprofit group opposed to the cable operator’s plan to buy control of NBC Universal said new pledges (CD Jan 13 p14) from the buyer fall short, filings posted Thursday to docket 10-56 show. Viacom, the largest programmer to express concerns about carriage of independent programming after the deal, teamed up with much smaller indie channel WealthTV to lobby aides to Commissioners Michael Copps and Commissioner Robert McDowell. The eighth floor continues to closely review the multibillion dollar deal, and commissioners are considering making changes to the Dec. 23 draft Media Bureau order conditionally approving the deal, agency officials said. Some said that no changes have yet been proposed by commissioners.
NTIA’s voicing spectrum interference concerns on LightSquared business plans in a letter to the FCC Wednesday (CD Jan 13 p3) may hurt the company’s ability to begin service relatively quickly as a 4G provider, said satellite industry executives. They said it’s still unclear how the FCC will handle LightSquared’s waiver request. A delayed approval could create major development worries for LightSquared, the executives said. The NTIA letter amounts to a strong brake on what has been a relatively quick regulatory process for LightSquared, they said. LightSquared is seeking FCC approval of its plan that could allow terrestrial-only service in spectrum currently allocated for mobile satellite services use.
Chairman Julius Genachowski is “hopeful but not certain” that Congress will authorize the FCC to hold voluntary incentive auctions to free up spectrum for wireless broadband, he said Wednesday. Recent studies have predicted that spectrum demand will increase by a factor of 35 but Genachowski said he thought that was “too conservative” and Congress must move quickly to help the U.S. regain its world-wide technological lead. Without contiguous spectrum blocks, wireless carriers can’t create broadband networks and tech companies will move overseas, Genachowski said at the Brookings Institution. There’s a technology “crisis” in the U.S., he said. “The gap is going to increase every month we wait."
Interconnected VoIP subscriptions jumped 22 percent to 26 million in 2009, while the number of switched access lines fell 10 percent to 127 million, the FCC said Wednesday in a report on local telephone competition. The number of wireline retail connections fell by 6 percent to 153 million in 2009, the report said. The report may show a decline in the total number of wirelines, but VoIP still relies on wireline broadband connections and many wireless services still rely on wireline facilities, said a spokeswoman for the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association. Policymakers “must make sure that high-cost support mechanisms are available to support the deployment and maintenance of critical network facilities,” she said.
The FCC Wireless Bureau made significant progress over the last year following up on March’s National Broadband Plan, Chief Ruth Milkman said in an interview Wednesday, after speaking at an FCBA lunch. Milkman also said the bureau plans to play an active role in the Universal Service Fund proceeding early in 2011.
SEATTLE -- YouTube is not a credible replacement for a dedicated public, educational and governmental (PEG) channel, activists told a city advisory board Tuesday night. They were protesting Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn’s proposed 2011-2012 budget, which would slash funding for PEG by 85 percent, to $100,000 a year. The decision was defended by the city’s chief technology officer given the availability of low-cost Web streaming. Several content producers for the nonprofit Seattle Community Access Network (SCAN), whose 10-year city contract to run channels 23 and 77 ended in December, suggested ideas for expanding access but said the bulk of their viewers wouldn’t migrate online.
Two House Republicans think that two bills to scale back FCC authority over the Internet are better than one. Reps. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., each introduced a bill last week opposing the FCC’s recent net neutrality order. A Blackburn spokesman said Wednesday that multiple bills may be necessary to get their point across to the FCC. Meanwhile, former Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., said he doesn’t believe the GOP’s related Congressional Review Act effort is likely to succeed.
FTC enforcement action is coming under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), including enforcement based on the collection of information about kids through mobile applications, a commission lawyer indicated Wednesday. “Our enforcement efforts continue” under COPPA, “so stay tuned for the next set,” said Phyllis Marcus, a senior attorney in the advertising practices division. And broadening the definition of protected personal information online “is a very interesting area that is ripe for potential development,” she said on an American Bar Association webcast about marketing to children.
GENEVA -- U.S. plans to make available 500 MHz of spectrum for wireless broadband in the next 10 years shouldn’t depend on L-band frequencies considered crucial for weather and space agencies, the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites wrote Commerce Secretary Gary Locke. The Jan. 3 letter was sent on behalf of NOAA, NASA and 13 other meteorological and space agencies in the Coordination Group for Meteorological Satellites.