The Local Community Radio Act doesn’t favor low-power over translator stations in the FM band, said the NAB and the owner of several hundred translators. Their filings and one from a provider of engineering data to low-power FM (LPFM) stations were posted to docket 99-25 Tuesday and Wednesday. Those filings and ones last week (CD Jan 11 p8) from a group representing LPFM stations and a dozen broadcasters seeking FCC permission to operate more translators come after a commission official encouraged comments on how the act applies to a translator auction. President Barack Obama signed the act this month.
LightSquared’s plans for mobile satellite services/ancillary terrestrial component spectrum is a cause for concern by government users but doesn’t face insurmountable problems, NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling wrote FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski in a letter Wednesday. Strickling said LightSquared’s proposed use of terrestrial spectrum “would create a new interference environment and it is incumbent on the FCC to deal with the resulting interference issues before any interference occurs.” LightSquared is seeking FCC approval for a business plan that could allow for purely terrestrial use of spectrum now allocated for MSS use (CD Nov 29 p2). The FCC asked for the NTIA’s thoughts about giving LightSquared a waiver of MSS/ATC rules, the letter said. LightSquared’s request amounts to a reallocation of spectrum and should receive much more testing before the FCC approves it, according to GPS interests, who say approval of LightSquared’s application threatens serious spectrum interference.
TORONTO -- Less than eight months before Canada’s DTV transition is to occur, it looks as if many Canadian households may lose TV service because their local over-the-air stations will go dark, they won’t have digital sets or set-top boxes equipped to receive DTV signals, or they just won’t know what’s happening. Like the FCC in the 2009 U.S. full-power broadcaster digital switch, Canada’s Radio-TV and Telecommunications Commission has taken a number of steps to coordinate and ease the Aug. 31 DTV transition. The CRTC has in recent months set deadlines, identified mandatory markets for conversion, spelled out alternatives to offering digital service in smaller markets and sought a government-funded and coordinated national public awareness campaign.
NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling Tuesday asked the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee to refocus its efforts on helping the agency identify spectrum to meet the administration’s goal of providing 500 MHz for broadband in 10 years. At the final meeting of the current CSMAC, the group also approved final versions of two sometimes controversial reports on “incentives” for getting more government spectrum into play for commercial use and on the benefits of unlicensed spectrum.
Five public interest groups led by Free Press said the FCC should investigate MetroPCS’s recently announced low-cost data plan, which would apparently preclude users from using Skype, Netflix and other popular services (CD Jan 5 p1). But customers would be able to watch YouTube videos. The Center for Media Justice, the Media Access Project, New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative and Presente.org signed the letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.
The FCC should dismiss a Nexstar and Mission Broadcasting emergency petition that asks the FCC to bar Time Warner Cable from importing distant signals into some upstate New York markets during a retransmission-consent dispute with Smith Media (CD Dec 30 p2), TWC said in an opposition filed with the FCC this week. Beyond failing in its arguments, the petition is moot because TWC stopped importing the distant signals and reached a carriage agreement with the Smith stations, it said. Furthermore, “TWC’s importation of those distant signals did not violate any Commission rule (and, contrary to Nexstar’s suggestion, was expressly authorized under TWC’s retransmission consent agreement with Nexstar),” TWC said.
Verizon Wireless confirmed long-time rumors that the iPhone 4 will be available for use on its network in early February. The device will be priced similarly to AT&T’s at $199 for a 16 GB phone and $299.99 for 32 GB with a two-year contract. The Rural Cellular Association praised the non-exclusive agreement, urging Verizon’s support in making popular devices like iPhone available to all RCA members within six months of their release.
The Internet backbone is becoming the next telecom battleground as the demand for online video throws traditional peering agreements out of whack, industry officials said. “There are constant discussions about how backbone providers, content providers and access providers learn to coexist in this new, video-driven world,” said Dennis Brouwer, senior vice president and general manager of backbone provider Savvis. “The thing that people don’t realize or tend to gloss over is that, depending on how those conversations go, it'll determine who’s going to invest, how much and where."
Draft FCC conditions on Internet video and network management in Comcast’s planned purchase of control in NBC Universal are the subject of close scrutiny from some commissioners, agency officials said Tuesday. They said Internet conditions in the draft Media Bureau order on the deal are getting significant attention in general on the eighth floor. The two Republican commissioners seem skeptical about whether all the Internet conditions are needed, said FCC and industry officials. Commissioners are also giving attention to arbitration conditions, the subject of a filing Tuesday by the two U.S. DBS companies, a commission official said.
The satellite industry must remain nimble in its innovation and work hard to come up with a “big new idea” to propel market growth, Intelsat CEO Dave McGlade said Tuesday at the Washington Space Business Roundtable. The big question is “how to get to that next level,” he said, using Sirius XM as an example of the right kind of idea. Venture capital, which most industries use as a vehicle for innovation, doesn’t “have a huge interest in our industry,” so a different vehicle may be necessary, he said. McGlade raised the idea of “maybe a new role” for an association.