LAS VEGAS -- Recent tax law incentives and other policy developments allowed AT&T to accelerate its 4G rollout beginning this year, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets CEO Ralph de la Vega told about 2,000 developers meeting here prior to the start of the CES convention. He said LTE deployment will be largely complete in 2013, and the company will deploy 20 new 4G devices this year.
MetroPCS’s changes to its 4G service plans make clear why all FCC net neutrality rules should apply to wireless, Free Press said Tuesday. MetroPCS’s $40 per month service, unveiled Monday, allows Web browsing and use of YouTube, but appears to create a “walled garden,” excluding such popular services as Skype and Netflix, the group said.
Some at the FCC hewed to its recent stance of mainly watching retransmission consent talks and not actively encouraging broadcasters and cable, DBS and telco-TV companies to reach new deals as a slew of contracts expired New Year’s Day, commission officials said Tuesday. Unlike in some previous disputes, including those expiring Jan. 1, 2010, commissioners’ offices weren’t in constant communication with broadcasters and pay-TV providers whose retrans deals were expiring, they said. Career FCC staffers, including at the Media Bureau, also don’t seem to have been involved in many deals, a commission official said.
LAS VEGAS -- On the eve of CES, which opens Thursday, broadcasters and TV makers began to lay out their plans for mobile DTV in 2011. The Open Mobile Video Coalition, which has been helping coordinate broadcasters’ technology efforts around mobile DTV admitted four manufacturer members, marking the first time it opened its doors formally to anyone other than TV broadcasters. Dell, Harris, LG Electronics and Samsung Mobile are the charter members of OMVC’s new Mobile DTV Forum, OMVC said. The move will allow broadcasters and device and equipment makers to work together more easily, said Anne Schelle, executive director of OMVC.
A $1.2 million indecency fine against 44 ABC affiliates was vacated Tuesday by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. The decision cited a Supreme Court ruling sending back to the FCC its policy that fleetingly indecent content could be found indecent. The 2nd Circuit also revealed that it recently turned down a U.S. government request that the court rehear en banc its affirmance of its earlier Fox ruling (CD July 14 p1). That puts all eyes back on the Supreme Court, which the government is expected to ask to hear Fox, said advocates on both sides of the issue.
The California Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that police may search an arrested suspect’s cellphone without a search warrant. The Ohio Supreme Court reached the opposite conclusion last year.
The FCC acted within its authority under the Communications Act in approving in 2008 a shot clock for wireless tower zoning decisions, CTIA and Verizon Wireless said in a filing with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. The court hasn’t set a date for oral argument in a challenge to the rule filed in October by Arlington and San Antonio, Texas.
The FCC will take back high-cost universal service money given up by eligible telecommunications carriers and reduce the caps in the states where the relinquishing telcos had been operating, the commission said in an order published late Thursday. The commission said redistributing the forgone cash to competitors wouldn’t necessarily help deploy high-speed broadband and “could simply subsidize duplicative voice service.” The order (dockets 05-337 and 96-45) paves the way for commission to offer direct USF subsidies for broadband. It takes effect immediately.
Reversing the FCC on net neutrality will be one of the House Commerce Committee’s “first big tests,” and the subject of one of the committee’s “first big hearings,” said the committee’s new chairman, Fred Upton, R-Mich. In an interview Friday with conservative radio talk host Hugh Hewitt, Upton said he hopes to find bipartisan support for a resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act. Meanwhile, new Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said he plans hearings on whether the Obama administration plans to “abuse the regulatory process” and how to stop leaks of confidential information on the Internet.
In a precedent-setting move, the cable industry will embrace a telco-style PON (passive optical network) technology for delivering multimedia services over new fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) networks.