FCC Office of Engineering & Technology (OET) Chief Edmond Thomas told reporters Thurs. that his office had a firm understanding of the technical implications of different plans for mitigating public safety interference at 800 MHz. “I think now more policy considerations are taking front and center,” he told reporters in a tour of the agency’s lab in Columbia, Md. “We basically separated the technical facts from the technical fictions.” Thomas reiterated what top FCC staffers have said in recent weeks -- a proposal is expected to be ready for FCC approval by the end of the year.
Country of origin cases
EchoStar’s recent unofficial offer for certain Loral assets has satellite industry analysts and officials questioning its next move. “Charlie Ergen [EchoStar chmn.] had the opportunity to buy PanAmSat… but he walked away from that. Nobody thought he was really interested in the fixed satellite services (FSS) business. I don’t quite grasp the interest,” TelAstra’s Roger Rusch said. Loral confirmed late Tues. it had received an unofficial offer in which EchoStar proposed not only to buy some of the same assets Intelsat was considering in its $1.1 billion bid for Telstars 4-8 and 13 (CD July 16 p6), but said it “also has indicated an interest in acquiring the balance of Loral’s FSS fleet and its satellite manufacturing assets.”
As expected, the FCC Wed. lifted a condition on the merger of AOL and Time Warner that had prevented the merged company from offering video and other advanced services over its Instant Messaging (IM) system. The vote was 3-2, with the 2 Democratic commissioners dissenting. AOL-TW said it was pleased that the FCC had lifted the restriction: “The FCC clearly recognized that text-based instant messaging today is highly competitive.” Sources familiar with the company said they expected AOL-TW to roll out advanced instant messaging services later this year.
The FCC Wireless Bureau turned down as moot a request for grace periods by General Wireless Inc. (GWI), which sought additional time for the first round of quarterly installment payments due on its PCS licenses. GWI was an original C-block bidder that entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after the PCS auctions and became involved in litigation similar to that of NextWave. In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court turned down an FCC request to review a 5th U.S. Appeals Court, New Orleans, ruling that sided with GWI on the $166 million valuation of its licenses, which was just a fraction of its original bid. The carrier had bid $1.06 billion for the spectrum in 1996 for 14 PCS licenses. GWI submitted its down payments on time and received the licenses in 1997. As part of payment plan restructuring that the FCC undertook in 1997 and 1998 to help C-block licensees that ran into financial trouble after the auctions, the Commission had extended to 90 days an original 60-day nondelinquency period for payments due when obligations resumed. A letter to GWI from the bureau’s Auctions, Finance and Market Analysis Branch said the company had opted to resume payments for all of its spectrum under the terms set by an adversary proceeding in bankruptcy court. “The suspension of payment deadlines and the process of considering and adopting financial relief for all C-block licensees provided a period of well over a year in which no payment was required of GWI,” the branch said. “Given this suspension of the installment payment obligations that are the subject of the instant grace period requests, GWI’s grace period requests are moot.”
Acknowledging the huge public outcry over the FCC’s new media ownership rules, Chmn. Powell said Wed. he would form a new task force to study localism in TV and radio broadcasting and hold a series of public hearings. His announcement set off a firestorm among critics, who said he should have done that long before the FCC voted 3-2 June 2 to loosen media ownership rules. Powell and his supporters insisted localism and structural ownership were 2 separate issues, and he refused to grant a stay of the new rules, due to take effect Sept. 4. Several public interest groups and 2 FCC commissioners asked for a stay.
The FCC responded to several petitions for reconsideration on service rules for the 27 MHz in separate bands between 216 MHz to 2.3 GHz, which have been reallocated from govt. to nongovt. use. The service rules cover swathes of spectrum at 216-220 MHz, 1390-1395 MHz, 1427-1429 MHz, 1429-1432 MHz, 1670-1675 MHz and 2385-2390 MHz. In its response, the FCC: (1) Declined to impose coordination procedures on the 1432-1435 MHz band licensees that operated within 100 miles of 1435-1525 MHz flight test sites. (2) Instructed the American Hospital Assn.’s American Society of Health Care Engineering (ASHE) and the Land Mobile Communications Council to present a joint coordination plan for the 1427-1432 MHz band, which is used by the wireless medical telemetry service and site-based nonmedical telemetry, within one year. (3) Declined to require that each 1392-1395 MHz band station register with the ASHE upon launching operation, saying that such a requirement would run counter to the regulatory flexibility that came with a geographic area license. (4) Changed the channel plans in the original order for the 217-220 MHz and 1427-1432 MHz bands to allow licensees to use 25 kHz or 50 kHz bandwidths with center frequencies that reached certain revised accuracy points. The Commission said the original reallocation decision had made allocation of 1390-1392 MHz and 1430-1432 MHz to nongeosynchronous satellite orbit mobile satellite service feeder links contingent on a decision at the World Radio Conference in 2003. The FCC said that the WRC approved a decision to make a secondary allocation for NGSO MSS feeder uplinks and downlinks in that spectrum. The international allocation is based on the completion of compatibility studies. The FCC reiterated that terrestrial and satellite sharing rules were to be addressed in a separate proceeding for that band.
The 3rd U.S. Appeals Court, Philadelphia, “won” a judicial lottery and will consider multiple appeals of the FCC’s new ownership rules. The Media Access Project (MAP) filed in the 3rd Circuit on behalf of Philadelphia-based Prometheus Radio Project (CD Aug 15 p11) while all the broadcast appeals on both sides of the case (including 3 of the TV networks, excepting ABC) were filed in the D.C. Circuit, which had original jurisdiction and had remanded portions of the ownership rules to the FCC. An attorney involved in the case pointed out the 3rd Circuit still could transfer the case to the D.C. Circuit “in the interests of justice.” Another attorney told us “it’s not over yet,” saying there were “strong reasons” why the D.C. Circuit with original jurisdiction should hear the appeals.
Arianespace announced an additional postponement of its Flight 162. The launch, originally scheduled for Aug. 28, had been rescheduled for Sept. 3 due to a client request (CD Aug 13 p9). Now, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has requested an additional delay to allow for retesting of certain satellite components, ISRO said. ISRO said its Insat-3E would be ready in 3-4 weeks, at which point Arianespace would determine a new launch window.
SBC finally completed settlement of DSL marketing discrimination charges by the Cal. ISP Assn. (CISPA), although only after the Bell accepted still more concessions demanded by critics. The Cal. PUC approved the settlement, conditioned on the modifications, which the parties promptly accepted. The actions apparently ended the dispute almost 2 years after CISPA filed its regulatory complaint and nearly a year after the parties thought they had settled it. The deal puts off consideration of SBC’s ability to offer voice-over- DSL (VoDSL) on loops sold to independent ISPs.
SBC made test calls in Cal. last week and found that MCI didn’t pay it to terminate a number of its long distance calls, SBC said in an Aug. 12 letter to MCI CEO Michael Capellas. “We have compelling evidence that the SBC Telephone Companies are not being paid appropriate terminating access charges for a substantial proportion of MCI’s long distance traffic and that this scheme is ongoing,” said the SBC letter signed by John Atterbury, group pres.- operations. Describing somewhat unusual calling patterns, SBC said it wasn’t being compensated for “at least 60 percent of MCI-originated long distance test calls” that started on SBC’s local network, were carried by MCI and eventually connected to other SBC local customers. “In other words,” the letter said, “these MCI long distance calls originate on the SBC local network in one exchange, they terminate on the SBC local network in another exchange, MCI bills the end-user for the full cost of these long distance calls but no terminating access charges will be paid to SBC by MCI… notwithstanding that SBC incurred the costs and did the work to terminate these MCI interexchange calls.”