U.S. officials told reporters shortly after the last plenary session at the World Radio Conference (WRC) closed Thurs. that there was no agenda item with which they were returning home “empty-handed” (see separate reports below). U.S. WRC Ambassador Janice Obuchowski said that “in some cases there was less than complete and absolute victory” but that every item provided at least a path to future development or launch. She and other top-ranking officials at the conference in Geneva said the conference was marked by pragmatism and was surprisingly free of talk of broader political influences. Delegates also decided on a trimmer agenda for the next WRC in Geneva, with 21 items teed up.
Country of origin cases
Opponents at the World Radio Conference (WRC) last week beat back a proposal by the Arab states that would have limited the length of frequency assignments of satellites. The proposal, opposed by the U.S., never made it to a floor vote during a plenary session. But it sparked passionate debate about the spectrum needs of developed and developing countries. U.S. WRC Ambassador Janice Obuchowski said Thurs. this “sleeper” issue represented one of the most dramatic moments at the 4-week conference in Geneva, which was set to close July 4 with a signing ceremony.
Support for media ownership limitations continues to mount in the wake of action by the Senate Commerce Committee on legislation that would undo many of the FCC’s June 2 rule changes. Since it was marked up June 19, the bill (S-1046) to restore several media ownership rules has picked up some influential co-sponsors, raising the total of co-sponsors to 38. Senate Minority Leader Daschle (D-S.D.) is the most recent co-sponsor, signing onto the bill by Senate Appropriations Chmn. Stevens (R-Alaska) Fri.
The U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., sided with the FCC Tues. against a challenge to a decision to open certain rural cellular licenses for auction. Ranger Cellular argued that Sec. 309(l) of the Communications Act, which didn’t allow the Commission to accept new applications for certain commercial radio or TV stations, also covered cellular licenses. That was part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which also included Sec. 309(j), which required the FCC to use competitive bidding and ended its ability to use a lottery system for awarding most spectrum licenses. Ranger had told the court that cellphone service providers were “commercial radio” or TV stations that fell under Sec. 309(l), meaning the Commission couldn’t accept new applications. Ranger had filed applications in the late 1980s to compete in a lottery for certain rural service area cellular licenses. Before the FCC decided how to award those licenses, Congress passed the Balanced Budget Act, which essentially phased out its lottery system. That law stipulated that “competing applications for initial licenses or construction permits for commercial radio or television stations” filed at the FCC before July 1, 1997, should be treated as the only applicants eligible as qualified bidders under that proceeding. The court said that language barred the FCC from accepting new applications for covered “commercial radio” or TV stations. The FCC rejected Ranger arguments that cellphone providers were included in the provision for commercial radio or TV stations and moved forward with an auction in June 2002. The court said the FCC had shown that Sec. 309(l) could be read as covering only broadcast stations. “Although this reading is not the only possible interpretation of Sec. 309(l), it is certainly a reasonable one and therefore commands our deference,” the court said. It also didn’t side with public interest arguments raised by Ranger, including allegations that the Commission had failed to consider factors such as the length of time the original applications had been pending -- 13-14 years. “We think the Commission reasonably applied appropriate factors to the circumstances of the case,” the court said. The case was decided unanimously by the 3-judge panel, which included Chief Judge Douglas Ginsburg and Judges Harry Edwards and Merrick Garland.
The World Radio Conference (WRC) in Geneva reached a hard-fought compromise proposal Wed. on how to coordinate nongeosynchronous earth orbit (GEO) radionavigation systems, an issue that emerged as one of the thorniest of the conference. The agreement appeared to bridge what otherwise would have been an impasse between European administrations, which sought a regulatory-heavy coordination process, and the U.S., which backed coordinating radionavigation satellite systems (RNSS) through an informal consultation process. At our deadline Wed., the proposal, which has implications for Europe’s planned Galileo system and U.S. GPS operations, still awaited final approval in plenary before the WRC ends Fri. Despite the 11th-hour agreement, several sources said the outcome still was far from certain.
The Administrative Court of Cologne, Germany, suspended a surcharge for local call origination recently set by the German telecom regulator RegTP. In an interim decision, the court said the European Union (EU) didn’t allow a surcharge on interconnection charges, and the time limit set by the EU for balancing access deficits in the member states had “long since elapsed.” The court accused the RegTP of acting “unlawfully” when deciding on the surcharge in a separate procedure. Tele2, a pan-European telecom company, applauded the decision, saying it was “pleased” the court had “accepted the arguments against this local call surcharge and [had] taken the decision to suspend its implementation.”
The U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., upheld Tues. an FCC order that permitted Verizon to offer long distance service in Pa. Z-Tel had challenged the order, contending that the Commission had erred in finding that Verizon offered nondiscriminatory access to its wholesale billing services. The Telecom Act requires that Bell companies offer access to their local facilities, including billing functions, before being allowed to enter long distance.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Adlai Hardin, White Plains,N.Y., approved a request by NextWave to extend the company’s exclusivity period until Sept. 30. Previously, NextWave had an exclusive right to file a plan of reorganization through June 30. NextWave, in asking for more time to file another reorganization plan, told the court that before a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in March, it “was literally impossible for the plan process to move forward.” That high court ruling upheld a U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., decision that the FCC had erred in cancelling the company’s licenses for nonpayment. “Realistically, the debtors have only been able to move forward on the business and financing plans which will form the core of the plan of reorganization for the last several months,” NextWave told the court. NextWave, in its original request, said it needed more time to resolve remaining issues with some creditors, “primarily the FCC,” on the “amount and proposed treatment of their claims.” Separately, Hardin also granted an interim extension of NextWave’s severance program. He said that continuation of that program appeared likely to “maintain employee morale and aid the debtors in protecting the assets of the estate and reorganizing.” Meanwhile, an amendment to the FCC Reauthorization Act that passed the Senate Commerce Committee Thurs. (CD June 27 p1) would bar bankruptcy laws from being used to avoid, discharge or stay “any prepetition debt obligation” to the govt. that stemmed from an auction obligation. The amendment, by Committee Chmn. McCain (R- Ariz.), would be applied only prospectively but was designed to avoid the kind of legal snafu the Commission faced in the protracted NextWave case. The Supreme Court upheld the D.C. Circuit’s ruling that Sec. 525 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code precluded cancellation of NextWave’s licenses. Sec. 525 provides that a govt. agency may not revoke a license “solely because” a debtor hasn’t paid a debt that is dischargeable in bankruptcy court. The U.S. had warned in a filing at the Supreme Court on NextWave that if bidders were allowed to use bankruptcy law as a haven against auction payment obligations, it would create an incentive for speculative bids. It argued that without a requirement that licensees meet bid obligations, applicants could submit bids that exceeded their expected return on the spectrum “on the chance that the spectrum might increase in value.” The amendment to the Senate bill would stipulate that bankruptcy law not be applied to: (1) Avoid, discharge or stay any prepetition debt obligation arising from an auction. (2) Stay the payment obligations of a debtor to the U.S. “if such payments were a condition of the grant or retention of a license.” (3) Prevent the automatic cancellation of licenses for failing to comply with a monetary or nonmonetary condition for holding an FCC license.
The Alaska Regulatory Commission (ARC) decided that it had jurisdiction over AT&T’s prepaid calling card services and that the carrier must pay intrastate access charges on prepaid card calls between points within Alaska. The ARC (Case U-97-120) was ruling on a complaint by ATU Long Distance, alleging AT&T was providing intrastate prepaid services without ARC authorization and wasn’t paying access charges. AT&T said it didn’t need separate state operating authority and wasn’t liable for access charges because the services were enhanced services and were interstate in nature. AT&T said the services were enhanced by advertisements played during the course of a call, and were interstate because the call was routed to an out-of-state point where the advertising was inserted, then relayed to its termination. The ARC agreed that separate state operating authority wasn’t needed but said AT&T would owe access charges because the determining jurisdictional factors were the originating and terminating points of the call, not how it was routed. The ARC also said playing an ad during a call didn’t make it an enhanced service because it wasn’t an additional capability or service offered to the end user.
A day before the FTC’s national do-not-call (DNC) registry goes live, the FCC Thurs. updated its original Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) rules, adopted in 1992. The Commission said it also established a national DNC list that includes all telemarketers and covers both interstate and intrastate telemarketing calls. The action follows Congress’s enactment of the Do-Not-Call Implementation Act earlier this year (CD March 12 p6) that authorized funding for the FTC’s national registry and directed the agency to “maximize consistency” with the FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule.