The Ill. House Public Utilities Committee advanced a controversial bill (SB-885) that would force state regulators to substantially increase SBC’s UNE rates. The panel voted 12-5 to attach the UNE provision as an amendment to the bill, which originally was an innocuous measure to make technical corrections in the state Public Utility Act. The amendment would require the Ill. Commerce Commission (ICC) to make certain changes in the depreciation and network usage factors that go into cost-of-service calculations, and would freeze current costs for CLECs at present levels for 2 years for the first 35,000 lines. CLEC interests assailed the amended bill as anticompetitive. They questioned why it was necessary since the ICC earlier this year opened a docket to reconsider SBC’s UNE rates. In that proceeding, the ICC staff said UNE rates SBC proposed were based on a flawed interpretation of the TELRIC costing model. The staff filed a “corrected” TELRIC cost estimate and urged the ICC to adopt its suggested rates rather than those of SBC. The Ill. Citizens Utility Board also filed testimony saying SBC had assumed a much higher level of competition in Ill. than actually existed or was likely to exist in the near future. And the Ill. Attorney Gen. said SBC’s actual loop costs were low because competition was most active in high-density, low-cost markets. SBC’s proposal, the AG said, would give SBC in Ill. the highest UNE loop rates in the nation.
Country of origin cases
The FCC’s Satellite Div. authorized EchoStar to use 11 DBS channels at 2 different locations in an order released Wed. EchoStar 4 will be relocated from 119 degrees W to 157 degrees W to use channels 1,3 and 5, the Commission said, and to use the remaining 8 even channels from 18-32 at 148 degrees W via EchoStar 2. EchoStar originally had requested 11 channels at 157 degrees W, which the Commission refused, directing the company to choose from 148 degrees or 175 degrees W for 8 channels (CD Jan 9 p10). EchoStar responded that the requirement to choose from 2 slots was a departure from the Bureau’s “first-come, first-served” policy.
The FCC at next week’s agenda meeting will take up a long-awaited order and further notice on secondary markets for spectrum. The order, following up on a 2000 proposed rulemaking, is expected to remove the barriers erected by a 40-year-old case called Intermountain Microwave that has been interpreted to mean that a licensee must keep relatively tight hands-on control of licensed property, making spectrum leasing difficult.
The FCC’s International Bureau denied a petition for reconsideration by Columbia Communications Corp. (CCC) to operate a Ku-band satellite in the 47 degrees W slot. The denial is the 3rd by the bureau on that issue. Columbia had said its application for the 49 degrees W slot, filed after a freeze, should be reinstated, the bureau said. Columbia had requested that the application be held in abeyance and subsequently filed an amended application that the bureau said replaced the original: “[W]e disagree with Columbia that holding an application in abeyance for more than a certain amount of time obligates the Bureau to continue to hold that application in abeyance until such time that it can be granted.”
The FCC entered a consent decree with Qwest Wed. in which the company agreed to pay the govt. $6.5 million and admitted violating a ban on providing long distance in its territory before receiving Commission approval. The payment eclipses a $6 million fine the FCC levied on SBC in Oct. for violating a condition of its 1999 merger with Ameritech, which the agency touted at the time as its largest fine ever.
Cable operators’ assertion that prices are rising because of programming costs was challenged by some senators in a Commerce Committee hearing Tues. on cable rates and media ownership. In particular, Senate Appropriations Chmn. Stevens (R-Alaska) had tough questions for cable operators and said he doubted that programming costs were driving up cable rates. Senate Commerce Committee Chmn. McCain (R- Ariz.) asked why a la carte pricing or tiering of cable channels wasn’t a common option for consumers.
More than a year after the launch of NPR2 on Sirius Satellite Radio, public radio officials are less than enthusiastic about its promise of bringing in new listeners, new pipelines for local programs and new revenue streams for public radio stations. Not only was the service debut delayed considerably, they say, it failed to draw the kind of audience response that supporters of NPR2 had counted on to prevail over opponents of the proposal in the public radio industry.
House Commerce Committee Counsel Jessica Wallace said Tues. there would be many “thorny” DTV issues for the panel to decide. On a panel at an American Cable Assn. meeting in Washington, she said the upcoming DTV bill by Committee Chmn. Tauzin (R-La.) would be difficult to get through Congress and would require “difficult votes” of committee members. “We have a lot of education to do,” she said of the bill, expected to be introduced soon.
Canadian TV trade unions are appealing to the federal govt. to help save Canadian drama. The Canadian Coalition of Audio-visual Unions (CCAU), which represents more than 50,000 workers in the nation’s film and TV industry, asked the Canadian Radio-TV & Telecom Commission (CRTC), to increase regulation of dramatic fare on domestic airwaves. The unions seek limits on U.S. programming, like those in other countries that have hurt U.S. producers.
SBC proposed an amendment to an innocuous Ill. telecom bill (SB-885) that would force the Ill. Commerce Commission (ICC) to increase its UNE rates. The bill in its original form would make various technical changes in the Public Utility Act. But the amendment SBC wants to add would force the ICC to change certain assumptions relating to depreciation and network usage when calculating costs of service and would freeze current per-line CLEC costs for 2 years on their first 35,000 lines. SBC said the changes would “reform” a system that put UNE rates at 44% of actual cost, giving CLECs a 56% gross margin at SBC’s expense. SBC said the rate increases the bill would produce would move wholesale rates in Ill. from “dead last” to about the middle of the pack. The amendment was proposed in a joint hearing before the Senate Environment & Energy Committee and the House Public Utilities Committee, where it was opposed by CLECs that said the bill would be an end run around the Commerce Commission. That agency has a pending docket to reconsider SBC’s UNE rates. Hearings are to begin July 17, with a final order expected around Thanksgiving.