State regulators at their summer meeting advanced four more telecom policy resolutions, on numbering, broadband data collection, IP relay fraud and broadband over power line cost accounting. The Telecom Committee of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) decided against resurrecting a fifth policy matter, a controversial resolution narrowly defeated by its staff subcommittee that would have urged that federal Universal Service Fund reforms be neutral regarding providers and technologies.
Notable CROSS rulings
Major European media companies are demanding rejection of a proposal meant to avert an antitrust ruling on a model contract for collective management of copyrighted music on cable, satellite and the Internet. The contract was created by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC), which also put forth the disputed plan. In its July 10 letter to EC President Jose Barroso and Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, the media company coalition said CISAC’s proposal would fragment music rights licensing and harm smaller authors’ rights societies. CISAC declined to comment on the letter, citing a pending inquiry.
The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) faced a heaping plateful of telecom resolution proposals at its summer meeting in New York City, set to open Sunday, July 22. Proposed resolutions address Universal Service Fund (USF) reform, VoIP number use, broadband over power lines, wireless termination fees, the digital television transition and IP relay fraud.
BEVERLY HILLS, Cal. -- A federal appeals ruling that the FCC was “arbitrary and capricious” in penalizing “fleeting expletives” validates PBS’s creative position, PBS CEO Paula Kerger told the Television Critics Association. Kerger and PBS have been pressing the FCC to clarify obscenity rules in regard to the pubcaster’s coming Ken Burns film, The War.
Competition in Europe’s internal telecommunications market is improving but roadblocks remain, the European Commission (EC) said Thursday in its final official report before this fall, when it unveils proposals to reform the regulatory framework (NRF). The report, the second on how well so-called Article 7 procedures for gauging and ensuring competition in national markets is working, shows the “glass is at least half full,” a spokesman for Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding said. While national regulatory authority (NRA) analyses are more consistent as to competitiveness in their markets, they do not impose more uniform remedies in cases of significant market power, which keeps the cross-border market from reaching its potential, the EC said. Under Article 7 NRAs must assess 18 different markets, then report to the commission on their findings and propose any pertinent remedies. The 600-plus notifications received show that remedies do not always work as well as they could and that regulation varies by nation, even when market circumstances are similar, the report said. It noted areas of concern. In the retail fixed access market, involving connection to a fixed telephony network enabling calls and related services, some NRAs failed to mandate cost accounting and accounting separation, complicating efforts to set effective price regulation for related wholesale products and to monitor compliance. Wholesale line rental conditions vary across borders, and are not alway justified by diverging market conditions, the report said. In the fixed and mobile termination markets a large spread persists in average mobile termination rates; some regulators have allowed small operators to charge more, perhaps discouraging them from seeking more market share, the EC said. In the wholesale broadband markets for bitstream access and local loop unbundling, the high cost of duplicating the last mile of publicly switched phone networks means former monopolists retain a very strong position in the market for unbundled access, the report said. Retail call markets are noticeably more competitive now across the European Union, it said, urging NRAs to stress wholesale regulatory enforcement to make retail rules unnecessary. The wholesale mobile access and call origination market, generally deemed competitive, needs study to see if competition through mobile virtual operator networks suffices, the EC said. The report laid out “horizontal issues,” some to be addressed in the October NRF review. Experience since the NRF took effect in 2003 shows a need to streamline Article 7 procedures for cooperation between the EC and national regulators, the report said. And while the European Regulators Group (ERG) continues to work with the EC cooperatively, and NRAs admit the remedies they impose lack consistency, regulatory guidelines “aren’t coming in time,” Reding’s spokesman said. The issue of which entity should be the “EU FCC,” authorized to impose and enforce competition remedies, is expected to loom in the coming NRF reform. The EC recently nominated itself for the job (CD June 1 p6). The revised NRF framework is not expected to take force before 2009 or 2010, the report said. Meanwhile, the EC will adopt a new version of its recommendation on relevant markets to be analyzed and Article 7 procedures later this year, it said.
Tribune should not get a waiver of newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership restrictions because the FCC does not allow exemptions of “indeterminate” length, as the company seems to want, said the United Church of Christ and the Media Alliance. In a joint response filed Friday with the FCC, they slammed the company and Sam Zell (CD June 29 p13), who is buying Tribune, for attacking their petition to deny the ownership waivers. “A large proportion of the two oppositions is devoted to feigned umbrage at petitioners’ alleged temerity and to restating the applicants’ basic positions rather than rebutting the petition to deny,” the church and the group said. Tribune and Zell avoid the “core legal issue” that the FCC cross-ownership rule is meant to promote media diversity, not consolidation, they said. Zell seeks FCC approval to acquire Tribune in a $8.2 billion leveraged buyout.
Tribune asked the FCC to dismiss objections to its request for temporary waivers of media cross-ownership rules. The company contended it needs the waivers for five markets where it owns TV stations and newspapers so it can be purchased for $8.2 billion by employees and real estate magnate Sam Zell. United Church of Christ and Media Alliance asked the commission to force the company to sell noncompliant stations (CD June 12 p9). Tribune said the waivers will not result in the formation of any new noncompliant properties and the FCC may lift a cross ownership ban when it completes a years-long media ownership review. The employee stock ownership plan that will get a stake in the company as part of the deal said the petitions to deny the waivers lack substance. “Despite their long- windedness, the challengers have set forth no credible or sustainable reason to delay or deny the proposed transfer of control,” said the employee filing. “Despite the size of the transaction and the length of the filings submitted to the Commission, this is in actuality a very easy and straightforward case.” Rival newspaper publisher and TV broadcaster Gannett said Tribune’s waivers should be granted “expeditiously.”
Major cable operators vary in the intensity with which they try to sell digital services to analog customers. Some -- Comcast in particular -- market assertively, hoping to move customers to digital. Others, like Time Warner Cable, are less emphatic. And some simply don’t push digital at customers. The marketing strategy spectrum varies by the kinds of digital services operators already provide, what they would like to provide and how they plans to offer those services, our survey of major cable operators found.
Tribune should get to keep its TV stations in markets where it owns daily newspapers, the Newspaper Assn. of America said in comments filed with the FCC. Tribune needs FCC waivers to keep the stations through its privatization. Tribune isn’t asking much, since the Commission is reviewing the rules that the company seeks to get out from under, the newspaper group said: “The uncertain status of the rule has left newspaper publishers and broadcasters in doubt for more than 10 years about what types of cross-ownership relationships ultimately will be permissible.” Tribune shouldn’t have to suffer financially from regulatory uncertainty, it said: “Tribune is merely asking the agency to maintain the status quo with respect to existing combinations pending the completion of the ownership rulemaking.” Free Press, Consumers Union and Consumer Federation of America disagreed. The FCC should play by historical rules still on the books, they said in comments: “It would be contrary to the Commission’s public duty to sanction a process whereby the rules are simply skirted with waiver upon waiver as requested by a firm with a history of noncompliance.”
The EC should be Europe’s telecom super-regulator, Information Society & Media Comr. Viviane Reding plans to say today (Fri.) at a broadband conference in Greece. Her proposals for revamping the 2003 e-communications regulatory framework won’t emerge until late Oct., but Reding will say for the first time that she believes the Commission, not the European Regulators Group (ERG), should oversee telecom regulation, with national regulatory authorities (NRAs) as advisors.