“Study after study shows that [broadcast-newspaper] cross ownership is a plus for consumers,” said Newspaper Assn. of America Pres. John Sturm at a Media Institute lunch in Washington last week. He said the cross- ownership prohibition was “very legitimate if you're living 30 years ago… when communication in any town was the newspaper and, at best, a bare handful of television and radio stations.” Sturm said the FCC rule “ignores cable television, the Internet, satellite television, satellite radio, podcasting, blogs.” He urged media groups to “keep the heat on” to enact a federal shield law: “As recent events make clear, the ability to shield the identity of sources is critical to the flow of information.”
Notable CROSS rulings
As Canadian regulators seek to harmonize the nation’s BPL rules with the FCC’s, there’s every indication amateur radio operators will resist, and stiffly. A BPL consultation paper published in July by Industry Canada drew 100-plus comments, a spokeswoman said. Canada’s proposals, lauded by industry as promoting economies of scale for BPL gear makers, generally mirror FCC rules. As in the U.S., ham radio operators worry about emission limits. They want Industry Canada to delay rules until nascent technology spawns mitigation methods that let them share spectrum with radio services without harmful interference.
A draft order equally splitting 40 MHz of 2 GHz band mobile satellite service (MSS) spectrum between TMI/TerreStar and ICO is among several circulating at bureau level, we're told. The FCC earlier this year tentatively decided to give ICO and TMI/TerreStar each 1/3 of the spectrum, soliciting comment on how to allocate the other 1/3. One draft order, still at the International Bureau, would give each firm 2x10 MHz, we're told. No final draft has been circulated on the 8th floor, but that’s expected soon.
SBC and AT&T cleared the last regulatory obstacle to their merger Fri. as the Cal. PUC voted 4-1 to approve the transaction. Cal. was the last to act of the 36 states whose merger approval was required by SBC-AT&T. With all necessary federal and state approvals in hand, the companies immediately closed on their merger. At the same meeting, the PUC also voted 3-2 to approve the Verizon-MCI merger.
By the end of the year, the FCC is expected to resolve several wireless proceedings, agency and industry sources said. The Commission is close to acting on a Remington Arms Co. petition and an air-to-ground (ATG) proceeding, plus 2GHz MSS spectrum reallocation, E-911 waiver petitions, designated entities, broadband radio service (BRS) and educational broadband service (EBS) rules. “Remington will be the first, and then ATG, then it’s up in the air,” an FCC source said.
A La. state court is to rule by Nov. 14 on whether BellSouth has made a case to overturn the voter-approved Lafayette, La., municipal broadband project. State 15th Judicial Dist. Judge Durwood Conque was to rule Nov. 3, but delayed ruling for up to 10 days because BellSouth wanted to see the judge’s reasoning in a written order. The central issue is whether state law allows the city’s utility system to pledge revenue from its energy, water and sewer operations to make debt payments on bonds for the new telecom business unit. BellSouth has argued the city was playing semantic games with its bond ordinance to sidestep state laws meant to prohibit cross subsidies of municipal utilities. The city argued that the pledge wasn’t a subsidy so the laws don’t apply
Tampa Bay ISP executives complain that a Verizon U- turn on selling them FiOS broadband fiber transport confirms that Bells, freed of regulatory access requirements, will freeze competitors out of broadband. Some said they believe Verizon dangled the product, Fiber Broadband Access (FBAS), before them simply to help persuade the FCC it wasn’t necessary to require Bells to offer broadband access -- only to yank it upon winning the broadband deregulation order in Aug.
“The broadcast flag is not dead,” Viacom CTO Paul Heimbach said Wed. Discussing digital rights management at the Satellite Application & Content Delivery Conference in N.Y., Heimbach said “efforts are being made to resurrect the broadcast flag,” though his keynote speech wasn’t specific on those efforts. “The idea of the broadcast flag is to protect over-the-air digital content from illegal distribution,” he said. “The concern it addresses is that it content] will be illegally retransmitted on the Internet.” Viacom and others now have a Supreme Court ruling - Grokster - “to use as a way to address” digital rights, he said: “And there are other ways to address this problem too… ways to wean users away from illegal peer-to-peer networking and cross- industry cooperation.”
VIENNA, Austria -- Harmonization of international regulation on IT security isn’t happening, said Michael Colao, dir.-Information Management at Dresdner Kleinwort & Wasserstein, during a panel discussion at the RSA Security Conference here. “There are many talks about harmonizing, but we just don’t see the fruits from it,” Colao told us. There were, he said, regional attempts at greater harmonization in the Asia-Pacific but even EU-wide harmonization hasn’t worked out, and the U.S. is going its own way.
SAN MATEO, Cal. -- A red flag on city use of Wi-Fi has been raised by an FCC official. “You have to be very careful,” Alan Scrime warned city officials, vendors and others at the World Internet Institute’s Digital Cities Convention here late Tues. Because Wi-Fi is unlicensed, “it’s not a guaranteed service,” said Scrime, chief of the Policy & Rules Div., FCC Office of Engineering & Technology.