BOSTON -- Usage-based data pricing can spur competition in broadband, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said of ISPs’ moves to systems not always charging flat prices regardless of consumption. NCTA CEO Michael Powell asked Genachowski about the practice in a Q-and-A Tuesday at The Cable Show, noting ISPs of all sorts, including cable operators, are starting to charge based on consumption. “Business model innovation is very important, particularly in new areas like broadband,” Genachowski replied. The commission’s 2010 net neutrality order allowed such practices. Nonprofits that backed the order criticized Genachowski’s remarks, while AT&T supported the comments.
Notable CROSS rulings
The FCC anticipates a complex but efficient process in handling about 6,500 outstanding FM translator applications so that it can move forward with implementation of the Local Community Radio Act, agency officials said. “We're confident we can carry this out, but we are certainly concerned about the level of complexity and our ability to efficiently process remaining applications,” said Peter Doyle, Audio Division chief of the Media Bureau. “The processing rules that will be put in place will be strictly enforced,” he said Wednesday during a forum at the FCC: “Those folks who are seeking waivers and case-by-case determinations are going to face a very difficult path."
Senate Commerce Committee members evaluated the FCC’s positions on wireless competition, the E-rate program, net neutrality, spectrum incentive auctions and broadband deployment, during the agency’s first oversight hearing in three years. The commissioners would not say whether they planned to start an investigation into allegations of News Corp. misconduct, but said they were monitoring the situation. Newly minted FCC commissioners Ajit Pai and Jessica Rosenworcel were largely silent at the Wednesday hearing, and primarily deferred to established agency talking points.
It’s long past time for the FCC to junk cross-ownership rules limiting an owner’s holdings of daily newspapers and radio stations in the same market, companies that own both reported telling commission officials. There’s been a “consistency of the Commission’s pronouncements over 42 years concerning the limited role that radio plays in original newsgathering and dissemination, particularly with respect to local news,” a lawyer for Bonneville International and Scranton Times LP told an aide to Commissioner Robert McDowell (http://xrl.us/bm8btz). “The rule serves none of the long-standing policy goals that purportedly have served to justify the FCC’s broadcast ownership restrictions -- competition, localism, and diversity.” The agency’s quadrennial media ownership review rulemaking notice proposed ending the rule (CD Jan 20 p4), a regulation which the companies said “seems to be little more than an after-thought in the larger debate over the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership” limit. That’s even as the agency has sought comment on the paper/radio rule seven times since 1996, representatives of the companies reported telling Chief Bill Lake and others in the Media Bureau (http://xrl.us/bm8bu6). “Newspapers and radio do not compete in the same product market, a determination long established by FCC precedent and upheld by reviewing courts.” The filings are in docket 09-182.
NEW ORLEANS -- The expected spectrum crunch was a hot topic at CTIA’s annual meeting, which ended Thursday. Numerous carrier officials told us spectrum remains a major concern, especially in light of the recent NTIA report on the 1755-1850 MHz band, which said clearing the band would cost $18 billion. Many questions remain about the pending FCC voluntary incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum and the extent to which there will be broadcaster buy-in, especially in major markets.
BRUSSELS -- Talks on revising the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) should focus on the high-level principles needed to spur investment and boost network capacity to meet demands in the coming decades, executives told a workshop on talks to revise the ITU treaty later this year. Internet governance issues are on the front line, said an executive representing 45 operators in 25 countries.
LONDON -- It’s too soon to regulate the Internet, particularly in the area of net neutrality, speakers from telcos, Facebook and Skype said Thursday at the IIR telecom regulation forum. The Internet is only 20 years old, an adolescent “full of potential but also full of doubts,” said Jean-Jacques Sahel, Skype government and regulatory affairs director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The net neutrality debate, which shows no signs of abating, is part of a much larger discussion about commercial models in the Internet and telecom sectors, said Telefonica Group Regulatory Policy Director Robert Murik. It’s too early to regulate because no one knows where this is going, he said.
Disney, Dish Network, NBCUniversal and NCTA weighed in for the first time on the FCC’s media ownership rulemaking, with replies reaching different conclusions. Disney questioned the very need for the review given the “realities of today’s market” that include the availability of new media. Dish, among those seeking changes to retransmission consent rules, wants the forthcoming order to bar separately owned stations in the same market from jointly negotiating retrans deals. Comcast’s NBCUniversal said local news sharing agreements shouldn’t be attributable under ownership rules. If required, that could bar LNS deals in some circumstances. The NCTA said a question in December’s rulemaking notice (CD Dec 23 p1) about extending carriage rights to a type of low-power TV station that must meet the same rules as regular broadcasters raised its concern.
Tribune’s unsecured creditors’ committee backed the FCC media ownership rulemaking notice proposals as being “fully consistent with the expeditious grant of the Exit Applications and the Waiver Requests” the company has pending at the agency. The committee backed reinstating a rule struck down by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that has a presumption for waivers of cross-ownership rules limiting common ownership in the same market of daily newspapers and radio or TV stations. Tribune’s “applications and waiver requests should be expeditiously processed to enable Tribune to emerge from bankruptcy promptly after Bankruptcy Court confirmation of the reorganization plan,” the committee said in replies Tuesday in docket 09-182 (http://xrl.us/bm38mx). Others also commented. (See separate report in this issue.)
Two months after the FCC’s declaratory ruling to “remind” carriers about the longstanding prohibition on traffic restriction, call completion problems aren’t getting any better, several rural carriers and state public utility commissioners told us. Call completion will remain a problem until the FCC actively enforces rules already on the books, they said, stressing the inability of state commissions to deal with problems that cross state lines. According to a survey by network and infrastructure company Anpi Zone presented Thursday at the “IP Solutions” conference in Indianapolis, more than 60 percent of ILEC and CLEC respondents said call-quality problems have either not improved or gotten worse since the declaratory ruling.