That the FCC has made such incremental changes to media ownership rules since 1996 was a surprise to Harold Furchtgott-Roth, who became a Republican commissioner the next year. Just-departed Democratic member Michael Copps worries more mergers and acquisitions will continue.
Notable CROSS rulings
The FCC cleared the way for more than 1,000 FM translator stations to go on-air in two items that also start work on an upcoming opportunity for tribes and community groups to seek new low-power stations on that band. An order and a rulemaking notice released Monday night appeared to largely track with drafts the Media Bureau circulated for a vote (CD Feb 9 p6), which commissioners approved as also expected (CD March 8 p12) before Wednesday’s agency meeting. The items said new rules for a 2003 application window for translators will expand the pool of construction permits issued from Auction 83 by 29 percent to 4,500 and possibly more. The next window for LPFM seekers to get permits for those stations may be the last, the commission said, asking about changes to some ownership rules.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals handed AT&T and Verizon Wireless a loss in a dispute with incumbent LECs in North Carolina over a ruling on interconnection agreements by the North Carolina Utilities Commission. The wireless carriers challenged the NCUC’s ruling that they, the terminating wireless carriers, bear the responsibility of paying transit charges for calls that originate on the wireline company’s networks, cross an intermediate network operated by AT&T, and terminate with the wireless carriers. The NCUC also concluded that the wireless carriers could seek reimbursement from the rural LECs for these transit charges through reciprocal compensation arrangements. The NCUC determined that the obligation to pay transit charges depends on the location of the physical point of interconnection between and designated a single point located with the RLECs’ networks. The 4th Circuit asked the FCC for guidance. “No prior FCC order has addressed whether the originating carrier or the terminating carrier is responsible for paying transit charges to an intermediate carrier under the facts presented here,” the commission said in a brief (http://xrl.us/bmybsw). “Nor has the FCC clearly opined on whether the Communications Act authorizes state commissions to suspend or modify the application of federal pricing requirements to small rural telephone companies.” A lower court in North Carolina granted summary judgment in favor the ILECs and the state commission. The Richmond, Va.,-based appeals court agreed, in a decision by Judge Andre Davis. “Because we ultimately agree with the arguments advanced by the RLECs and the NCUC, we affirm the judgment of the district court,” Davis wrote (http://xrl.us/bmybtt). The NCUC’s decision “is worthy of some deference,” he said. “Although we review legal issues of a federal nature, the NCUC has ‘expertise and experience in applying [tenets of] communications law,'” the court said. “The NCUC proceedings involved evidence and argument, and the parties prefiled testimony, participated in an evidentiary hearing, and briefed the arguments.”
An Internet governance strategy to protect human rights, democracy and the rule of law online won approval Thursday from the 47 members of the Council of Europe, the organization said. The strategy is a key priority of the U.K., which holds the current CoE chairmanship, it said. It calls for 40 different actions centered around Internet openness, user rights, data protection, cybercrime, democracy and culture, and children and young people. The plan’s aims include: (1) Develop a “framework of understanding and/or commitments” to protect Internet universality and openness as a way of safeguarding free speech. (2) Craft human rights-based standards to protect the cross-border flow of legal online content. (3) Develop human rights policy principles on network neutrality. (4) Update CoE data protection conventions. (5) Boost international cooperation against cybercrime and terrorist use of the Net. (6) Strengthen global coordination to protect children against child pornography and sex abuse materials. The actions will be put in place between now and 2015 in close cooperation with partners such as the EU and U.N., ISPs and other private sector players, and civil society, the CoE said.
The FCC Thursday ordered Verizon Wireless, the SpectrumCo partners and Cox to file mostly unredacted versions of the marketing agreements they signed as part of a broader deal that includes the sale of AWS licenses to the carrier. The letter (http://xrl.us/bmxh5j) was signed by Wireless Bureau Chief Rick Kaplan and outlined a ruling that had been sought by opponents of the spectrum deals. He asked Verizon Wireless and the cable operators for the documents by the end of Monday.
TV stations need ownership flexibility because the spectrum auction the FCC wants to hold could hurt the industry unless it continues to use multicasting and other arrangements linking separately owned stations within a market, some broadcasters said. Networks and affiliates alike cited last month’s passage of spectrum legislation in saying the agency shouldn’t place new limits on use of multicast channels to transmit signals of two or more network affiliates. But networks and affiliates disagreed on whether the agency should lift a ban on common ownership of more than one top-four rated broadcast network. And nonprofits and station owners of all stripes disagree, in comments on a media ownership rulemaking notice, on whether new media ginned up enough competition to TV to warrant more broadcaster mergers and acquisitions, much as they disagreed in the last quadrennial review.
Verizon Wireless and cable companies shot back at critics of Verizon’s proposed buy of AWS licenses from SpectrumCo and Cox in a reply filed at the FCC. The companies said that by their calculations, in 98 percent of the counties covered the combinations will not push Verizon Wireless above the FCC’s spectrum screen, or the level at which the FCC would consider divestitures as part of any order approving the deals. Critics led by T-Mobile, small carriers, and public interest groups, took aim at the transaction last month, in various petitions to deny (CD Feb 23 p1). SpectrumCo is a joint venture of Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks.
Ignoring calls by Vodafone for a moratorium on mobile roaming regulation, the European Parliament Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) Committee on Tuesday backed European Commission-proposed rules intended to cap data roaming charges, cut costs for calls and texts, and let consumers buy cross-border roaming services from suppliers outside their home countries. The legislative report, authored by Angelika Niebler of Germany and the European People’s Party, sets lower retail price caps than the EC, aiming for a rate of euro 0.15 ($0.20) per minute for outgoing voice calls; euro 0.05 per minute for incoming voice calls; euro 0.05 per text message; and euro 0.20 per megabyte for data roaming, starting in July 2014. The report recommends requiring mobile operators to offer roaming services separate from domestic contracts beginning in March 2014. Home providers will have to notify customers of that right and switching to an alternative provider must be free. Domestic mobile operators will have to allow customers to access mobile local data services temporarily while abroad, akin to using a Wi-Fi hotspot, without having to unsubscribe from their existing data roaming contract or arrangement and while keeping their mobile number, the report said. Independent mobile virtual network operators complained earlier this month that the low ceilings proposed by lawmakers will squeeze them out of the mobile roaming market (CD Feb 9 p15). The new rules could see plenary action in April, the committee said. Tuesday’s vote was “another stepping stone towards better protection against excessive roaming charges in the EU,” said European Consumers’ Organization Director General Monique Goyens. “But we haven’t crossed the finish line yet.” While roaming calls and SMS costs are being driven down, “we should not see a lava lamp effect” where prices are hiked elsewhere, such as for data or national calls, she said. Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes meanwhile slammed Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao for saying, at the 2012 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Monday, that there should be a regulatory moratorium on roaming ceilings. Colao warned that unless the EU stops imposing prices cuts, mobile companies will slash investment in networks, The Guardian reported. Moves to regulate roaming charges are creating a “heaven or a hell scenario,” Colao was quoted as saying. The hell scenario is operators losing hundreds of millions in revenue to mobile termination rates and reducing their spending on networks, jettisoning jobs in the telecom, media, entertainment and applications-development sectors, he said. “Message to Vittorio and Vodafone: I call your bluff, and indeed do not respond well to threats,” Kroes said. The EC is on the side of Vodafone’s customers, she said, reminding the company that it’s also trying to get the mobile industry more spectrum and a bigger market.
Europe and the U.S. should be thinking about a “transatlantic digital marketplace” instead of getting “hung up on our small differences,” U.S. Ambassador to the EU William Kennard, a former FCC chairman, said Monday at a Copenhagen EU Danish Presidency high level conference on the digital single market. He cited a book by Peter Baldwin, “The Narcissism of Minor Differences,” that describes the psychological tendency people have to seize on small differences and enlarge them, saying that although the EU and U.S. are the world’s largest trading partners, they get stuck on issues such as data privacy that are insignificant in the grand scheme of things. As Europe debates its digital single market and the U.S. updates its online rules, they should consider joining forces because China, Brazil, Russia and other countries aren’t going to wait for them to resolve their differences, he said on a webcast.
A small daily newspaper publisher warned the FCC against easing cross-ownership rules against one company owning a daily and a radio or TV station in the same market. Journal Publishing, which has said Tribune abuses its cross-ownership waiver in Connecticut (CD Oct 4 p19), pointed to that company in asking the agency not to expand the waiver for others to use. “This situation that has developed in Connecticut may provide a good example of what will happen nationally if the rule against cross-ownership is repealed -- less competition, less employment, less journalism, and more concentration of power,” the owner of the Journal Inquirer said in docket 09-182 (http://xrl.us/bmrxuw). “Banning cross-ownership in markets outside the top 20 ranking would be better than no ban at all, but after 12 years of waivers of the cross-ownership rule for one particular company in Connecticut, we ask the commission to prohibit further extension of waivers in this situation.” A Media Bureau rulemaking notice asks about allowing cross ownership in the top-20 U.S. markets when certain showings are made by a waiver seeker. Lawyers representing a creditor of Tribune, owner of the Hartford Courant and WTIC Hartford, separately met with bureau officials about the company’s plan to exit bankruptcy and transfer some FCC licenses. JPMorgan Chase proposes to use a subsidiary to hold “the bulk” of the bank’s stake in the reorganized company, so its executives will be “wholly unrelated to Tribune,” said a filing last week in docket 10-104 (http://xrl.us/bmrxu8). “This change in the manner in which JPMorgan intends to hold its interests in Tribune post-emergence will be described in the amendment to the pending FCC applications in this proceeding that the parties intend to file in the near future,” said the ex parte document reporting on a meeting where JPMorgan was represented by former FCC Chairman Richard Wiley and other lawyers with Wiley Rein. “Although JPMorgan had previously reported to the Commission that it held a non-attributable ownership interest of more than 5 percent of the voting stock of Gannett,” the filing said that stake is now below that threshold, at which investments can become attributable under FCC rules.