Matt Daneman

Any FCC efforts to claw back Dish Network designated entity (DE) credits face a big hurdle within the halls of the agency itself. "The notion you'll get three votes on the eighth floor is far from certain," said a communications lawyer whose firm has done satellite work: "If you don't get majority approval on the eighth floor, it's nothing more than a staff recommendation."

Declaring itself interconnection fee-free helps Charter Communications' bid for regulatory approval to buy Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable, said industry officials in interviews this week. By how much remains to be seen, they said. "I think it makes it a much easier sell," Cogent Communications CEO Dave Schaeffer said. "Anything they can show that they are willing to promote Internet growth ... will quell a lot of the concerns regulators had."

The set-top cable box -- and the monthly bill for renting it -- is increasingly in critics' crosshairs.

Somewhat the way the FCC was flooded with public comments regarding net neutrality, a collection of communications companies, trade organizations and advocacy groups is hoping to get similar public support -- if not the volume -- as they lobby regarding a variety of broadband-centric matters before the FCC. "You don't have to get net neutrality-type numbers," said Harold Feld, senior vice president at Public Knowledge, one of the participants in a new campaign, dubbed "Competify." "If you have a large number of customers … file saying, 'There's not a lot of competition,' that’s something a chairman of the FCC can point to to say 'Look, I'm not making this up.'"

Mediacom’s attempt at pushing changes in retransmission consent rules at the FCC likely won't go far, the company acknowledges. But the FCC wasn't necessarily the intended audience when Mediacom this week petitioned the agency for rules largely blocking broadcasters' blackouts (see 1507070061). "I don't think the FCC will take it seriously," said Thomas Larsen, Mediacom group vice president-legal and public affairs. "If I was a betting man, I'd say the FCC sits on their hands. You throw out enough ideas, that's what we're hoping -- somebody [on Capitol Hill] will run with one of them. Maybe down the road a congressman or senator says 'You were told to serve the public; let's make it a requirement free TV is widely available or give us back your spectrum.'"

Treating everyone the same is not fair for levying the regulatory fees on direct broadcast satellite providers and cable operators, Dish and DirecTV said in comments posted Tuesday in docket 15-121. The filings on the FCC’s proposed 12-cents-per-customer direct broadcast satellite (DBS) regulatory fee were in response to comments filed last month by NCTA and the American Cable Association pushing for higher fees to increase parity between what DBS and cable operators pay for FCC regulation. DBS' 12-cents-per-subscriber fee is an eighth of the 95-cents-per-subscriber rate being proposed for cable and Internet Protocol TV providers, with no rationale for why it would be "so disproportionately low," the cable industry groups said in similar comments posted Tuesday.

Game Show Network's 2011 move from Cablevision basic cable to a specialty programming tier "was the equivalent of sending it to Siberia," said Paul Schmidt of Covington & Burling Tuesday in opening argument in a carriage complaint hearing before FCC Administrative Law Judge Richard Sippel.

LightSquared is hoping the lack of opposition to its plans to transfer licenses to a reorganized version of the company, and to get a waiver of foreign ownership rules, helps speed its emergence from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The deadline for initial comments in docket 15-126 was July 1. The company needs to transfer its licenses to a reorganized entity as one of the last steps to getting Bankruptcy Court approval for ending its 38-month-old bankruptcy proceeding. The lack of opposition to the license reassignments "is a positive sign," said a lawyer working with the company. "It certainly shortens the review process."

Objections to LightSquared plans to hand over wireless licenses to its post-bankruptcy owners faced a midnight July 1 deadline in FCC docket 12-340. Though that change in control is the final piece needed before U.S. Bankruptcy Court can approve the satellite company's emergence from bankruptcy, LightSquared sees just as big a moment coming in 11 weeks, when the results of a study it commissioned on interference issues between GPS services and broadband will be presented to the FCC (see 1506250008). That Roberson & Co. study will be what LightSquared senior adviser Reed Hundt said would be “the best mid-band plan for America.”

The set-top box world that has a dominant player, Arris, in the process of buying another major player, Pace, is much different from a few years ago, said industry lawyers in interviews this week. The companies said Monday that the Justice Department has sought more information on the $2.1 billion deal.