FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler plans to recuse himself entirely from involvement in AT&T’s wire center trial experiments, he said Friday. Wheeler was on the EarthLink board for about 10 years until resigning when he was confirmed to the chairman’s position in November. Wheeler’s EarthLink past caused him to recuse himself from the Wireline Bureau’s decision to suspend and investigate an AT&T tariff revision in the special access proceeding (CD Dec 9 p1). Industry observers then wondered if Wheeler would have to recuse himself from parts of other proceedings. One question raised by observers now is whether EarthLink participation on other, more contentious proceedings -- like Comcast’s plan to buy Time Warner Cable -- might force Wheeler’s recusal there as well.
The FCC was set to seek comment late Monday on a federal advisory committee recommendation that Ericsson subsidiary Telcordia, doing business as iconectiv, become the new local number portability administration (LNPA) vendor. The current vendor, Neustar, has waged a monthslong battle against that expected selection, saying the selection process was flawed. Federal agencies typically aren’t bound by advisory committee recommendations, and the FCC has ignored them in the past. Observers on both sides of the aisle say this is the most hotly contested FCC advisory committee recommendation in recent memory.
The FCC continues to log thousands of brief net neutrality protests, with more than 10,000 posted on its Electronic Comment Filing System on Monday alone. Most of the comments are extremely brief. Some contain profanity, one commenter wrote only “FCC F*** YOU” several dozen times. Most touch on the importance of the Internet to innovation or rail against powerful ISPs. Net neutrality advocates like Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu see the comments as important as the FCC weighs its next steps under Chairman Tom Wheeler.
The FCC continues to log thousands of brief net neutrality protests, with more than 10,000 posted on its Electronic Comment Filing System on Monday alone. Most of the comments are extremely brief. Some contain profanity, one commenter wrote only “FCC F*** YOU” several dozen times. Most touch on the importance of the Internet to innovation or rail against powerful ISPs. Net neutrality advocates like Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu see the comments as important as the FCC weighs its next steps under Chairman Tom Wheeler.
The FCC continues to log thousands of brief net neutrality protests, with more than 10,000 posted on its Electronic Comment Filing System on Monday alone. Most of the comments are extremely brief. Some contain profanity, one commenter wrote only “FCC F*** YOU” several dozen times. Most touch on the importance of the Internet to innovation or rail against powerful ISPs. Net neutrality advocates like Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu see the comments as important as the FCC weighs its next steps under Chairman Tom Wheeler.
An April 23 FCC-approved item making much-anticipated changes to the Connect America Fund (CAF) remains stuck inside the commission and has yet to be released. FCC officials tell us that commissioners approved the order six weeks ago, but they're still fighting over edits. The order was approved over a partial dissent by Commissioner Ajit Pai and partial concurrence by Commissioner Mike O'Rielly. The order does away with the much-criticized quantile regression analysis formula and makes other tweaks to the 2011 CAF order, which was aimed at part on refocusing USF on broadband deployment (CD April 24 p2).
An April 23 FCC-approved item making much-anticipated changes to the Connect America Fund (CAF) remains stuck inside the commission and has yet to be released. FCC officials tell us that commissioners approved the order six weeks ago, but they're still fighting over edits. The order was approved over a partial dissent by Commissioner Ajit Pai and partial concurrence by Commissioner Mike O'Rielly. The order does away with the much-criticized quantile regression analysis formula and makes other tweaks to the 2011 CAF order, which was aimed at part on refocusing USF on broadband deployment.
Broadcasters won the lottery to determine which venue will hear petitions for review against new FCC rules on joint sales agreements (JSA) and its handling of the quadrennial review of media ownership rules, according to court documents. The matter will be heard in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where NAB, Howard Stirk Holdings and NexStar Broadcasting had all filed court challenges. Prometheus Radio filed its own challenge in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, necessitating the lottery. The matter of venue may not be over, said Georgetown Law Institute for Public Representation senior counselor Andrew Schwartzman, representing Prometheus. The public interest group has filed a motion to transfer the case to the 3rd Circuit, and it’s likely to be granted, Schwartzman said. The 3rd circuit has handled challenges to the quadrennial review in the past, Schwartzman said, making it the likely venue for the case.
The NAB and Prometheus Radio Project each filed court challenges to new FCC rules on joint sales agreements (JSA) and its handling of the quadrennial review of media ownership rules, according to court documents and an NAB news release Friday (http://bit.ly/1o7ZMRY). The order barring JSAs where one station accounts for more than 15 percent of another’s ad sales (CD April 1 p4) without similarly attributing shared service agreements is “arbitrary and capricious,” public interest group Prometheus told the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The JSA rule is against the public interest because it puts broadcasters at a competitive disadvantage, NAB told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. “Ownership restrictions against free and local broadcasters are outdated in a world of national pay TV giants,” said an NAB spokesman in a written statement.
Sinclair wants to cancel the licenses of three TV stations involved in its $985 million plan to buy Allbritton’s TV stations because of FCC rules barring joint sales agreements, a lack of willing third-party buyers and an approaching deadline to close the deal, Sinclair said in a letter to the Media Bureau Thursday. The stations slated to go dark are WCFT-TV and WJSU-TV in Birmingham, Alabama, and WCIV-TV Charleston, South Carolina. Though Sinclair will preserve the content of those stations by multicasting their signals, closing the stations scuttles a plan by African-American broadcaster Armstrong Williams to participate in the deal (CD April 24 p12) and doesn’t serve the public interest, said commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O'Rielly in a joint statement. “We hope the commission will act immediately to correct its misguided policy on JSAs."