Public interest groups and New York politicians criticized FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and the rest of the commissioners Monday for not attending a public hearing in Brooklyn on the commission’s net neutrality NPRM and its review of Comcast's planned buy of Time Warner Cable. Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, a Democrat, said she had sought an FCC-sponsored hearing on net neutrality and Comcast/TWC in the New York area, but the commission hadn’t “taken us up on our offer.” Commissioner Ajit Pai chaired a net neutrality field hearing in College Station, Texas, last week (see 1410210049).
New York politicians and public interest groups planned a hearing Monday night on the FCC net neutrality rulemaking and Comcast's planned purchase of Time Warner Cable. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, a Democrat, New York City Mayoral Counsel Maya Wiley and former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps were to host the hearing because FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has “ignored” requests for a field hearing in the state, they said. “After waiting months for the FCC to get out of the Beltway, advocates are taking initiative,” Copps said in a Free Press news release. “The voices of millions of Americans must not be ignored. A cloistered conversation in Washington, D.C., advances the special interests, not the public interest. It's time for everyone to speak, and be heard.” The FCC didn’t comment. Interest groups Common Cause, Consumers Union and MAG-Net are also involved in the hearing. Computer & Communications Industry Association President Ed Black said in a statement that “it’s encouraging that Internet users are raising their voices against these threats to the Open Internet and that public officials are listening.”
While no firm decision has been made, the FCC could take up final net neutrality rules as early as its December meeting, industry and agency officials said. The FCC is scheduled to meet Dec. 11, which means Chairman Tom Wheeler has until at least Nov. 20 to decide.
Public performance rights headlined lobbying efforts for the music licensing industry, in Q3 lobbying disclosure documents filed last week. The Respecting Senior Performers as Essential Cultural Treasures Act (Respect) (HR-4772), the Songwriter Equity Act (SEA) (HR-4079) and the Department of Justice’s current review of consent decrees for performing rights organizations were lobbying emphases for a vast array of music stakeholders. DOJ’s consent decree review of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) highlighted a divide between broadcasters who believe the decrees keep the potential monopoly power of PROs at bay and music publishers and songwriters who think the decrees give an unfair advantage to broadcasters (see 1409150067); (see 1408040070).
A handful of companies and consumer advocates are lobbying Congress to stop what is now a bipartisan and bicameral provision from becoming law. The provision would kill the set-top box integration ban and is a top lobbying priority for NCTA. Lawmakers in both chambers have attached the repeal to their Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization proposals, considered must-pass legislation before the Dec. 31 expiration.
More than two years after the FCC approved rules for a new Medical Body Area Network (MBAN) service in the 2360-2400 MHz band, the rules have yet to be finalized and no patients are benefiting from wireless body sensors approved by the FCC. The FCC’s work on MBAN demonstrates the sometimes extremely slow pace of making FCC spectrum reallocations a reality, industry officials say.
The FCC said the start of the TV incentive auction was pushed back from mid-2015 until a date in early 2016. The Friday announcement came in a blog post by Gary Epstein, chair of the FCC’s TV Incentive Auction Task Force. Industry officials have long predicted that a delay was possible, given the NAB legal challenge to the auction rules and the number of items the FCC needs to complete before the auction can take place (see 1409100041).
Neustar is continuing to protest the North American Numbering Council’s (NANC) recommendation that Telcordia be selected as the next local number portability administrator. The latest complaint came in a letter to the FCC and in meetings with agency officials Oct. 14 and 15, said ex parte filings posted Tuesday in docket 95-116. Neustar has been providing LNPA services “flawlessly” and NANC “fails to provide a sufficient factual basis” for the recommendation, Neustar officials including President Lisa Hook told Wireline Bureau Chief Julie Veach and other commission officials (http://bit.ly/1FDjZcL). Hook, Neustar Senior Vice President-General Counsel Leonard Kennedy, Deputy General Counsel Scott Deutchman, Vice President-Product Development Bill Reidway, Wiley Rein’s Thomas Navin and Kellogg Huber’s Aaron Panner made the same arguments in a separate meeting with Chairman Tom Wheeler’s aide, Daniel Alvarez, the filing said. The commission should issue an NPRM, Neustar officials said at both meetings, because it does not have before it a record that “adequately addresses the many significant technical, policy, and national-security issues that have been raised,” said the filing. Telcordia’s bid does not address several services Neustar now delivers, including the continued orchestration of large porting requests, access by law enforcement and auto-dialer users, said Neustar, which also continued to question Telcordia and parent company Ericsson’s neutrality. In an Oct. 17 letter (http://bit.ly/1ylbu10) to the commission, Neustar said Ericsson is “uniquely dependent on the success of a few major U.S. wireless providers. Ericsson is thus aligned with and subject to undue influence from the U.S. wireless industry,” the letter said. Telcordia has previously denied all of Neustar’s allegations (see 1408220053). Telcordia is “taking substantial steps to protect the security” of the Number Portability Administration Center database it is building, despite questions raised in the past by Neustar about Ericsson’s foreign ownership, said Telcordia President Richard Jacowleff and several others representing Telcordia, including former Public Safety Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett, now with Venable. They met Oct. 15 with Public Safety Bureau Chief David Simpson, Deputy Chief Ken Moran and Wireline Bureau Deputy Chief Lisa Gelb and other agency officials, said an ex parte filing also posted Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1oul2Xe). Telcordia is not reusing foreign code but writing its own, Telcordia said. The selection process envisioned working out specifics about security issues during contract negotiation and Telcordia intends to work with law enforcement on a testing process as part of the transition, the filing said.
In rewriting the Communications Act, “I would have a very skinny FCC,” said Robert Litan, a Brookings Institution nonresident senior fellow, speaking Wednesday at a Brookings Institution event in Washington on the Communications Act. Litan backs a “very minimalist role” for the agency, focused on its management of spectrum auctions and “I would have them administratively stop discrimination,” whether on the Internet or in traditional media spaces involving network owners blocking content, he said. Robert McDowell, a former Republican FCC commissioner and now partner at Wiley Rein, cautioned about the ease with which the FCC can escape “its congressional tether” and become “oligarchical,” citing the role of the courts in reining the agency in when needed. Litan, a former principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s antitrust division, scoffed at the FCC’s role in approving acquisition deals and said it should be nixed. Larry Irving, a former NTIA administrator and now consultant to telecom and information technology clients, resisted what he viewed as any “straight economic test” or one simply focused on consumer harm, calling communications the “lifeblood of a democracy.” They debated over how prominent the public interest component of the FCC’s role should be, with McDowell cautioning over a potentially “expansive” interpretation. “A straight economic test would frighten me,” Irving said. But the public interest standard should be clearer, he said, noting past challenges in finding the right balance. “It’s impossible,” McDowell said, cautioning against ex ante regulation and noting how much has changed even in the past decade. Irving referred to the many pieces of the FCC puzzle and said “the Communications Act gets most of them right.” But Irving would work to fix certain shortcomings at the agency, he said, referring to a need for expediency on certain fronts. He called efforts to clear federal spectrum “abysmal.” Litan predicted multiple possible drivers of a Communications Act overhaul on Capitol Hill, positing that net neutrality advocates could end up unhappy with the FCC’s rulemaking and ultimately go to Congress seeking a “fix” of the act. Alternatively, Republicans could take control of the Senate, Litan posited: “Imagine a scenario in which they win the presidency in 2016,” Litan said. “Maybe that becomes something the Republicans push because there’s no one to veto.”
CTIA President Meredith Baker, who took over in June (see 1404240050), is making some of her first big moves as the head of the group, telling staff in an email that Executive Vice President Chris Guttman-McCabe is leaving. Also leaving is John Walls, vice president-public affairs, a former sports reporter who followed Baker’s predecessor Steve Largent to CTIA