The data roaming decision reaffirms the FCC’s Title III authority to pass net neutrality rules, the commission told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in its surreply brief late Friday (http://xrl.us/bn9sts). That December decision, Cellco Partnership v. FCC, also supports the agency’s position that its net neutrality order doesn’t impose common carriage requirements, it said. Verizon had argued last month that the Cellco decision -- which upheld the rule requiring carriers to offer roaming agreements on “commercially reasonable” terms -- supported its position that net neutrality rules impose “per se common carriage” obligations on broadband providers (CD Dec 26 p1).
Some long-pending proposals to increase broadcast ownership by minorities and women got more support. The Diversity Competition Supporters (DCS) said there was broad consensus in initial comments late last month (CD Dec 28 p3) on a FCC public notice about a recent Media Bureau broadcast ownership report for several of the 47 proposals they want the FCC to consider. In replies posted to docket 09-182 Monday and Friday, more commenters endorsed some of those ideas.
Sprint Nextel and AT&T oppose a joint proposal put forward in the New York Public Service Commission’s proceeding on its state USF and intrastate access charges. The two major telcos have argued for months that intrastate access issues should be resolved in litigation, not as part of a multiparty negotiation. “There should be no further delays in reforming New York intrastate originating access rates,” Sprint said Friday in its comments to the PSC (http://xrl.us/bn9sqr), calling Verizon’s current proposal, introduced in November and attracting wide support, “an effort to delay reform further.” Parties who signed on to the November joint proposal include PSC staff, the New York State Department of State Utilities Intervention Unit, the Cable Telecom Association of New York, Verizon, Verizon Wireless, Frontier, Level 3, a group of smaller ILECs, Time Warner Cable, tw telecom and Windstream.
Dish Network’s mission at this Consumer Electronics Show is to “top the Hopper,” the premium DVR it introduced at last year’s show and kept adding features to during 2012, CEO Joe Clayton told a recent New York media briefing. So Dish is using this CES to introduce a new “Hopper With Sling” DVR with twice the processing speed of the original Hopper set-top and with built-in Sling TV-anywhere functionality. The box will ship in January, Clayton said.
CenturyLink hopes to block Portland, Ore., from changing how it taxes landline phones. The legal challenge focuses on the Portland City Council’s Nov. 28 approval of changes to City Utility License Law, which “substantially increase taxes” on local wireline phone services of incumbent companies CenturyLink and Frontier Communications, effective Dec. 28, according to CenturyLink’s court document filed at the Multnomah County Circuit Court in Portland. Other telecom providers don’t pay these fees, the injunction request said, mentioning wireless companies as an example.
The risks of collecting unique handset identifiers outweigh the potential benefits, FCC officials told members of its mobile broadband measurement group Friday. In December the commission considered collecting more detailed data from users who were “more comfortable” sharing stats that identify their phone at specific coordinates at a particular time (CD Dec 13 p14). But after talking with policymakers, researchers and stakeholders, agency staff have decided that “the risks outweigh the benefits of having a unique identifier."
Six of the largest media companies asked the FCC to review a Media Bureau order that gives Comcast access to confidential distribution agreements between content owners and online video distributors (OVDs). CBS, News Corp., Sony Pictures Entertainment, Time Warner, Viacom and Disney told the FCC that the bureau’s order suffered from procedural flaws, violated FCC precedent and federal law and was an arbitrary and capricious decision. The application for review filed Thursday (http://xrl.us/bn9eii) was preceded by a stay request last month. The order clarified the so-called “Benchmark Condition” of the FCC’s order approving Comcast’s takeover of NBCUniversal which gave OVDs the right to license Comcast-NBCU (C-NBCU) programming if they have reached a similar deal with an industry peer.
Consumers are using built-in apps for access to Web-enabled content “at a high rate,” according to a Consumer Electronics Association study, “Beyond 2D Viewing: Understanding the Demand for Advanced Television Features.” Roughly 20 percent of U.S. adults own a connected TV, according to CEA, and nearly 90 percent report using apps available on their display in some capacity. Over 40 percent of HDTV owners connect their primary displays to the Internet, and 76 percent connect at least one external device with smart app capability, according to the study.
The U.S. decision not to sign the revised International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) means controversial changes to the treaty-level document will have no effect on U.S. law or the telecom sector’s work within the U.S. -- but the treaty’s effect on U.S. businesses’ dealings internationally remain far less clear, industry experts and insiders say. The U.S. was among 55 ITU member nations to not immediately sign onto the revised ITRs last month after they were adopted at the conclusion of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai. Another 89 nations signed the treaty (CD Dec 17 p1). Non-signatory nations will continue to follow the original ITRs enacted in 1988, Terry Kramer, head of the U.S. delegation to WCIT, told us. The original ITRs are “antiquated, but they're very high level, they don’t get into any Internet issues,” he said. The revised ITRs will take effect Jan. 1, 2015.
The FTC should have taken more drastic action against Google, said competitor Microsoft and a public interest group that has long sounded alarms on Google’s practices. At the same time, lawmakers representing Silicon Valley applauded the agency for not interfering more with Google’s business practices. FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz predicted such differing opinions during last week’s press conference to announce the settlement. “Some may believe the commission should have done more in this case ... some may believe we should have done less,” he said of the agency’s critics.