LOS ANGELES -- The rising volume of data-rich traffic requires carriers to address capacity issues with technical solutions in the short run and deploying more spectrum in the long run, panelists at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners summer meeting said. Operators need to continue to deploy more advanced wireless technologies and offload data traffic onto alternate networks like Wi-Fi and femtocells, which have greater capacity due to their much higher frequency reuse, said Peter Rysavy, president of Rysavy Research. The measures aren’t sufficient to meet growing market demand, he said late Tuesday. The only viable long-term solution is to allocate more spectrum, he said.
The FCC should exempt Internet-connected TV sets and video players from rules it’s in the process of adopting to ensure accessibility of certain online content to people with disabilities, the CEA said in an ex parte letter to the commission filed this week. It wants Internet-connected TV sets, DVRs and DVD players to be exempt from rules laid out in Section 716 of the Communications Act, as amended by the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, which covers accessibility of “advanced communications services” (ACS), a term the FCC has yet to precisely define but which may include VoIP, electronic messaging and videoconferencing. Industry groups had sought a narrow definition of the term in initial comments in the FCC’s CVAA rulemaking (CD April 27 p8). The CEA waiver request doesn’t address accessibility of video programming on those devices, it said in a footnote to its letter.
Major groups representing local officials asked the FCC to activate its Intergovernmental Advisory Committee (IAC), a successor to its Local and State Government Advisory Committee, active from 1997-2003, in a filing responding to a notice of inquiry on promoting broadband deployment. Such sector heavyweights as the National League of Cities, the National Association of Counties, the United States Conference of Mayors, the International Municipal Lawyers Association, the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, the Government Finance Officers Association, the American Public Works Association and the International City/County Management Association signed the filing.
The top senator on antitrust urged regulators to block AT&T’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile. “To replace the AT&T phone monopoly of the last century with a near-duopoly of AT&T and Verizon today would be harmful to consumers, contrary to antitrust law and not in the public interest under communications law,” said Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Herb Kohl, D-Wis., in a letter Wednesday to Attorney General Eric Holder and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. In a separate letter the same day, Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, D-Mich., and Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., urged the FCC and DOJ to scrutinize the deal closely.
President Barack Obama this week nominated Maureen Ohlhausen, a Republican, to replace GOP FTC Commissioner William Kovacic, whose term expires in September. An FTC veteran, Ohlhausen spent 11 years there, where she was the director of the agency’s Office of Policy Planning until 2008. She’s currently a partner at Wilkinson Barker.
The FCC has made significant progress in reducing a backlog of cable company requests for local rate deregulation, according to agency records and interviews with lawyers who file petitions for operators or oppose them on behalf of municipalities. There were 56 requests for Media Bureau findings of effective video competition pending as of June 30, agency figures show. That’s the lowest figure in any Communications Daily review of such requests in the last six years (CD June 3/10 p4, Feb 2/07 p3, Sept 29/05 p1), although exact data for earlier periods is unavailable. Recent recipients of effective competition findings include the four largest U.S. cable operators.
LOS ANGELES -- The FCC needs to recommit to the principles of Universal Service and revamp the system in a manner that won’t weaken the system that has helped connect rural America for decades, former Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said during NARUC’s summer meeting Tuesday. Meanwhile, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson emphasized wireless is essential for universal broadband. The AT&T/T-Mobile merger, which is getting a closer look from the California Attorney General, is a private party solution to achieve universal broadband, Stephenson said.
Spectrum auctions could be a major part of Commerce committees’ savings plans to meet goals set by a deficit reduction plan released Tuesday by the bipartisan “Gang of Six” senators. The proposal, endorsed Tuesday by President Barack Obama, would direct the committees to find $11 billion for deficit reduction within six months, according to an executive summary of the plan. The proposal set up a two-step legislative process, in which there would be immediate cuts totaling $500 billion, followed by a process in which Commerce and other congressional committees would find further savings.
Upcoming results from a broadband speed study should be viewed skeptically because the FCC has been captured by ISPs, said New America Foundation Director Sascha Meinrath. “Even though we have been a core partner on this project and were a part of the official meetings for months and months, recently, we have not been invited to any of the meetings (nor have we seen ex partes from those meetings),” he said in an email exchange. Earlier meetings where ISPs discussed SamKnows work with agency officials were reported in such filings, and Meinrath was talking about the results of the SamKnows study involving 13 Internet companies. Release of the speed study has been pushed back to August (CD July 19 p14).
The controversy over the GOP’s efforts to use the Universal Service Fund to pay down the nation’s deficit ought to remind the telecom industry that the money is “finite,” AT&T Vice President Hulk Hultquist said Tuesday. Last week, the industry went into uproar when it emerged that House Republicans were considering using $1 billion from the fund to help close the budget gap (CD July 14 p1). Telcos small and large, which had disagreed over how to fix universal service, united in their condemnation. “There are definitely legal issues with that … that aren’t well understood,” Hultquist said at a Broadband Breakfast in Washington: “You know, there are limited means to do what we want to accomplish.”