Proposed FCC “reform” legislation may “undermine” the Administrative Procedure Act and the Communications Act, Democrats on the House Commerce Committee said in a minority memo circulated Tuesday. Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., circulated a draft bill Friday (CD June 21 p7) to let three or more commissioners meet privately, set shot clocks on agency actions and require the FCC to provide greater justification for new regulations and transaction conditions. The subcommittee has a hearing Wednesday on the draft.
The record developed by the FCC makes clear that SMS is an information service and carriers should not have to pay into the Universal Service Fund based on SMS revenue, CTIA said in reply comments. The Wireline Bureau asked for comments on the topic, in response to an April 26 letter from the Universal Service Administrative Co. seeking guidance on the reporting of text messaging revenues for purposes of the USF.
The satellite business continued its revenue growth streak in 2010, largely on the back of satellite services, the industry’s largest sector, the Satellite Industry Association said. At the end of Q3 -- the most recent data available -- industry employment had fallen 2.7 percent since the end of 2009, SIA said in its annual study. It was done by Futron Corp. using surveys of 80 companies, 40 of which are SIA members, and publicly available data and research, and is at http://xrl.us/bks9s8.
The New York Senate passed legislation that would prevent state regulation of VoIP services. The bill, introduced by GOP Sen. George Maziarz, might not be going anywhere because the state Assembly session ended Monday, his legislative aide told us. Maziarz is working with the Assembly to try to pass the bill in potential extended session, the aide said. S-5769 passed Monday.
NAB will release a study Tuesday that claims local TV and Radio stations affect about $1.17 trillion of the United States’ $14.66 trillion gross domestic product. The analysis, by Woods & Poole Economics, with help from BIA/Kelsey, looks at broadcasters’ cumulative effect on GDP and on the economies of each of the 50 states. Stations contribute almost $60 billion directly to GDP; the rest of the $1.17 trillion comes from broadcasting’s effects on other industries through the money its workers spend, and its “stimulative effect” on the economy through the ads it sells, the study said. The ads placed on local stations are “estimated to stimulate more than $986 billion in economic activity and support 1.38 million jobs,” the study said.
CLEC association CompTel was among those offering early replies in the AT&T/T-Mobile docket Monday, opposing the deal. Comments were flooding into the FCC Monday, responding mostly to the “opposition” AT&T/T-Mobile filed June 10 (CD June 13 p1) in answer to some 50 petitions asking the commission to reject the deal. At our deadline, almost 39,000 comments have been filed in docket 11-65, on AT&T’s plan to buy T-Mobile.
Charging wireline broadband subscribers for the amount of bandwidth they consume, instead of sending all who buy a certain product the same bill each month, will become increasingly prevalent among U.S. ISPs in the coming years, executives predicted in interviews Monday. They said few cable or phone companies in this country now charge broadband customers for how many megabytes they use, and that may take some time to change. U.S. wireless carriers frequently charge customers based on usage, or impose bandwidth caps, as do wireline ISPs outside the U.S., executives said.
Early reviews are mixed on draft FCC process reform legislation circulated Friday by House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore. The subcommittee has a hearing Wednesday on the draft bill. Among its provisions, the draft would allow three or more commissioners to meet behind closed doors, would set shot clocks on agency actions and require the FCC to provide greater justification for new regulations and transaction conditions.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said he will circulate Tuesday a notice of proposed rulemaking aimed at preventing “cramming.” That comes in the aftermath of enforcement actions the commission took against four companies for cramming last week (CD June 17 p5). Genachowski also indicated Monday in a speech at the Center for American Progress that controversial “bill shock” rules could soon be ready for a commission vote.
LightSquared will propose initially only using the lower 10 MHz of the L-band spectrum the company has access to as a way to deal with interference problems with GPS services, it said Monday. The proposal, which includes the acceleration of a LightSquared agreement with Inmarsat, would allow LightSquared to begin service further away from spectrum used by the GPS industry. LightSquared made the decision after “early test results indicated that one of LightSquared’s 10MHz blocks of frequencies poses interference to many GPS receivers,” the company said. The GPS industry has expressed concerns over such plans in the past (CD June p9).