The FCC should overhaul how it holds radio and TV stations accountable, with the current system “broken,” concluded a report a year-and-a-half in the making and written under the auspices of Chairman Julius Genachowski. Other recommendations that had not leaked out in recent days (CD June 8 p3) are that public TV stations should get the same percentage of proceeds as commercial outlets if they participate in the incentive auction of broadcast spectrum that the commission hopes to get authority from Congress to conduct. Thursday’s report -- informally called by its former name, “The Future of Media” -- also sought an overhaul of the leased access system for cable operators because of underuse and sought changes to an educational programming set-aside for DBS given there’s more demand from content providers wanting in.
AT&T must lease its existing entrance facilities to CLECs at rates reflecting actual costs, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in an 8-0 decision in Talk America v. Michigan Bell Telephone. Justice Elena Kagan wasn’t involved in Thursday’s decision and Justice Antonin Scalia concurred separately. Seven of the justices, led by Clarence Thomas, ruled that the relevant sections of the 1996 Telecom Act were ambiguous, and therefore the FCC’s view of its own rules were owed deference, even though the view was expressed in an amicus brief.
The FCC and Federal Emergency Management Agency will conduct the first “top to bottom” nationwide test of the emergency alert system on Nov. 9 at 2 p.m. EST, both agencies said Thursday. The test is expected to last up to three and a half minutes. The government will base the national test on two EAS tests the government recently conducted in Alaska (CD Feb 3 p5).
AT&T’s buy of T-Mobile has gotten unprecedented support from groups representing minorities, from the NAACP to various Hispanic groups to the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council. If all politics is local, it also has a long memory. Some observers see the support as tied in part to a 1970 FCC consent decree in which AT&T agreed to become more proactive in employing minorities. AT&T has also contributed millions of dollars to minority groups over the years, though the company said that’s not different from contributions made by its large competitors.
The Senate Commerce Committee approved comprehensive spectrum legislation in a 21-4 vote Wednesday. The bill by Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, would give the 700 MHz D-block to public safety and authorize voluntary incentive auctions, among other things. Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Jim DeMint, R-S.C., was one of four Republicans who voted against the measure.
A prominent cable lawyer seeks consideration of a new “social contract” -- and of an entertainment tax -- for companies competing with traditional multichannel video programming distributors. Paul Glist, co-chairman of Davis Wright’s communications practice, told an FCBA event that traditional “video platforms typically come with a social contract. So we should be thinking of what might be a better social contract.” Public Knowledge lawyer John Bergmayer, speaking on the same panel Tuesday night, told us later that Glist’s comments have merit in considering how to apply old rules to newer, Internet-based firms. A veteran wireless lawyer said it may be too soon to regulate new Web video technologies.
The FCC should waive a requirement that retail cable set-top boxes include an analog tuner for its new device that TiVo called Premiere Elite and it plans to sell, the company said in a waiver request this week. TiVo said it’s taking orders for a different version of the device called the Premiere Q from cable operators who will begin deploying it later this year. It wants to sell the Elite box at retail with a larger hard drive, and for that it will need a waiver of the commission’s “Digital Cable Ready” (DCR) certification, marketing and labeling rules, to license CableLabs’ CableCARD technology, it said. Under those rules, such one-way cable products can’t be certified as digital cable-ready without including an analog tuner.
A report by the Commerce Department proposes a new cybersecurity framework for companies that use online services but aren’t classified as covered critical infrastructure. Companies in this “Internet and Information Innovation sector” (I3S) are “outside the orbit of critical infrastructure or key resources,” Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said in the report. To reduce the number of vulnerabilities in the sector, the department makes recommendations that involve establishing voluntary codes of conduct, developing incentives to adopt cybersecurity practices and developing cybersecurity standards that extend into international markets. To craft the report, the department’s Internet Policy Task Force considered recommendations from a notice of inquiry last year that solicited comments on enhanced cybersecurity practices.
Studios’ nascent UltraViolet initiative amounts to a “do-over” for the industry to give consumers access to legally purchased content on a wide array of devices, the chief technology officer of a major movie company said. Sony Pictures’ Mitch Singer, president of the multi-industry group backing the project, told communications lawyers and executives that the initiative comes after studios tried a strategy of filing lawsuits to “stop the innovation from happening."
World IPv6 Day was “uneventful” in that things went “exactly as planned,” Akamai Vice President of Engineering Andy Champagne said in an interview Wednesday. Although the global test of the new Internet addressing technology was still going on, the day was already successful, said Robert Kisteleki, research and development science group manager of European Regional Internet Registry RIPE NCC. There were “very few hiccups” and those were expected, he said. One glitch was that Arabic versions for some major sites failed to work in the Middle East, leaving end-users access only in English, said IPv6 Forum President Latif Ladid.