Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has some real concerns with the FCC’s work on allowing LightSquared to begin service, potentially at the expense of important GPS services, he said in a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski dated April 27. Grassley, ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, said he was “dismayed” to learn of the “accelerated timetable” the FCC used when considering LightSquared’s waiver application that allows the company to provide terrestrial wireless service. The letter to Genachowski was recently made public.
Leaders of the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association and the Iowa Telecommunications Association gave a cool reception on NCTA’s proposal to freeze the RUS broadband loan program. The RUS relaunched its troubled broadband loan program earlier this year and published interim rules. The comment period on the proposed rules closed last week. In its filing with RUS, the cable association said the broadband loan program was structured as if high-speed broadband suffered under geographic monopolies like old water and electric systems (CD May 16 p14). Offering broadband subsidies to telcos in areas where cable already offers it puts government in the “totally inappropriate role for a government agency,” by “picking winners and losers in the marketplace.”
The Obama cyberspace plan offers international Web norms that promote an open, interoperable, secure and reliable Internet, the administration said Monday. The administration released its international strategy for cyberspace at a White House press conference less than a week after it presented its cybersecurity proposals for Congress (CD May 13 p10). The estimate for small-business cybersecurity plans came from Symantec’s 2010 survey of information protection for small and medium-sized businesses.
Interoperability of traditional radio systems must remain a top priority even as public safety pushes forward on a national broadband network, two Department of Homeland Security officials said Monday at the National Public Safety Telecom Council’s Cross Border Interoperability Forum. Philip Verveer, deputy assistant secretary of State, said that, despite years of trying, public safety communications still isn’t interoperable enough.
The Senate is moving faster than the House to finish legislation to build a nationwide interoperable public safety network. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, late Friday circulated a bipartisan draft bill. Committee aides told the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officers Summit Monday that they're pushing hard to pass a bill before the 10th anniversary of 9/11. But a GOP aide for the House Commerce Committee said it will be difficult to pass a bill in that timeframe.
The FCC advocated better cybersecurity measures among small American businesses, half of which lack a defined cyberplan, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said Monday during an industry panel at the FCC’s headquarters. “It’s vital that small businesses be part of the cybersecurity equation,” the chairman said after issuing a 10-step cybersecurity tip sheet for small companies. The panel occurred on the same day that the White House launched its international strategy for cyberspace (see separate article).
Sirius XM will keep its subscription rate at $12.95 per month through the end of the year as part of a class action suit settlement, the company said in an SEC filing on Monday. The lawsuit had said Sirius XM had violated antitrust law and the settlement is dependent on court approval. The settlement coincides with the FCC’s ongoing review of the rate freeze, which was an FCC condition of approving the combining Sirius and XM. The FCC is in the process of deciding if it should let the cap expire as planned on July 28. The settlement agreement was reached on Thursday, according to the filing.
FCC staffers and administrative law judges would face deadlines to act on program carriage complaints made by independent cable programmers against multichannel video programming distributors, under a draft order, agency and industry officials said. They said the order that began circulating earlier this month (CD May 3 p8) would give the Media Bureau 60 days to decide whether a complaint made a prima facie showing, or case at first sight. The clock would start ticking after the end of the pleading cycle on the complaint, which lets only the parties to the case comment, agency and industry officials said. Other deadlines would be triggered once the bureau determined an initial case was made.
Approving the AT&T/T-Mobile deal would be a “historic mistake,” Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., told FCC commissioners at a House Communications Subcommittee hearing Friday on commission process reform. Other subcommittee members touched only lightly on AT&T’s plan to buy T-Mobile. Many debated more generally whether FCC conditions on transactions should be specific to the given deal.
Meredith Baker’s surprise June exit from the FCC has left Republicans scrambling to find a replacement on short notice. Under the process set up by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., interested Republican senators will forward recommendations to his staff, and a series of interviews will follow. It’s then up to McConnell to recommend a nominee to the White House.