Broadband reclassification is once again haunting the FCC’s proceedings, this time as rural telcos seize on broadband’s Title I status to lobby on Universal Service Fund reforms. The commission elected to take a Title I approach in its net neutrality order (CD Dec 2 p1), but in recent weeks, executives of rural telcos have begun to argue that proposals to roll universal service cash into a Connect America Fund for broadband will raise “a host of legal and practical complications” under Title II (CD May 9 p13).
Meredith Baker said she sat out the past month’s worth of votes as an FCC commissioner, starting around the time she was approached by Comcast about a job. Her written statement Friday was the first time she addressed concerns on conflicts of interest (CD May 13 p1) between regulating Comcast and going to work for the cable operator, whose deal to buy control of NBCUniversal she voted to approve in January. Several opponents of government regulation who supported the Comcast-NBCUniversal deal said in interviews Friday that they saw no problems with Baker’s decision to become NBCUniversal’s top lobbyist.
With some of the larger pay-TV operators having made TV Everywhere deployments, vendors are looking to the second tier of the market to try to win business. Cable operators and telco TV providers with less than a million subscribers are both seeking and being courted by video technology vendors that offer a range of technological approaches to delivering multi-screen video services both in and out of the home, industry executives said. “They look at what Cablevision and Time Warner Cable have done, but they don’t have the resources to build it themselves,” said Marc Sokol, executive vice president of marketing and business development for NeuLion. He said NeuLion expects to announce new customers in the U.S. and U.K. soon. Vendors are presenting pay-TV providers with a variety of ways to begin offering multi-screen services.
Misuse of mobile payment systems is a growing threat, the European Police Office said in its latest report on organized crime trends in the EU. Mobile banking offers ample opportunities for money laundering, and Europol is starting to see suspicious transaction reports related to mobile money transfers, it said. But some, including the intergovernmental Financial Action Task Force, said there’s little evidence that m-payments are a problem, and that regulation of such activities must take into account their enormous societal benefits.
The FTC should have sole authority over consumer privacy, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., told us in an interview Friday. She previewed her speech scheduled for Thursday at the Telecommunications Industry Association conference in Dallas. Blackburn said she plans legislation later this year to remove the FCC’s authority over privacy by repealing Section 222 and 631 of the Communications Act.
Opposition to the sale of non-commercial station WMFE-TV Orlando isn’t likely to have an effect on the FCC’s approval of the deal, broadcast lawyers said in interviews. The filings, mainly from the general public, oppose selling the station to religious broadcaster Daystar. The FCC won’t involve itself in choosing one form of programming over another, the lawyers said.
The FCC is expected to let Sirius XM’s merger condition price cap expire, industry executives said. The commission is still reviewing its options, said an agency official. The condition caps the satellite radio company’s price at $12.95 per month, and is set to expire July 28. The FCC is looking at the cap to determine if it should be allowed to expire. The agency approved XM’s purchase by Sirius with conditions including the price cap in 2008.
FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker faces potential conflicts of interest, even if she is recusing herself from any proceeding involving her future employer Comcast (CD May 12 p1), critics of agency procedures and those seeking more government transparency said in interviews Thursday. Baker surprised many by saying Wednesday she'd leave the FCC. She’s restricted in what she can do until she departs June 3 to lobby for Comcast’s NBCUniversal in Washington, and other restrictions will take effect after she starts work for the cable and broadcast programmer. Baker’s office and representatives of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski aren’t saying what, if any, proceedings she has sat out of since she began talks for the job last month.
LightSquared is on track to address GPS interference issues within the timeframe laid out by the FCC, CEO Sanjiv Ahuja said Thursday. Other speakers at a New America Foundation discussion of satellite spectrum and wireless competition said the 59 MHz of spectrum LightSquared plans to make available will be significant for the wireless market.
The FCC unanimously (4-0) approved a rulemaking notice during its open meeting Thursday that asks whether and how the commission should apply 911 outage reporting rules to voice over Internet protocol and broadband networks. Republican Commissioner Robert McDowell approved the rulemaking, but concurred, “narrowly,” on the section that asks whether the FCC has the power to mandate data collection. “All Americans rightly expect their calls to go through,” he said, but “we do not have Congress’s authority to act as suggested.”