An FCC auction of 144 FM licenses garnered muted bidding, with 35 percent of the construction permits failing after three rounds Wednesday to get the minimum bid set by the agency. Meanwhile, deals to sell radio stations continue to be fewer than in previous years, and some industry officials said that’s borne out by the auction results. There are some positive signs for AM and FM mergers and acquisitions, with the market for deals for stations generating cash flow picking up, they said. Radio M&A activity has been declining for years, from a height in 1999 of $28.5 billion to transactions in the hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years (CD Aug 30 p1).
The battle lines formed more clearly Wednesday over whether the FCC should approve AT&T’s application to buy T-Mobile. Four of AT&T’s main competitors and two associations representing smaller carriers formally asked the FCC to consolidate its review of the merger with a review of AT&T’s proposal to buy $1.9 billion in spectrum licenses from Qualcomm. Separately, five public interest groups asked the FCC to reject the Qualcomm purchase outright, or at least consolidate the review of the two transactions. AT&T and T-Mobile sought review of their merger in filings at the FCC last week (CD April 22 p1).
An NAB-backed study contending there’s no spectrum shortage gets many points wrong, said the FCC and several groups seeking to repurpose airwaves used by TV stations for wireless broadband. A spokesman for the commission emailed reporters with a long list of shortcomings the agency contends are contained in a report by industry consultant Uzoma Onyeije. Within hours, the CEA and Wireless Communications Association joined in on the criticism. Broadcasters, an “infrastructure dinosaur,” incorrectly try to downplay the coming growth of wireless data usage, CEA Vice President Julie Kearney said.
Apple’s iPhone devices don’t track their users and a software bug is responsible for storing location logs even after users turn off their iPhone’s location services, the company said in a “Q&A” statement Wednesday. Apple said it plans to issue an iOS software update in the next few weeks that will fix the bugs and “reduce the size of the crowd-sourced Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower database cached on the iPhone.” Meanwhile, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., added his voice to growing congressional outcry over mobile privacy concerns.
The FCC’s desire to cap the Universal Service Fund may collide with “the rubric” of technological neutrality in considering broadband projects, Washington Utilities and Transportation Commissioner Phil Jones told FCC officials during a panel. “The world you're describing is not the world we're living in,” he said Wednesday. “The rubric of ’technology-neutral’ means ‘unlimited funding.'” Capping the fund will cause an array of trade-offs: Whether to focus on high speed or fuller coverage, or whether to focus on better service metrics or companies’ management capabilities, Jones said.
Colorado Republicans Sen. Mark Scheffel and Rep. Carole Murray proposed a measure to remove state regulators’ control over certain rates and eliminate the state high-cost fund by 2031. While companies like AT&T claim the bill is good for innovation and job creation, consumer advocates cautioned of rate increases and a weaker consumer protection mechanism.
The FCC understands that interoperability across the lower 700 MHz band is a critical issue, but there may not be any easy answers, Wireless Bureau Chief Ruth Milkman said Tuesday. Milkman kicked off two panels and nearly three hours of discussion at the FCC, much of it highly technical.
The FCC should allow for flexibility in meeting the requirements of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA), companies and trade associations told the commission in comments filed this week. But advocates for the deaf, hard of hearing and deaf-blind said the rules must not be so flexible that “accessibility is never achieved,” said joint comments filed by Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Inc., the National Association of the Deaf, Hearing Loss Association of America, Association of Late-Deaf Adults, American Association for the Deaf-Blind and the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Consumer Advocacy Network. “The Commission must also avoid the situation where accessibility is achieved only in a minority of instances,” they said. “It is the clear intent of Congress … that it should be the rule that accessibility is to be achieved in most cases, and only in exceptional instances in which providers can show that accessibility is not achievable can this requirement be foregone,” they said.
Broadcasters jousted with wireless carriers and the CEA as the FCC took in a last round of comments on its proposal to “repurpose” parts of the TV band. NAB filed a report, written by former FCC official Uzoma Onyeije, questioning whether there really is a spectrum “crisis.” CTIA and CEA fired back, arguing that all the evidence shows a growing need for more spectrum for wireless broadband. Five nonprofit groups said the commission needs to collect data on whether TV stations fully use their spectrum, with commenters “deeply divided on this question."
Pay-TV distributors still like the statutory licenses that let cable systems carry broadcast TV programming without licensing the rights for that programming from every content owner carried on a broadcast, and copyright holders still want to do away with the rules, comments to the Copyright Office Monday indicate. The office sought industry input for a report to Congress required by last year’s satellite reauthorization act on possible alternatives to the statutory license system. Commenters largely ignored questions the office asked about online video. Broadcasters suggested keeping the statutory license for local carriage of TV stations, but eliminating it for the importation of distant signals. Pay-TV distributors argued against eliminating the licenses without altering retransmission-consent and must-carry rules.