Google picked Kansas City, Kan., to build its ultra high-speed fiber network, after a year-long search for a location to test broadband at speeds 100 times faster than existing technologies in wide use. The company plans to offer service starting in 2012, pending approval from the city’s Board of Commissioners, Vice President Milo Medin wrote in a blog post Wednesday.
Support for a bipartisan bill to reallocate the 700 MHz D-block to public safety (CD Feb 11 p3) appeared strong at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing Wednesday. Public safety officials testified in support of the assignment for the full 20 MHz of public-safety broadband to a single licensee, in an effort to get legislation passed and a network put in place by the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
The FCC International Bureau waiver that allows LightSquared to offer terrestrial-only service should have received a full public notice with a 30-day comment period because the requested modification, by the FCC’s own account, isn’t a “minor” one, said the U.S. GPS Industry Council and the Air Transport Association. The trade groups filed joint reply comments to oppositions to applications for review of the waiver (CD March 17 p17). The waiver order itself makes clear that “the modification is not minor” because it would raise interference issues and finds that LightSquared’s mobile satellite service modification request requires a waiver of FCC rules, they said.
Public access channels remain in regulatory and business limbo, facing digitization in more cable systems because the FCC hasn’t acted on petitions made in early 2009 by the channels, said advocates for public, educational and governmental programmers. PEG programmers have sought a commission ruling that AT&T’s U-verse pay-TV service and cable operators can’t move public access channels off the analog tier. Lack of action on the petitions has emboldened cable operators, with Cox Communications being the most recent, to digitize PEG networks before doing so for commercial programmers, advocates contend.
Netflix continues to gobble up bandwidth, but the company’s explosive growth still hasn’t threatened cable, said a study released Tuesday by analyst Bruce Leichtman. Nearly 30 percent of survey respondents watched online video at least once per week through Netflix. Three percent of non-Netflix subscribers reported that they were watching streaming video, Leichtman said. While Netflix is growing exponentially, over-the-top streaming is growing only incrementally: 12 percent of the adults surveyed told Leichtman that they watched TV shows online once a week, up a percentage point from last year and up from 10 percent in 2009. “People watching TV online has barely moved,” Leichtman told us. “The reality is, in this over the-top emerging video world, there’s only two winners: Netflix and YouTube. Everyone else is losing out."
A recent audit that criticized the FCC for not following federal guidelines on tracking public spending (CD March 28 p11) “may come up” when Chairman Julius Genachowski testifies before a House appropriations subcommittee, said a spokesman for Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo. The chairman of the subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government “is aware of the situation,” her spokesman said. Managers at both the FCC and the Universal Service Administrative Co. were recently ordered to “update and reinforce” rules for entering expenses into the federal accounting system, after outside auditors labeled the commission’s accounting system “a significant deficiency."
Advocacy for and against a proposed data roaming mandate has been relatively quiet in recent days, according to FCC officials and recent ex parte filings at the commission. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is slated to circulate the sunshine agenda on the April 7 meeting Thursday, cutting off further lobbying. The order appears likely to be approved by the commission, though commissioners Meredith Baker and Robert McDowell may dissent based on jurisdictional concerns, industry and FCC officials said.
NTIA has no problem with a developing bill to speed the return of unused broadband stimulus funds to the U.S. Treasury, NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling said at a conference Tuesday of the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition. Strickling and Rural Utility Service Administrator Jonathan Adelstein plan to testify at Friday’s hearing on the bill before the House Communications Subcommittee. In an earlier panel Tuesday, Democratic Hill staffers questioned the need for legislation.
Attorneys general in New York and potentially other states will review AT&T’s plan to buy T-Mobile, they said. It’s uncertain if state regulatory commissions, which have limited authority over wireless mergers and played no role in previous wireless deals, would play a part, state officials and analysts said in interviews.
Dynamic spectrum sharing poses risks for carriers and other incumbents, since the record shows the FCC has never been good at protecting them from interference, CTIA said in reply comments in docket 10-237. The Public Interest Spectrum Coalition (PISC) said the comments filed thus far speak to the great potential for spectrum sharing patterned on pending use of the TV white spaces. The commission sought comment on dynamic spectrum access in a notice of inquiry approved at its November meeting.