Raising an issue that has arisen repeatedly about the Mobility Fund Phase II program, commenters urged the FCC to create a robust challenge process if it moves ahead with auction of subsidies in areas completely or almost completely served by unsubsidized broadband competitors. Form 477 data, by itself, isn’t good enough, commenters said. Rural telco interests earlier raised concerns about an auction in general (see 1903110032). The FCC sought comment in a December Further NPRM (see 1812120039) and replies came through Tuesday in docket 10-90.
Additional hearings are needed to examine questions about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and other tech issues, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., told us. Members of both parties blamed each other for not properly addressing hate- and race-related activity, at a hearing earlier Tuesday.
Washington state legislators failed to agree on a privacy bill, House sponsor Rep. Zack Hudgins (D) said Tuesday. Legislators seemed to run out of time to move the much-debated measure after the House Appropriations Committee didn’t act Monday on SB-5376 “after 12 hours of work on a large agenda,” Hudgins said in an email update. "In legislative language, we would describe the bill as 'dead for now.'"
Huawei and other Chinese companies pose a major challenge for the U.S. and other nations, said Jamil Jaffer, executive director of the National Security Institute at George Mason University's law school, during a Technology Policy Institute panel Tuesday. “The risk is real.” A Trump administration supply chain security executive order apparently is off the table (see 1903250055).
LAS VEGAS -- DOJ's view of broadcast competition as concerned only with spot TV advertising is narrowly defined and unlikely to change, broadcasters and broadcast attorneys told us Tuesday. Their remarks followed an NAB 2019 panel headlined by Owen Kendler, chief of the Antitrust Division's Media Entertainment and Professional Services Section.
LAS VEGAS -- Radio license renewals are moving to a new system, the delayed FCC decision on a top-four combination in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, isn't related to the quadrennial review, and the chairman's office nixed a prison phone company deal before it reached other eighth-floor offices, said commissioners and Media Bureau staff on panels Monday and Tuesday at NAB 2019. There was heated onstage back-and-forth between Commissioners Mike O'Rielly and Geoffrey Starks on pirate radio. And Video Division Chief Barbara Kreisman suggested broadcasters walk back calls to relax some reporting requirements.
Expected House passage of the Save the Internet Act net neutrality bill (HR-1644) is unlikely to spur the Senate to take up the bill's companion version (S-682) or to rejuvenate a fledgling working group in the chamber aimed at writing alternative legislation, lawmakers and lobbyists told us. HR-1644/S-682 would reverse the FCC order rescinding its 2015 net neutrality rules and restore reclassification of broadband as a Communications Act Title II service (see 1903060077).
LAS VEGAS -- Industry luminaries at an NAB Show briefing Monday to announce the rollout of ATSC 3.0 to the top 40 U.S. TV markets by the end of 2020 seemed intent on dispelling worries that the commercial introduction of 3.0 broadcast services won’t come without consumer electronics industry support. A “broad coalition” of TV station groups, including network-owned-and-operated stations and affiliates, plus public broadcasters, will participate in the rollout starting this year, said the announcement.
LAS VEGAS -- Pearl TV and partners have learned a “ton of things” from their ATSC 3.0 model-market deployment in Phoenix, including “Lesson No. 1” -- the “big” realization that equipment “implementations aren’t complete yet,” Peter Van Peenen, technology consultant to Pearl, told the NAB Show Sunday. “I think everybody’s running hard to get that stuff done.”
A treaty updating broadcasting protections could be finalized next year if governments can finally resolve "fundamental issues" such as scope, object of protection and rights to be granted, said delegates at the April 1-5 World Intellectual Property Organization Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR). They approved a recommendation, set out in Chairman Daren Tang's draft summary, that WIPO's general assembly asks governments to keep working toward a diplomatic conference in 2020 or 2021. Broadcaster and civil society groups were less than enthusiastic about the outcome.