Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

Vonage CEO Jeffrey Citron warned Fri. that “premature regulations could kill the nascent VoIP industry.” Speaking at a policy lunch sponsored by the Progress & Freedom Foundation in Washington, Citron said regulations could slow broadband deployment, undermine the U.S. position as a technological leader and force service providers offshore. He urged legislators to “bring clarity to the VoIP regulatory framework to protect competition. New laws are needed to ensure Internet applications remain free from regulation.”

The FCC late Thurs. announced its VoIP proceeding would be on the agenda for its Feb. 12 open meeting, along with a petition by Pulver.com for a ruling that its VoIP offering wasn’t a telecom service. The Pulver item was surprising because the FBI had expressed concern about the FCC’s acting on VoIP classification issues before handling a related CALEA issue (CD Feb 5 p4). The more general VoIP notice of proposed rulemaking is expected to ask for comment on several questions about how VoIP should be treated, but probably won’t make any conclusions.

Ultra-wideband (UWB) developers are gearing up for tests at the NTIA lab in Boulder, Colo., that will assess whether the interference potential of a frequency-hopping (FH) flavor of that technology conforms with FCC rules. The Motorola- funded test marks the latest wrinkle in an industry dispute on whether technology backed by Intel, Nokia, Panasonic and others meets limits in the Commission’s UWB rules.

It’s not improper for states to require Bell companies to continue providing DSL service to customers that switch to competitive voice services, state regulators argued in comments filed at the FCC on a BellSouth petition. BellSouth asked the FCC to rule that state PUCs couldn’t require it to provide such services to CLEC voice customers, saying such action by the states was an intrusion into federal interstate authority over DSL. BellSouth targeted state regulators in Fla., Ga., La. and Ky. where PUCs have required BellSouth to provide DSL to CLEC voice customers. However, other PUCs in BellSouth territory also urged the FCC to deny the petition.

The FCC reached agreement with an intergovernmental tribal group Tues. on best practices for communications tower siting. The Commission called the pact the first of its kind. It also created a database for a voluntary system that Chmn. Powell said would provide an “early notification” of tower construction that might affect historic properties or tribal religious sites. When final, the best practices will provide guidance to the FCC, tribes and the industry, he said.

FCC’s Media Bureau created the Electioneering Communications Database to help users determine whether a communication sent by broadcast, cable or satellite could reach 50,000 or more people in a particular congressional district or state. If the communication can reach that number, it may qualify as an “electioneering communication,” which requires every person who spends more than $10,000 on an electioneering communication in any calender year to file a statement with the Federal Election Commission that includes certain information on the communication. The database, which goes live today (Tues.), is available at http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/ecd or http://svartifoss2.fcc.gov/ecd. The database is current as of Nov. 2003 and will remain unchanged through the end of the 2004 election cycle. The database was required by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.

A program agreement that would streamline wireless and broadcast tower siting reviews ran into trouble last week when the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) raised concerns about how certain types of sites would be excluded, sources said. FCC and some industry officials said they remained bullish that differences could be worked out relatively quickly. But they said a key unresolved issue was one that had drawn recent Capitol Hill attention: Treatment of sites “potentially” eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

A program agreement that would streamline wireless and broadcast tower siting reviews ran into trouble last week when the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) raised concerns about how certain types of sites would be excluded, sources said. FCC and some industry officials said they remained bullish that differences could be worked out relatively quickly. But they said a key unresolved issue was one that had drawn recent Capitol Hill attention: Treatment of sites “potentially” eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

The broadband over power line (BPL) industry welcomed as helpful in the FCC’s BPL inquiry the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s new position that not all BPL technologies posed interference problems (CD Jan 29 p11). “It’s nice to see that FEMA is backing away from what they have earlier stated,” Brett Kilbourne, regulatory dir. of the United Power Line Council, told us. He said it seemed from FEMA Undersecy. Michael Brown’s letter to FCC Chmn. Powell that “they are open minded about” BPL and the agency didn’t intend to say, as it did in its original filing with the Commission, that all approaches to BPL would cause interference. Jay Birnbaum, pres. of Current Technologies, said FEMA’s original filing with the FCC did seem to indicate that the agency didn’t have any homegrown data about interference potential and was relying on 3rd-party assessments and studies. “I don’t think that it would be fair to look at the first filing and say they found interference.” Brown’s letter was confirmation that the agency hadn’t done any research on interference potential and was conceding that BPL and emergency communications systems should be able to “peacefully coexist,” he said. Both Kilbourne and Birnbaum said the FEMA filing would make a big difference to the industry in the FCC’s inquiry into the technical aspects of BPL. The Commission is expected to come out with its conclusions in the first quarter. “If the earlier [FEMA] filing made the FCC think twice, then this is a positive development and it should help,” Birnbaum said: “But if the FCC hadn’t given the earlier filing too much weight, then this is a nice clarification.” At the very least, Brown’s letter would make the Commission look at the original FEMA filing in a different light, he said. Some industry sources found it unusual that FEMA had filed comments directly with the FCC instead of going through the NTIA as was the norm for govt. agencies that had spectrum issues.

The FCC Technological Advisory Council (TAC) wrestled Fri. with how to move public safety operators more quickly toward IP-based systems, including Wi-Fi, while meeting local govt. money concerns. Sean O'Hara, research & communications engineer for the Syracuse Research Corp., said that in the last year public safety had had a greater voice on standards for 802.11 and beyond. But he warned that emergency responders still must be “sold” on the benefits of cognitive radio.