The MVPD industry objections to loosening broadcast ownership rules are “self-serving,” said NAB in a letter posted in docket 12-318 Tuesday. Filings from DirecTV and other MVPDs “are part of the pay TV industry’s history of opposing any repeal or loosening of the broadcast ownership rules because pay TV providers prefer to compete against and negotiate retransmission consent agreements with competitively weaker broadcasters,” said NAB. The FCC should reject data submitted by DirecTV to support arguments that broadcast consolidation will lead to higher retransmission consent rates, NAB added.
The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) objected to an FCC proceeding withdrawing its recognition as an accredited lab (see 2510170024). The academy also objected to instructions that it respond to an FCC complaint to the email address BadLabs25-267@fcc.gov. “In our view, the Commission’s move to revoke the accreditations of Chinese state-owned laboratories is primarily driven by political considerations rather than ‘security’ concerns” and is “unsupported by any evidence relating to quality or technical competence,” CAICT said in a filing posted Friday in docket 25-267.
Petitions to deny SpaceX's proposed acquisition of EchoStar's AWS-3, AWS-4 and AWS-H Block spectrum licenses are due Dec. 15, with oppositions due Dec. 29 and replies Jan. 8, an FCC Wireless Bureau public notice said. The docket is 25-302. EchoStar struck a spectrum deal with SpaceX and a similar spectrum rights sale deal with AT&T to end a pair of FCC investigations into its use of the 2 GHz band and the deadline extensions it received for its 5G network buildout (see 2505130003).
Dish Wireless objected at the FCC to a Universal Service Administrative Co. finding that some households it served under the affordable connectivity program and emergency broadband benefit program were ineligible and didn’t comply with USAC’s one-per-household rule.
Appalachian Power Co. is denying Comcast access to its poles that have preexisting safety violations unless Comcast pays for replacing the pole, Comcast told the FCC in a pole attachment complaint posted Wednesday. Comcast said it needs access to thousands of Appalachian power poles for its network expansion work in Virginia, including bringing connectivity to 13,000 BEAD-funded locations in the state. It said Appalachian has adopted a policy where Comcast must pay the total cost of replacing the preexisting violation pole, "with, at best, the potential for a 50% reimbursement at the whim of the preexisting violator." That's despite FCC rules saying pole owners can't charge new attachers the cost of addressing preexisting violations of safety or construction standards or delay new attachers while the pole owner tries to fix the preexisting violation or seek reimbursement from the preexisting violator. Appalachian didn't comment.
"Trusted" U.S.-based submarine line terminal equipment owners and operators that don't pose a big national security risk should be exempt from all SLTE-related licensing and reporting requirements, NCTA said last week (docket 24-523). An example would be NCTA members that use completely domestic SLTE and lease fiber capacity to provide connectivity from a U.S. location to another U.S. location, it said. With those systems being wholly domestic and owned and operated by trusted U.S.-based entities, they don't pose a notable national security risk and should be excluded from any FCC subsea cable system licensing rules, NCTA said.
The FCC should take action against statewide exclusivity contracts between MVPDs, state athletic associations and networks that prevent local broadcasters from airing high school sports championships, said Mid-State Multimedia President Robert Meisse in a filing in docket 25-322 Tuesday.
Industry groups are concerned about FCC proposals to relax restrictions on sharing disaster reporting information with public safety authorities and the public but are broadly supportive of agency plans to streamline the disaster information reporting system (DIRS), according to comments filed in docket 21-346. Public disclosure of outage reporting data “could compromise public safety and network security, particularly at a time when vandalism of communications network infrastructure is on the rise,” said ACA Connects. The FCC should focus on more education and engagement with state public safety officials, “not a lowering of standards for protecting sensitive information from public disclosure.” But Public Knowledge said wider dissemination of outage data could improve public safety and enhance competition by giving the public another category in which to compare providers.
The FCC seems likely to move toward looser spectrum-sharing rules between non-geostationary and geostationary orbit satellites, allowing for NGSOs to operate at higher equivalent power flux density (EPFD) levels, satellite and spectrum experts tell us. That could mean big momentum for NGSO efforts to get similar changes made at the 2027 World Radiocommunication Conference, we're told. The FCC chairman's office didn't comment.
Congress hasn’t given the FCC any authority over the national TV ownership cap, said the American Television Alliance in a letter filed in docket 17-318 Monday. Congress set the cap at 39% and explicitly removed the new cap from the Commission’s quadrennial review process, ATVA said. “When Congress directs agency action -- whether through codification in a statute or through a direction to change a rule --the agency cannot undo that action unless Congress has authorized it to do so.” The U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down Chevron deference made it clear that “congressional silence is no longer an invitation for regulatory discretion,” the filing said. ATVA said broadcaster arguments that the FCC has authority over the cap are undercut by its filings from 2013, when the FCC was examining doing away with the UHF discount. “Broadcasters say it is obvious that the FCC has broad authority to raise the national cap because Congress failed to ‘enshrine’ it in the statute” but also said it was “obvious that the Commission did not have any authority to change the cap when broadcasters thought the FCC might lower it,” ATVA said.