The FCC H-block auction closed Thursday after 167 rounds and 24 bidding days, with total bids of $1.564 billion across the 176 Economic Area licenses. The FCC won’t provide results for a few days, but most analysts have long seen the most likely outcome as Dish Network buying almost all of the licenses (CD Feb 24 p12, Jan 28 p4). The money raised will pay part of the $7 billion startup cost of FirstNet, to be paid out of auction proceeds, industry observers said.
The FCC will work to fill some of the holes that the commission has yet to answer on the dynamics of the upcoming broadcast spectrum incentive auctions, said Chairman Tom Wheeler. “We live in revolutionary times and it’s requiring revolutionary thinking,” he said Monday in a video at an Association of Public Television Stations event in Washington. “Part of that revolution is spectrum and how the analog assumptions of yesterday don’t fit with the digital realities of today.” Never before has there been such a “risk-free and rewarding opportunity for people to participate in the digital revolution,” he said. Wheeler said the channel-sharing trial with Los Angeles TV stations KLCS and KJLA is “really important in demonstrating the realities of moving from analog concepts to digital reality.”
The FCC approved Thursday 5-0, despite concerns of its two Republican members, an NPRM that seeks comments on how the agency can ensure that wireless calls to 911 forward accurate location information to dispatchers. The vote came at the commission’s monthly meeting. The notice proposes revised location accuracy standards for all wireless calls, as well as rules for calls made indoors. The FCC last updated its wireless location accuracy rules in 2011. States led by California have raised concerns that current requirements aren’t strong enough. In November, the FCC held a workshop on the topic (CD Nov 19 p1).
An FCC move to make TV joint services agreements (JSAs) attributable at the same level they are in radio would be unpopular with broadcasters but is unlikely to cause widespread divestitures or end the practice of using pacts like JSAs to get around ownership rules, said broadcast attorneys in interviews Friday. Such a rule “would be a good first step” for the public interest groups that oppose such sharing arrangements, said Free Press Policy Counsel Lauren Wilson. “We wouldn’t see that as the end."
The FCC approved a policy statement and second further NPRM, designed to make text-to-911 more widely available, at its meeting Thursday, potentially imposing a mandate on interconnected over-the-top (OTT) text providers. The policy statement approved was a somewhat watered-down version of the statement originally circulated by Chairman Tom Wheeler (CD Jan 27 p5), FCC officials said. With the changes, all five commissioners voted to approve. Wheeler said Thursday that at the FCC’s February meeting it will take on a second 911 issue -- location accuracy for wireless calls made indoors.
On Capitol Hill Thursday, public safety officials and Democratic senators urged the FCC to kick off a proceeding setting standards for wireless 911 location standards while industry representatives struck a cautious note. Hill pressure surrounding this issue has risen over the past half year, with members of Congress in both chambers writing to the FCC last fall expressing concern following a summer CalNENA report indicating poor wireless location accuracy. The Find Me 911 Coalition has beat the drum with advertisements, a Hill briefing and other efforts to raise awareness for what it deems a problem.
For the second time in four years, the FCC failed to convince the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that it had authority to impose net neutrality rules on broadband ISPs. The anti-discrimination and anti-blocking rules in the agency’s December 2010 net neutrality order were indistinguishable from prohibited common carrier restrictions, said the decision (http://1.usa.gov/1m0UQPi). Chairman Tom Wheeler’s FCC has already faced renewed calls to reclassify broadband Internet as a Title II service.
For the second time in four years, the FCC failed to convince the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that it had authority to impose net neutrality rules on broadband ISPs. The anti-discrimination and anti-blocking rules in the agency’s 2010 net neutrality order were indistinguishable from prohibited common carrier restrictions, said the decision (http://1.usa.gov/1m0UQPi). Chairman Tom Wheeler’s FCC has already faced renewed calls to reclassify broadband Internet as a Title II service.
LAS VEGAS -- All four FCC regular commissioners indicated they're likely to support the agency’s next moves on the IP transition, during a panel discussion late Wednesday at CES. The commissioners disagreed sharply on what should happen to the net neutrality order, now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Several industry officials said during CES they expected a decision soon, probably this month.
The FCC granted Dish Network the relief it sought to decide on the operations of its AWS-4 spectrum. The waiver, granted Friday, is conditioned on Dish’s bid of nearly $1.6 billion in the H-block auction next month. “Failure by Dish to comply with either of these conditions will automatically terminate the waivers granted in this order,” the Wireless Bureau said in its decision (http://fcc.us/1i8eU1M). Dish must elect no later than 30 months from the release of the order whether operations at 2000-2020 MHz will be uplink or downlink, the order said. The DBS company also was granted a one-year extension of the final buildout requirement, which gives it eight years to build a terrestrial network service, it said.