FCC relaxation of media ownership rules is an industry “holiday wish list” and won’t survive a legal challenge, said Commissioner Mignon Clyburn in her dissent on the order, which was approved on a 3-2 party-line vote Thursday, as expected (see 1711150054). “I vociferously dissent and look forward to the day when the court issues a decision to right this sad wrong,” Clyburn said. Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said he had no doubt the new standard will end up back before the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That court would be “hard pressed” to find the moves aren’t supported in the record, he said. O’Rielly said he hopes the FCC will appeal if the 3rd Circuit again strikes down rules.
ADT and others criticized an FCC draft wireline broadband infrastructure order tentatively on commissioners' Nov. 16 meeting agenda (see 1710270040), while the American Cable Association supported pole-attachment provisions. The draft "threatens to disrupt vital alarm monitoring services and creates an unfair competitive advantage for [ILEC] alarm company affiliates," filed ADT Tuesday in docket 17-84. "The tilted playing field results from a confluence of changes ... relating to network change notifications, particularly for copper retirement. These changes will enable ILECs to inform their affiliates of copper retirement or other network changes long before a customer's existing chosen outside provider like ADT would be given notice, providing an unfair head start for the ILEC-affiliated companies to plan for such changes and to engage in marketing campaigns focused on converting and upselling their services." Public Knowledge and the Communications Workers of America opposed the draft's rollback of copper retirement notice and discontinuance rules. Proposals to "eliminate the advance notice requirement for retail customers and to reduce the advance notice requirement for interconnecting carriers from 180 to 90 days will leave consumers, small businesses, and anchor institutions confused and unprepared" when incumbents retire copper networks, wrote PK and CWA on a meeting with an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. They said scrapping a "de facto copper retirement definition will allow incumbent carriers to neglect their copper infrastructure" where consumers lack viable alternatives, and criticized a proposal to eliminate a "functional test" and "narrowly reinterpret the definition of service" under Communications Act Section 214. ACA backed proposals to exclude from pole-attachment rates the capital costs recovered from make-ready fees and create a 180-day shot clock for resolving pole-access complaints. It supported a proposed rulemaking "to address requests by attachers to overlash existing wires or install drops from poles to customers without filing pole attachment applications," meeting with aides to Chairman Ajit Pai.
Local government officials are trying to be heard as FCC Chairman Ajit Pai seeks to end barriers to broadband deployment through rulemakings and an industry-dominated committee. With the FCC moving at a “dizzying pace,” local governments feel they must grab on or risk getting left behind, said Andy Huckaba, a Republican city council member in Lenexa, Kansas, and one of three local officials on the 30-member Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee. The full members and another four local officials serve on BDAC working groups with several dozens of others. In other interviews, local and state officials raised concerns about what BDAC membership says about FCC willingness to listen to governments, but some said they feel included.
A draft order on reconsideration that would eliminate cross-ownership and duopoly rules was circulated to the eighth floor to be voted at the FCC’s Nov. 16 meeting (see 1710250037), as expected, Chairman Ajit Pai told the House Communications Subcommittee during an oversight hearing (see 1710250050) Wednesday. The November meeting is widely expected to include a vote on authorizing ATSC 3.0, industry officials said. FCC action on net neutrality rules isn’t expected until December, agency and industry officials told us.
Charter Communications rejected Horry Telephone Cooperative allegations that the cable company's bulk-billing, discount arrangements with homeowners' associations in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, are "below cost" and preclude HTC from competing because it doesn't own content or have nationwide leverage to subsidize competitive markets. The "baseless" comments "raise nothing beyond the arguments against bulk billing that have been rejected by the Commission and, in this proceeding, rebutted by NCTA," Charter said Thursday in docket 17-142 on an inquiry into multiple tenant environments competition (see 1707250050). Charter said the cost lets it recover investment, with bulk billing providing a revenue stream and "financial stability" that facilitates broadband investment. Horry counsel Donald Herman said Friday that Charter's filing "further validates the confusion and complexity" of the issue, "reinforcing" the need for a rulemaking to promote competition. Horry "continues to call for the FCC, FTC and DOJ to separately investigate the anti-competitive practices being undertaken by Charter, which thwart competition through below-cost pricing and disparities in programming agreements," Herman emailed.
Sinclair Broadcast and Tribune didn’t give specifics on how they will bring their proposed deal into compliance with FCC ownership rules, in the response this week to an agency request for more information, but industry attorneys told us that they don’t believe that reticence makes an FCC OK of the transaction less likely. Sinclair is negotiating with the DOJ and still deciding its specific course of action, and the FCC is expected to soon make changes to its ownership rules, Sinclair said. “It is premature at this point for Sinclair to know what specific steps will be required to comply” with FCC ownership rules, Sinclair said. “By failing to provide serious answers to the FCC’s straight forward questions, Sinclair-Tribune is refusing to respect the Commission’s role,” said a statement from the Coalition to Save Local Media, a group formed to oppose the Tribune deal.
Any FCC rulemaking about the set-top box market first needs more-thorough study of the market and its dynamics, GAO reported. It may be moot because odds of Chairman Ajit Pai's administration picking up the set-top issue seem scant, experts tell us. "If I were Pai, I wouldn't want to touch this," Public Knowledge Senior Counsel John Bergmayer said. Pai conceivably could initiate a study of the set-top market just so it could be declared effectively competitive, closing the door on the matter permanently, said Gigi Sohn, who was an aide to former Chairman Tom Wheeler. She disputed the GAO saying the FCC didn't have enough analyses to back Wheeler's set-top regulation course.
The FCC needs to work toward immediately restoring communications service to affected areas in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands before it considers longer term issues, said Chairman Ajit Pai in a news conference after a Public Safety Bureau report on the FCC response to storms Harvey, Irma and Maria at Tuesday’s commissioners’ meeting. The commission is “focused like a laser beam” on restoration, Pai said, calling the situation in Puerto Rico "dire." Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said the FCC should hold field hearings in affected areas on how best to prepare for such disasters. The agency should “have the guts” to get out on the ground, she said. “You don’t pull together a report with only the information you amass from sitting in front of your keyboard,” said Rosenworcel. “You get out.”
The FCC released on Monday its order requiring QAM-based cable system operators to adopt the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers standard 40 as the performance benchmark for their systems. Commissioner Brendan Carr, in a Monday statement, said the order meets Congress' requirement the agency update its signal quality rules but that it avoids "unnecessary burdens on digital cable operators." The item, which had been on Tuesday's meeting agenda, was approved unanimously last week (see 1709220057). Unlike the draft order, the final order doesn't solicit petitions for rulemaking with proposals for preventing interference in bands above 400 MHz; NCTA lobbied against that solicitation (see 1709150003).
ISP privacy rule supporters aren’t daunted after states failed to pass bills to counter President Donald Trump’s approval of congressional repeal of FCC rules, they told us. Opponents said legislatures were wise not to act. Privacy advocates and state ISP privacy bill authors plan to continue the fight into 2018. Supporters plan to ramp up outreach efforts to state lawmakers to combat ISPs and edge providers they claim spread misleading information.