The FCC rejected several proposed conditions on Charter Communications' proposed buys of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, including limits on New Charter's ability to access TWC's regional sports networks for five years and requiring it to offer a stand-alone broadband option. Some parties were critical of the final order that left out their suggestions. "We're pretty disappointed," Alliance for Community Media President Michael Wassenaar told us Wednesday.
Two former senators now working as industry lobbyists lauded the FCC’s set-top box rulemaking over the weekend. Consumers “should be able to purchase a device that lets them watch live sports, channel surf through traditional cable programming or binge-watch a streaming series,” said former Sens. Trent Lott, R-Miss., and John Breaux, D-La., in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal. “This isn’t possible without action from the FCC. The cable companies, which have stonewalled set-top-box competition for two decades, are mounting a final fight to stop the FCC from giving consumers this freedom. Their incentives are clear.” Lott and Breaux, who now lobby for Squire Patton, slammed the attacks on the NPRM: “To protect their monopoly, the cable companies have been reduced to making desperate claims about encroachments on privacy and copyright law that could result from giving consumers greater freedom in the set-top market. But innovation elsewhere has caught up with them and exposed the fallacies behind this rhetoric.” Their clients include Amazon, which backed the NPRM in comments filed at the commission last month: “The NPRM strikes the appropriate balance, providing third parties access to service discovery, entitlement, and content delivery while empowering [multichannel video programming distributors] to innovate themselves.” AT&T, an opponent of the NPRM and member of the Future of TV Coalition, was also a client of both lobbyists until recently.
An FCC rulemaking notice that would remove the last physical vestiges of the broadcaster public file as well as a requirement for cable carriers to keep on hand the location of their control centers (see 1605050060 and 1605040066) is expected to get little pushback, broadcast attorneys and cable industry officials told us. Though most aspects of the public file are online, broadcasters still have to keep physical copies of public correspondence in a physical public inspection file, and cable carriers must do the same for the addresses of their network control centers, under current FCC rules. Broadcasters and cable carriers said the requirement to make physical documents available to the public compromises their security.
The FCC offered proposals and market views in a business data service Further NPRM (see 1605020061) despite jettisoning tentative conclusions from a draft item circulated by Chairman Tom Wheeler. The edits made the item "more neutral, by, for example, moving away from a tentative conclusion that 50 Mbps is the appropriate metric for presuming a market is competitive or not," said Commissioner Mignon Clyburn Thursday as the agency voted 3-2 to adopt the FNPRM and a related order (see 1604280057). But the text shows the FNPRM went beyond asking questions and made findings on business data services (BDS or special access), including apparent distinctions based on data speeds above and below 50 Mbps.
The FCC launched an effort to replace its telco special access regime with a “technology-neutral” framework governing business data services (BDS) used by enterprise customers on a retail basis and telecom competitors on a wholesale basis. Commissioners voted 3-2 along party lines Thursday as some expected (see 1604270051) to approve a Further NPRM along with a tariff investigation order that prohibits certain incumbent telco practices. Chairman Tom Wheeler said the plan is to establish “a level playing field” and make regulatory judgments based on the competitiveness of markets. “That is what is proposed. Then we ask a lot of questions,” he said.
Small multichannel video programming distributors and allies continue to press the FCC for changes to its totality of circumstances test, while NAB continues to push back, according to a series of ex parte filings Tuesday in docket 15-216. One pay-TV industry official told us Wednesday the uptick in activity in the docket shows the issue is being discussed by the agency. But eighth-floor action probably isn't imminent, though the agency is likely to do something before year's end, the official said.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler privately addressed his much-debated set-top box proposal Wednesday in a meeting with the House Democratic caucus, House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., said in an interview. She had invited Wheeler last year, she said. Invitations for the caucus meeting had circulated earlier this week (see 1604250055).
The FCC could modify proposals to revamp its special access framework for “business data services,” informed sources told us Wednesday. There likely will be some changes to a proposed rulemaking, one source said. Another suggested draft tentative conclusions could be watered down. The FCC is to vote on a business data service (BDS) item at its Thursday meeting, after Chairman Tom Wheeler circulated a draft Further NPRM that proposed a "technology-neutral framework" and an accompanying ILEC tariff investigation order to ban "all or nothing" discount plans and restrict early termination fees and volume shortfall penalties (see 1604080011). NCTA and AT&T made public statements Wednesday criticizing the FCC direction, while Public Knowledge issued a supportive statement.
Dish Network and other multichannel video distribution and data service (MVDDS) spectrum licensees are petitioning the FCC for use of the 12.2-12.7 GHz spectrum for two-way mobile broadband. Calling themselves the MVDDS 5G Coalition, the group in its petition Tuesday said permitting sharing between mobile broadband and direct-to-home satellite service "will allow 500 MHz of underutilized MVDDS spectrum to be used as efficiently as possible [for] even faster speeds, enhanced connectivity ubiquity, and truly real-time services and applications." The MVDDS group said that spectrum meets FCC criteria for 5G suitability by offering 500 MHz of contiguous spectrum, a flexible regulatory framework, international harmonization and 5G sharing with incumbent uses. Dish et al. said the FCC should launch a rulemaking proposing adding a domestic mobile allocation to the 12.2-12.7 GHz band, updating MVDDS operation rules to let licensees provide two-way mobile broadband, updating MVDDS technical rules to enable 5G while protecting direct broadcast satellite from interference, deleting or designating as secondary the unused non-geostationary satellite orbit fixed satellite service allocation in the band and eliminating or modifying the MVDDS rules protecting non-geostationary satellite orbit fixed satellite service. "Consumers will not be impacted by losing a service that does not exist and that still would be able to use the 11.7-12.2 GHz band (and perhaps the 12.2-12.7 GHz band on a secondary basis) should it ever develop," they said. Seven coalition members -- Cass Cable TV, Go Long Wireless, MVD Number 53 Partners, Satellite Receivers, Story Communications, Vision Broadband and WCS Communications -- also have sought waivers of MVDDS technical rules (see 1510150050).
The FCC should ignore industry objections and keep current comment deadlines on the ISP privacy rulemaking, said nine consumer and public interest groups in a filing Monday. Industry groups asked for a 45-day delay (see 1604210048). Wireline Bureau Chief Matt DelNero said Friday that the FCC will likely respond soon to groups seeking extended deadlines (see 1604220055).