Cable parties voiced dismay the FCC is even considering regulating their business data services (BDS) as part of a planned rulemaking to revamp its special access framework traditionally targeting incumbent telcos. Comcast said there was no hint of cable regulation until recently and urged the commission not to rush into adopting a "premature" Further NPRM that could be "counterproductive." The American Cable Association (ACA) said it was also surprised and urged the agency to back off, water down the notice to a preliminary inquiry, or at least ask basic questions about the justification for regulating new entrants in the BDS market. The FCC is to consider the Further NPRM and related order Thursday, and parties made a flurry of FCC visits last Thursday before lobbying restrictions took effect.
The cable industry is leveling both barrels at FCC-proposed set-top box rules. The American Cable Association and NCTA said they likely would pursue legal redress in response to agency implementation. "I've seen very few things I'm this confident contravene the express wishes of Congress," NCTA CEO Michael Powell said Thursday in a call with media.
The cable industry sought to head off possible FCC regulation of its business data services (BDS) that could be teed up under a draft Further NPRM. Cable regulation would fly in the face of Chairman Tom Wheeler's resistance to rate regulation of broadband providers in the net neutrality context, cable officials said. "Nothing in the record of this long-running proceeding remotely supports reversal" of four decades of "highly streamlined" treatment of facilities-based new entrants in a market, NCTA said Wednesday and Thursday, summarizing its meetings with senior FCC officials, including one attended by other cable players. It's doubtful cable "best efforts" services would be subjected to rate regulation in this proceeding, industry stakeholders told us Thursday, but some said other cable BDS offerings could be.
A broad group of industry associations asked the FCC to delay by 45 days the deadlines for filing comments on the ISP privacy rulemaking. After the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) had asked the agency to extend the comment deadlines 60 days (see 1604130054), industry observers said they didn’t think the FCC was inclined to provide more time (see 1604150075). The U.S. Chamber of Commerce also filed in support of an extension. Wireline Bureau Chief Matt Del Nero is to discuss the NPRM at an FCBA seminar Friday.
The FCC is seeing some push to follow up its notice of inquiry on independent and diverse programming with action. Tuesday was the deadline for replies in docket 16-41, and the FCC's filing systems were partly down. While numerous large conglomerates have argued that the video market is too competitive for them to have any real gatekeeping power, and that they also provide wide programming diversity in their lineups, indie programmers see the opposite, the American Cable Association said in comments to be filed in the docket. Indie programmers' comments also show that forced bundling is a problem since it constrains capacity on multichannel video programming distributors' systems, that penetration requirements often relegate indie programming to higher tiers, and that most-favored-nation clauses end up preventing carriage of indie networks, ACA said. It said the FCC at some point should move to a diversity rulemaking, and it "can and should act now" through addressing bundling involving stations via its current proposed retransmission consent rules changes and by updating its program access rules to let the National Cable TV Cooperative bring complaints. The FCC also could use its authority under Telecom Act Section 706, which allows for regulating practices -- including video service provision -- if they hinder broadband deployment, it said. The FCC's focus needs to not be on surface issues like what genres of networks are on an MVPD's channel lineup, but on ownership diversity and making sure indie networks have access to those linear platforms, One World Sports (OWS) said Tuesday in the docket. MVPDs often don't have the bandwidth and programming dollars to add such networks because of such practices as forced bundling by large media conglomerates, OWS said, saying the agency's next step should be an NPRM on a prohibition of or limits on forced bundling and tying of programming. Not every indie programmer is seeking an FCC fix. National Religious Broadcasters bemoaned the difficulties indie programmers have in getting carriage but cautioned against "a [regulatory] move in the name of diversity towards a subjective, government-favored content regime or so-called 'fairness' censorship on video programmers or any other form of electronic media." Instead, it said in a filing that it hopes the NOI will lead to programmer talks with MVPDs that result in their being more interested in carriage "for the valuable faith and family programming of religious channels."
The North American Submarine Cable Association criticized the FCC's course in a rulemaking proposing undersea cable outage reporting rules (see 1509170047), days after the agency circulated a draft order to require such reporting (see 1604080062). "NASCA remains concerned that the NPRM is premised on an erroneous assumption that there is a hidden submarine cable outage problem," said a Monday filing in docket 15-206 on discussions the group's representatives, including from AT&T and Verizon, had last week with aides to Commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O'Rielly. "The lack of outage reports under the existing voluntary system is due to a lack of reportable events." NASCA said data show an average of just "two faults" (events needing fixes) per year in U.S. territorial sea (within 12 nautical miles of shore) and exclusive economic zone waters (extending 200 nautical miles out) in the Atlantic Ocean and one such fault per year in U.S. Pacific Ocean areas. A Northern Mariana outage resulted from a lack of redundancy, but most U.S. undersea cable providers have "ring infrastructure systems with multiple segments serving the same route" and some have satellite backup, the group said. "The purposes of the new reporting requirements remain insufficiently defined and lack a clear statutory basis," it said. The NPRM's proposals "would require significant revision to make them workable," said NASCA. An "outage definition's '30-minutes-or-greater' loss-criterion would capture mundane events" and a "loss of 50 percent or more of a cable's capacity" standard couldn't "be meaningfully applied," it said. The FCC underestimated the costs of its reporting proposals, said the group, which proposed a more targeted framework, with an "outage" defined in terms of traffic loss and customer impact, undersea cable operators not required to submit initial notifications until 48 hours after a fault is discovered, and licensees able to determine their own reporting duties. Operators should be given at least one year to implement changes, it said. NASCA strongly backed the FCC's proposed information clearinghouse on submarine cable landings in the U.S.
The broadcaster/pay-TV war of words escalated over possible changes to the FCC threshold for determining if either side in a retransmission consent agreement failed to act in good faith. Affiliate groups of the big four broadcast networks jointly wrote the agency to oppose the totality of the circumstances tweaks sought by multichannel video programming distributors. Meanwhile, Mediacom, which backs retrans changes, clarified its request to the FCC, and a retrans-reform group of many MVPDs including the company hit back at the network affiliates.
Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., warned the FCC the set-top box NPRM that Chairman Tom Wheeler advanced earlier this year comes fraught with potential unintended consequences. She and officials affiliated with the Future of TV Coalition, which strongly opposes the NPRM, joined Thursday in the Longworth House Office Building to outline their concerns with the NPRM and argue for additional study they consider necessary. The briefing was hosted by Politic365.
One House Republican used this week's planned telecom floor vote to set up possible chamber consideration of the FCC’s February 2015 net neutrality order decision to reclassify broadband as a Communications Act Title II telecom service. Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., filed an amendment to the Republicans’ No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act (HR-2666) Monday on reclassification and the net neutrality order's authority.
FCC-proposed changes to rules for third-party set-top boxes (see 1602180065) would have a negative impact on programmers, and on minority programmers in particular, MPAA President Chris Dodd and NCTA President Michael Powell said Tuesday at a briefing hosted by the Congressional Hispanic Leadership Institute. The FCC proposal would give third-party set-top manufacturers access to programming they haven’t paid for, devaluing the content industry, Dodd and Powell said. If tech companies want access to content, they should negotiate with programmers the way multichannel video programming distributors do, said Victor Cerda, president of network V-me.