The AT&T-BellSouth merger appeared to be on temporary hold at the FCC at least until today (Mon.), after the agency pulled it from the agenda for Fri.’s open meeting. “Everyone is taking a break,” a source said: “Discussion is on hiatus today.” Another FCC staff member said no talks were expected over the weekend. The FCC hasn’t set a new target for action on the merger but it almost certainly won’t come until after the Nov. 7 election. It’s probably going to take “a couple more months,” said Stifel Nicolaus analyst Blair Levin.
Canadian cable operators are considering whether to bid on 1.7 GHz AWS spectrum that the Canadian govt. plans to auction within 18 months, said a regulator and an executive. Shaw Communications believes the spectrum probably would work well with WiMAX, said Pres. Peter Bissonnette. The company, Canada’s number 2 cable operator, is considering whether to bid, though its interest isn’t high, he said. Other cable operators appear interested in participating in an upcoming auction for 90 MHz of the spectrum, said Peter Hill, the Dept. of Industry’s spectrum management operations dir. The 1.7 GHz to be auctioned is paired with 2.1 GHz, he said.
Google’s and YouTube’s success underscores the need for media deregulation, broadcasters told the FCC. Unprecedented competition from video and news online gives consumers a staggering array of programming choices, they said. Commenting on the Commission’s ownership rulemaking, over- the-air networks and TV station owners said there’s little reason to keep limits preventing a company from owning more than one TV station in most markets. Commenters said cross- ownership rules barring a broadcaster from owning a newspaper in the same town are outdated because websites and cable offer consumers choices and are snaring a growing chunk of local ads. The comment deadline was late Mon. (CD Oct 24 p8).
Whether DVD players, VCRs and other “TV interface devices” are more prone than TV sets to interference from unlicensed devices operating on or adjacent to channels 2-4 is among many CE questions for which the FCC seeks answers on use of TV white spaces, according to the Commission order and further rulemaking released last week (CD Oct 19 p1).
The N.Y. PSC Wed. adopted BPL rules, Commission and industry sources said. “They voted on it today, but it doesn’t mean it will be released today,” the Commission source said. The order will be posted on the PSC website within a week, the source said. This would make N.Y. the 2nd PSC after Cal. to adopt BPL rules, with Tex. enacting a bill to ease utility embrace of the technology.
With the U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., usually deferring to the FCC on technical matters, the American Radio Relay League faces an uphill battle getting the court to void Commission BPL rules, said industry lawyers and analysts we spoke with. The ARRL petitioned Oct. 10 seeking review of the FCC rules, but the document didn’t specify objections to them. In a news release, the ARRL indicated it’s targeting the FCC’s 40 dB per decade extrapolation factor and a “new rule” in an Aug. memo and order limiting the extent to which BPL operators must protect mobile ham radio stations from interference.
CE makers and broadcasters tore at each other’s throats during the DTV transition debate. So it was a big surprise last month when CEA, MSTV and NAB filed comments jointly in NTIA’s rulemaking on running the $1.5 billion DTV converter box coupon program (CD Sept 26 p3).
A national emergency alert system was set in motion by a law President Bush signed Fri. giving the Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) 6 months to set up warning procedures. The wireless industry embraced the law’s voluntary process as preferable to a mandatory path being considered in an FCC rulemaking. Carriers opting out of the system must tell customers only that devices they use won’t carry the alerts.
As expected, FCC Chmn. Martin set a vote on the AT&T- BellSouth merger for the Thurs. agenda meeting, though the date could slip. It’s not unusual for major agenda items like the merger to be “pulled at the last minute, for a later vote… [I]t’s even possible for the meeting itself to be moved back,” said analysts at Stifel Nicolaus. But “we believe the process is in its final weeks, not months,” Stifel Nicolaus said in an investor’s note Fri.
It’s “improper” to try to “co-opt the merger process” by seeking interconnection and intercarrier compensation conditions addressed in pending rulemakings, AT&T told the FCC in response to a request by cable companies (CD Oct 2 p11). Cable companies are trying to “saddle AT&T with obligations that are wholly unrelated to any impact of its merger with BellSouth,” AT&T said in an Oct. 3 letter: “The nation’s cable companies will do just fine waiting with the rest of the industry for the Commission’s orderly resolution of its pending intercarrier compensation and IP-enabled services proceedings with rules of general applicability.” Those proceedings “are addressing all of the industry-wide interconnection and compensation issues raised by their filing,” AT&T said. The cable companies’ concerns about “how, where and on what terms companies should interconnect and exchange… traffic are the central issues under review in these rulemaking proceedings.”