Treating everyone the same is not fair for levying the regulatory fees on direct broadcast satellite providers and cable operators, Dish and DirecTV said in comments posted Tuesday in docket 15-121. The filings on the FCC’s proposed 12-cents-per-customer direct broadcast satellite (DBS) regulatory fee were in response to comments filed last month by NCTA and the American Cable Association pushing for higher fees to increase parity between what DBS and cable operators pay for FCC regulation. DBS' 12-cents-per-subscriber fee is an eighth of the 95-cents-per-subscriber rate being proposed for cable and Internet Protocol TV providers, with no rationale for why it would be "so disproportionately low," the cable industry groups said in similar comments posted Tuesday.
Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Bill Nelson, D-Fla., didn’t get the reassurances he requested that the FCC “immediately launch a long-overdue rulemaking to update its sponsorship identification requirements,” a desire also inherent in legislation that Nelson had introduced to compel the FCC to overhaul Communications Act Section 317 rules involving those issues, but still was told more sunshine is on the way. “Currently, the Commission is concentrating its resources on a proceeding to expand the online file requirements to cable operators, satellite TV providers, broadcast radio licensees, and satellite radio licensees,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler told Nelson in a June 16 letter released last week. “The expanded rules, if adopted, will bring sunlight to political advertising, ensuring that the public has access to the political files of all broadcasters and [multichannel video programming distributors], not just television broadcasters. In the meantime, the Commission will track all proposed legislation related to this issue, including the bill you introduced last month, S. 1260, the Sunshine in Sponsorship ID Act.”
The FCC is considering placing an IP technology transition item on the preliminary agenda due out Thursday for the commission's July 16 open meeting, those following the proceeding told us Monday. The item, which grew out of a November rulemaking notice, is intended to provide a regulatory framework as telecom carriers migrate from traditional circuit-switched, copper-based phone networks and services to packet-switched IP-based services using fiber, coaxial cable, copper and wireless networks.
Many eyes are on NTIA's multistakeholder proceeding on drones, since other agencies and Congress may not enact comprehensive privacy measures. At a Society of Professional Journalists D.C. chapter panel Wednesday night, a privacy advocate, drone and media industry lawyers, and the NTIA official helping oversee the agency's nascent privacy discussion voiced some optimism that accord could be reached. Some pointed out that would be in contrast with the agency's multistakeholder dialogue on facial recognition privacy, from which privacy advocates withdrew Tuesday (see 1506160041).
Cable and telco interests are pressing the FCC to take further steps to harmonize at lower levels the pole-attachment rates they pay, while power companies, which own most of the poles, oppose such changes, according to comments filed Thursday in docket 07-245 responding to a commission public notice. FCC action is needed to reduce some pole-attachment rates for telecom providers and prevent rate hikes for cable companies now classified as telecom providers, the cable and telco parties said. But power companies said they must be able to recover their costs and warned that new FCC action lowering rates could prompt further litigation.
Both Republican FCC commissioners have already cast votes in favor of a draft order making effective competition a rebuttable presumption nationwide, while eighth-floor Democratic offices have yet to throw their support behind the item, FCC officials told us Monday. Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel are seen as having concerns about the draft item in its current form, industry and FCC officials told us.
The FCC has repeatedly said the way it levies fees on the companies it regulates needs to change, but the new fee structures proposed for FY 2015 had plenty of critics. In the proposed fee structure in the FY 2015 rulemaking notice on docket 15-121 released May 21 (see 1505220050), the FCC said it expects to raise nearly $340 million in regulatory fees for the fiscal year. The agency proposed charging direct broadcast satellite (DBS) operators 12 cents a year per subscriber, while simultaneously cutting what cable and IPTV operators pay from $1.01 per subscriber to 95 cents. That was opposed by DBS operators, who argued in filings that the cost of regulating them is far less than the cost of regulating cable operators, and the FCC lacks the regulatory power to suddenly institute new regulatory fees.
An FCC Enforcement Bureau public notice is an early window into how the agency will handle many net neutrality issues, addressing them on a case-by-case basis (see 1505200059), industry observers told us. Wednesday's PN said more guidance may be forthcoming, but for now the Enforcement Bureau will look at whether providers are taking “reasonable, good-faith steps” to comply with privacy protections in Section 222 of the Communications Act. The rules take effect June 12.
Verizon is buying AOL for $4.4 billion, in a deal aimed at strengthening Verizon's LTE wireless video and over-the-top (OTT) video platforms. AOL still offers dial-up ISP service and is also a content company with assets that include AOL.com, Engadget, Huffington Post, Makers and TechCrunch. The transaction also gives Verizon AOL’s expertise in mobile advertising, the companies said Tuesday.
Another group opposed an FCC rulemaking that proposed to give cable operators nationwide effective competition deregulation (see 1505060051) unless local franchise authorities (LFAs) demonstrate otherwise, saying that would "unfairly burden" LFAs. The group, Consumer Action, cited cable rate increases that have outpaced inflation. It said the commission should at least "slow down and carefully consider how these rule changes could affect consumers." There's "no reason to rush through" the congressionally mandated proceeding to streamline the effective competition process for small cable operators, said the group in a filing posted Monday in docket 15-53. Agency and industry officials and the NPRM itself say the 2014 Satellite and Television Extension Localism Act Reauthorization Act requires the revamp of at least the small-operator effective competition rules by June 2 (see 1505070046).