The proposal to require multichannel video programming distributors to provide emergency video description over mobile devices isn’t based on a congressional mandate, said DirecTV. In the CVAA, Congress told the FCC to implement emergency video description for TV, and to study providing the service over IP, DirecTV said. “The juxtaposition of an explicit grant of authority with respect to closed captioning of programming delivered via IP and the mere requirement for a study of the issues potentially relevant to providing video description via IP is especially telling.” DirecTV referenced MPAA v. FCC, where rulemakings were struck down under similar circumstances.
The FCC should adopt a PCIA-submitted “consensus” definition of wireless facility installations that should qualify for exclusion from review under the National Environmental Policy Act and National Historic Preservation Act, PCIA and HetNet Forum representatives told Wireless Bureau officials during a meeting last week. Industry officials want an exemption for “minimally invasive wireless infrastructure designed to provide service in a limited geographic area,” said Zachary Champ, PCIA government affairs counsel, in an FCC filing. “These installations can consist of relatively inconspicuous, small form-factor installations consisting of one or more radio transceivers, antennas, interconnecting cables, power supply, and other associated electronics. The wireless facilities referred to are generally made up of an equipment enclosure, antenna and associated equipment.” Installations should qualify for exemption if the equipment enclosure is no larger than 17 cubic feet in volume, PCIA said. Antennas connected with the installation should be no more than 3 cubic feet in volume, with antennas that have exposed elements fitting within an “imaginary enclosure” of no more than 3 cubic feet in volume, said the group. Associated infrastructure, including all electrical equipment, should not be included in the FCC’s volume calculations, said the association. The industry-driven definition “accommodates current DAS and small cell deployments and anticipates foreseeable technological development,” but may require future flexibility to accommodate unanticipated future tech developments, PCIA said. The FCC should “develop an accelerated waiver process for wireless facilities that conform to the intention of the exemption but do not fit within the stated dimensions,” PCIA said. The groups’ representatives also urged the FCC to not view its work with the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors to develop voluntary best practices on wireless facility siting “as a substitute for a rulemaking proceeding in which all parties have an opportunity to comment on the legal framework governing wireless facilities siting” (http://bit.ly/14EaSrM).
Commenters were generally bullish on the FCC’s proposal to make direct access to numbers available generally to interconnected VoIP providers, in comments posted Monday. Several offered tweaks on how the rules could better accommodate VoIP providers. And some questioned whether it was wise to do so without “holistic” reform.
The FCC should reinstate most of the CableCARD rules stripped away by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in its EchoStar decision, TiVo said in a petition for rulemaking filed Tuesday (http://bit.ly/12VRaSI). The court decision stripped away the “Second Report & Order pertaining to Section 629,” including rules governing CableCARDs and encoding rules. By vacating a number of technical standards that applied to cable operators along with the encoding rules that were at the center of EchoStar, “the Court created an unhealthy amount of uncertainty in the industry -- uncertainty that harms innovation and competition as well as settled consumer expectations,” said TiVo. To comply with the court’s ruling that the FCC did not have the authority to apply encoding rules governing copy protection to DBS, TiVo’s petition asks the commission to leave the rules that affect DBS out of the rulemaking. Since the court didn’t “make any findings adverse to any of the other regulations” aside from the rules that applied to DBS, “there is nothing in EchoStar to impede the Commission from re-instating the non-controversial standards-reference regulations adopted with the Second R&O, and from re-instating the Encoding Rules, sans the language that included DBS operators in their scope,” TiVo said. Restoring the rules would promote competition and clear up confusion about the state of CableCARD regulation, TiVo said. “Given Section 629’s requirement that the Commission assure the competitive availability of retail navigation devices, it is the Commission’s statutory responsibility to resolve any uncertainty or ambiguity concerning its rules,” TiVo said. The set-top box maker pointed to the Media Bureau’s CableCARD waiver granted to Charter Communications as evidence of a need for more clarity on CableCARD regulation. “The Media Bureau’s Order speculated about, but did not purport to resolve, the status of earlier and later rules in the wake of EchoStar’s rejection of only the Second R&O,” TiVo said. “Charter formulated arguments suggesting that every FCC rule pertaining to CableCARDs and common reliance was now subject to reinterpretation and dismissal,” said TiVo. The Media Bureau didn’t comment. “I have a hard time seeing what choice the FCC has,” said Public Knowledge Senior Staff Attorney John Bergmayer. “They have a statutory obligation to do something about this -- I would expect to see most of the rules come back,” said Bergmayer. CEA also said it supports the proposed rulemaking. “They have the ability to reinstate them, it’s not a heavy lift,” said CEA’s Julie Kearney. The NCTA and American Cable Association -- both of which have opposed CableCARD requirements in the past -- did not comment on TiVo’s petition. “The petition doesn’t indicate any market impediment as a result” of the rules being vacated by EchoStar, said Davis Wright cable attorney Paul Glist, who has represented companies seeking CableCARD waivers. “This shouldn’t be controversial,” said TiVo General Counsel Matt Zinn. “These are the rules we've all lived by for years.”
The FCC should avoid specific “prescriptive” regulations and focus on flexibility in new rules on accessibility for user interfaces and video programming guides, said several cable providers and the NCTA. They commented on the commission’s rulemaking on implementing Sections 204 and 205 of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (http://bit.ly/19qAKaI). The deadline for comments on the proposed new rules was Monday. “Overly prescriptive regulations could freeze current technologies and solutions in place, hamper investment, and stymie advancement,” said Comcast. Although consumer groups filing comments in docket 12-108 asked for some specific rules, they also urged flexibility in the language of the rules. “We do not believe that the manner of viewing video programming will be limited to ’television sets’ in the future; nor will the manner of obtaining video content be limited,” said the American Council of the Blind. “The FCC must regulate with the proverbial eye toward the future."
The telecom industry is deeply divided on the potential scope of the FCC’s Internet Protocol transition trials. In comments filed Monday in docket 13-5, some opposed the trials because they went too far; some opposed the trials because they didn’t go far enough. Many CLECs, expressing resentment at what they called an ILEC refusal to interconnect in IP, encouraged the FCC to skip the trials in favor of mandating IP interconnection. Other stakeholders urged the FCC to stay out of it, and let businesses decide the best way to interconnect in an IP world.
A chain of truck stops can’t start a wireless TV service that would require waivers to operate in a band used by broadcasters, cable programmers and the federal government, said the FCC. The “entirely new use” of the cable-TV relay service band to run a multichannel video distribution system at Flying J truck stops throughout the U.S. shouldn’t be pursued by a waiver, said an order approved by commissioners and released Tuesday. It said such a change is “the province of a rulemaking.” Since 2006, when Clarity Media Systems first requested the waivers that were a year later denied by the Media Bureau, that company’s owner, Flying J, has filed for bankruptcy and in 2010 combined with another truck stop chain.
The New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission wants to revamp its phone rules, much to the dismay of some the state’s bigger companies. The PUC has examined different methods since January of 2012, and on Tuesday received several new comments on its latest proposal to refine the regulations, delivered in the wake of a deregulatory telecom law that went into effect last August. The PUC introduced an initial proposal in April (http://1.usa.gov/1a4QHnr), and the PUC and stakeholders hope to nail down a potential final version this month. But industry has objected to how the PUC’s proposal treats VoIP companies and interprets Senate Bill 48, the state’s recent telecom law. Multiple industry representatives voiced concern, both in recent comments and at a May commission hearing on the rules.
FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel believes the FCC should have a completed band plan for the spectrum incentive action by Q3 of 2013, said Rosenworcel’s aide Alex Hoehn-Saric at one of several panels featuring FCC staff at the NCTA Cable Show Wednesday. Hoehn-Saric said Rosenworcel also believes the commission could have a repacking plan finished by the end of the year.
CEA and NCTA have asked the Department of Energy to pause a rulemaking process on energy standards for set-top boxes and instead allow multichannel video program distributors to police themselves, the trade groups said at a joint media briefing Monday. Davis Wright attorney Paul Glist, representing NCTA, said he believes DOE proposals (CD April 10 p19) on whether set-top boxes should be regulated and how they should be tested could be finalized soon. If so, they would be a “switch point” for the cable industry, he said. If the DOE continues with the rulemaking, it will invalidate a voluntary agreement (VA) on set-top box standards that’s already being followed industry-wide, and discourage other industries from working proactively on energy efficiency, “undermining the very thing the DOE wants to encourage,” he said. DOE and the National Resources Defense Council, which backed tighter standards on set-top boxes, didn’t comment.