The Mississippi Public Service Commissionconcurs with NARUC and the other state commissions that have filed in the FCC’s rural call completion docket, it said in comments Tuesday (http://bit.ly/16pT4Cn). It also “appreciates” the FCC’s enforcement actions, it said. “The MPSC urges the FCC to expand its rulemaking scope to incorporate NARUC’s suggestions to ensure call failure causes are timely identified and either resolved or enforced in a meaningful way,” the commission said. Call completion problems don’t only plague rural customers, the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable (MDTC) said (http://bit.ly/16pTmsO). “While call completion is characterized as a rural issue, the problem can extend to suburban and urban areas in Massachusetts as these calls may originate or terminate anywhere in the United States,” the state department said. MDTC also agrees with NARUC and the state commissions’ call for the FCC to expand its rulemaking.
"In 2013, we see a new set of priorities,” said National Regulatory Research Institute Principal Sherry Lichtenberg of recent IP-focused deregulatory state legislation. NRRI is an affiliate of NARUC, and Lichtenberg released a new review of state deregulation laws Wednesday (http://bit.ly/YFJuHQ). These “different” 2013 laws have a clear and focused message, she said: “Thou shalt not touch VoIP or IP-enabled services -- even if we haven’t defined them.”
All replies backed the FCC allowing waivers of foreign ownership caps of 25 percent on U.S. radio and TV stations. Several comments from broadcasters and their lawyers pointed to the agency’s order last month streamlining some policies for non-American ownership of some other types of licenses (CD April 19 p17). That commissioners Ajit Pai and Jessica Rosenworcel in approving that order mentioned the petition to allow waivers on which the replies commented is one reason to be optimistic that the request will be approved, a lawyer who backs the relief told us. That attorney, David Oxenford of Wilkinson Barker, said the agency can without engaging in a further rulemaking deem that ownership above 25 percent meets the public-interest threshold for such holdings in Section 310(b) of the Communications Act.
The FCC required all Web browsers on mobile phones be made accessible for the visually impaired by Oct. 8, said an order Monday on implementing the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act. On circulation is an NPRM on implementing CVAA rules on accessibility requirements for video user interfaces and programming guides, said agency and public-interest officials. An order last month implemented CVAA rules on emergency video description (CD April 10 p6). While some groups representing disabled consumers have said they found the orders and the coming NPRM vague, they also praised the FCC for issuing them. “We've been generally very pleased with the FCC’s efforts to complete these rulemakings in a timely fashion,” said American Council for the Blind Governmental Affairs Director Eric Bridges.
There were failures among many types of emergency alert system participants and at many levels in the so-called daisy chain distributing EAS warnings, the FCC said sixteen months after the first nationwide simulation. There’s a “Need for Additional Rulemakings” and other steps by the commission and Federal Emergency Management Agency before another test is held, said one subsection heading of the Public Safety Bureau report. The study sought a “re-examination” of FCC state EAS plan rules, with some plans not providing enough details about alert propagation, said the report. EAS stakeholders we spoke with said they generally backed its recommendations and found it a useful document even so long after the Nov. 9, 2011, test. Members of Congress were among those who had scrutinized the results and sought such an autopsy (CD Nov 18/11 p1).
In large part the order echoes what industry insiders said they were expecting (CD April 8 p6). It requires broadcasters, MVPDs, and “any other distributor of video programming for residential reception that delivers such programming directly to the home and is subject to the jurisdiction of the Commission” to put an aural description on a secondary audio stream of any emergency information that is available visually. There’s a two-year deadline for compliance with the new order, with a waiver for The Weather Channel and Direct TV, and commercial video equipment and display-only monitors don’t fall under the rules.
Bridging the rural communications gap has been complicated by uncertainty created by some FCC policies, said stakeholders at a Senate Communications Subcommittee hearing Tuesday. The hearing was the first of the subcommittee’s investigation into the state of the nation’s communications policy, and the first held by it’s new Chairman Mark Pryor, D-Ark. Subcommittee staffers said the panel will also seek to investigate the state of wireless communications and the state of video in future hearings.
"Under the NTTAA, DOE, as a federal department, is required to use technical standards that are developed or adopted by voluntary consensus standard bodies unless these standards are inconsistent with applicable law,” wrote Doug Johnson, CEA vice president-technology policy. DOE has acknowledged that their proposed rules are based largely on the CEA-2043 VA, the test standard used in the industry consensus, but CEA and other industry commenters said the DOE should have to show that the VA is impractical under the law before developing it’s own standards. “U.S. law and good public policy favors simply relying on the standard rather than borrowing from, modifying or reinventing it,” wrote Johnson.
As interim chair of the FCC, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn would likely take on a number of issues, starting with her big issue of late, prison calling, FCC and industry officials said last week. Another big issue for Clyburn has been 700 MHz interoperability, but how much she would be able to do on that with a 2-1 commission is unclear. A former top FCC official said Clyburn’s staff should already be looking around for a few issues on which she can make her mark as the first woman to head the agency.
With the U.S. “barreling toward” all-Internet Protocol networks, Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., said he worries that infrastructure isn’t up to the IP challenge. Networks may be insufficient to accommodate huge increases in video-content streaming and other changes, he said at an American Cable Association conference. That the FCC hasn’t closed its docket to apply Title II common-carrier telecom rules to broadband means “a proposed rulemaking is hanging over your heads,” which “alone slows down progress,” Heller told executives of small- and mid-size cable operators in Washington Wednesday.