DTV ‘Search and Rescue’ Plan Being Developed, Adelstein Says
The Obama administration is developing a DTV “search and rescue” plan for the approximately 4 million U.S. households unprepared for the transition, FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said Friday. He and representatives from outside groups met Thursday at the White House to discuss “what we're going to do,” he said. The White House, the FCC and the NTIA are working on the DTV plan, Adelstein said.
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The meeting was on lessons from the Feb. 17 analog cutoff by 421 stations, and preparing for the June 12 switch deadline. It was attended by the other two FCC members, said a government official. The official said they got approval from the FCC Office of General Counsel to meet privately together and the meeting was led by Susan Crawford, who was on the Obama transition team and works at the White House. Crawford didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment.
The administration sees the transition as a consumer- protection issue, Adelstein told a Consumer Federation of America conference. The government needs help from nonprofit groups, churches and others to continue education, Adelstein said.
Adelstein also sought help from the CFA and others to fashion a national broadband plan. Adelstein said the FCC will start work on it next month by issuing a notice of inquiry (CD March 11 p1). “We're going to make this as ubiquitous and fair as we can” and look at how to coordinate current plans, Adelstein said.
The notice of inquiry on how the FCC can complete a national broadband plan probably will be voted on at the commission’s April meeting, Adelstein said. The notice, which acting Chairman Michael Copps also has said is coming, will “begin the process” of creating a plan within a year, Adelstein said. Congress imposed the deadline, he said. “This time we're going to do it early” to give people sufficient time to respond and the commission adequate time to do its work, Adelstein told reporters. “This is a huge undertaking for the FCC,” which needs “to get started right away,” he added.
“The commission is going to work at warp speed” on a separate rural broadband proceeding, Adelstein told the conference audience. The $7 billion set aside by Congress for broadband efforts is “just a down payment” to “wire all of rural America,” he said. “I am hoping we can use this initial tranche to really find a process that works” and incorporate municipal and other existing efforts, Adelstein said. “It’s incredibly important that we coordinate universal service” with broadband plans, he added.
Adelstein said he hopes to see the deployment of wireless broadband that can provide video service in competition with cable. Satellite-TV and telcos provide some competition, but not enough “to try to restrain” cable operators, he said. “You want to break the hold” of pay-TV on consumers, and the digital transition offers a “way to do it,” the commissioner said. “We have to help people get there” by educating them about the transition. The FCC also should look at cable program carriage and access rules, Adelstein said. An NCTA spokesman declined to comment.
The FCC is preparing to release several solicitations for nonprofit groups, municipalities and others to run “walk-in centers” to provide DTV information and programs to install digital converter boxes in homes (CD March 12 p1), Adelstein confirmed. “Here’s where your stimulus comes in” as welcome help for groups hurting for money because of the recession, he said. Yet “we don’t want to turn off those volunteer efforts now that there’s a little money in the pipeline,” Adelstein added. He cautioned groups to “be very careful who goes into the homes” of elderly and disabled to install the converter boxes “so that people aren’t taken advantage of.”
The commission should begin to consider how to change the definition of broadcast entities eligible for special consideration in order to increase minority media ownership, now defined as small businesses, Adelstein said: “We are going to take a hard look at this immediately. This is the kind of thing we can tee up” for completion after Julius Genachowski takes over as chairman. The FCC should start studying how to change the definition while ensuring it’s “constitutionally sustainable,” Adelstein told reporters. Final rules, though, are “something that can be better dealt with by the full commission.”