NCTA supported an FCC effort to explore ways to promote broadband deployment in multi-tenant environments, but it proposed some additions to a draft notice of inquiry on the agenda for next Thursday's FCC meeting, which is aimed at "improving competitive broadband access" to MTEs. NCTA encouraged the FCC to expand some draft questions, including on: the state of MTE market competition, the extent to which restricting building practices "may adversely affect" broadband deployment and pricing, and the agency's statutory authority to regulate building-provider contracts. For example, the NOI should ask if there's "any evidence of a market failure" in MTE broadband, and under what circumstances, if any, should the government have a role in dictating contract terms, said an NCTA filing posted in docket 17-142 Thursday on meetings with aides to Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Michael O'Rielly. The cable group also said the FCC should seek comment on "technical and operational challenges" to multiple providers using a single facility and "potential consumer harm" of such sharing.
The North American Free Trade Agreement should include provisions governing intellectual property, recognize the importance of the internet, and be free of impediments to U.S. companies operating in foreign countries, said industry associations in comments submitted to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative Friday. “The U.S. approach to renegotiating NAFTA should reflect the increasing importance of Internet-enabled trade to the U.S. economy,” said CCIA. “For the Internet to serve its trade-enabling role, and for local entrepreneurs to drive crossborder economic activity, trade negotiators need to ensure predictable liability protections are in place across countries where users and content creators are sharing information on Internet platforms,” said CTA. The agreement should include principles consistent with an open internet, said Public Knowledge. PK also commented on the agreement’s provisions on intellectual property, though it said NAFTA may not be the correct place for such provisions. “When multiple bilateral and regional trade agreements address substantive intellectual property in detail, they run the risk of an inconsistent and complex patchwork of obligations,” PK said. If copyright provisions are part of NAFTA, they should preserve public interest balance and “require limitations and exceptions to copyright, which are essential in modern societies and economies,” PK said. North American trading partners should “maintain a balanced system of intellectual property regulation” said CCIA. NAB, CTA and the Satellite Industry Association said NAFTA shouldn't include rules that make it difficult for U.S. companies to work with Canada and Mexico. The agreement should address Canadian retransmission of U.S broadcast content and Canada’s “discriminatory tax treatment” of U.S. broadcasters, NAB said. The agreement “should require copyright limitations and exceptions like fair use that have been essential to U.S. innovation and the strength of the U.S. tech sector,” CTA said. “The absence of such provisions in Mexico leaves the U.S. tech sector vulnerable there -- particularly as Mexico strengthens other parts of its copyright system,” CTA said. NAFTA should “prohibit” the “trade barriers which create performance demands on U.S. satellite services in Canada and Mexico,” SIA said. The Communications Workers of America suggested a host of changes to the agreement to improve its effects on labor. “NAFTA has had a hugely negative impact on CWA members and other working families across this country,” CWA said. “The renegotiation of NAFTA must replace this deal written by and for multinational corporations with an agreement that is designed to create jobs and raise wages for working men and women."
Microsoft told the FCC that preserving a single UHF white-space channel in every market would have “virtually no impact on low-power broadcasters or translators.” Two years ago, the FCC proposed to reserve at least one blank TV channel in every market for white spaces devices and wireless mics after the incentive auction and repacking (see 1506160043). Microsoft said it completed a report that focused on the effect on New Mexico, Utah, and North Carolina, “markets NAB’s pre-auction comments identified as potentially problematic.” The study also looked at Cleveland as a more typical urban market. One thousand simulations were conducted for each market, Microsoft said. “Microsoft’s analysis predicts no [effect] at all in three out of these four markets,” it said. “In Salt Lake City, the impact is minimal.” Microsoft representatives met with aides to Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Mike O'Rielly and other FCC officials. “The record is clear that this white space channel is critical to ensuring that the United States has the minimum three white space channels needed to support investment by semiconductor and device makers and to enable broadband Internet access for rural and underserved Americans,” Microsoft said in a filing in docket 12-268.
FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn Friday urged FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to wrap up action on three accessibility items started under predecessor Tom Wheeler. Clyburn spoke at a meeting of the FCC Disability Advisory Committee (DAC). First on Clyburn’s list was video programming. "We cannot stand idly by as so many members of our communities are being left behind,” she said. "The time to act is now.” In March 2016, the FCC adopted an NPRM that proposed increasing video-described programming from 50 hours to 87.5 hours per calendar quarter, she said. “This would have expanded the availability of video described programming by 75 percent, allowing those who are blind or visually impaired, to immerse themselves in programming in a way that audio dialogue simply does not provide,” Clyburn said. “It is time to act and put this proposal into effect.” Clyburn also urged the FCC to make closed captioning more readily available. Last fall, the FCC opened a proceeding that would have ensured consumers can readily find and control the display features associated with closed captioning, Clyburn said. “What good however, is closed captioning if those that stand to benefit the most cannot easily find and use all of its features?” she asked. “I think it is time we put this item back on circulation and take action expeditiously.” The FCC also should act on a proceeding that would revise the volume control standards for wireless and wireline phones to better serve people with hearing loss, Clyburn said. The same proceeding also would address application of hearing aid compatibility standards to handsets used with advanced communications services, including VoIP, she said. Patrick Webre, acting chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, said the DAC has a big job ahead, starting with the development of criteria for measuring relay service quality and best practices for video description. DAC also will provide advice on emergency communications using real-time text, he said. “Your technology transition subcommittee is helping us address the challenges of compatibility and integration of real-time text with assistive technologies and relay services,” Webre said.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was picked to hear challenges to the FCC's recent business data service order, a commission spokesman told us Friday. The FCC filed a notice with the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation of Multicircuit Petitions for Review that challenges had been filed in three different courts: the 8th Circuit, 5th Circuit and D.C. Circuit (see 1706150074). The panel randomly selected the 8th Circuit to review the consolidated BDS litigation, said an order Friday. A D.C. Circuit order (in Pacer) transferred its BDS cases to the 8th Circuit. Commissioners voted 2-1 along party lines April 20 to approve the BDS order, which substantially expands price deregulation of incumbent telcos. Challenges to the order were filed by the Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users Committee, Sprint and Windstream jointly, CenturyLink and Citizens Telecommunications of Minnesota.
Permissive detariffing of business data services begins Aug. 1, but the 3-year countdown to mandatory detariffing won't begin until the Office of Management and Budget approves related rules, said AT&T, citing FCC staffers. AT&T and Wireline Bureau officials discussed implementation issues for the agency's recent BDS order (see 1704200020), including the Aug. 1 effective date's impact on price-cap BDS services; "guidebook and wire center-to-county mapping best practices; the review process for adjustments to BDS offerings in non-competitive counties going forward; and the timing of the effectiveness of the Order’s detariffing relief," said a company filing Thursday in docket 16-143. Bureau staff indicated the permissive detariffing rules don't require OMB review, meaning price-cap ILECs can begin voluntarily detariffing on Aug. 1, said AT&T. It noted bureau staff also indicated mandatory detariffing rules are subject to OMB review, and thus will become effective when the OMB approval process is complete.
The California Public Utilities Commission “may be overly antagonistic” in proposed comments to the FCC on the commission’s wireline and wireless infrastructure NPRMs and notices of inquiry, CPUC President Michael Picker protested at the state agency’s Thursday meeting. The draft comments opposed FCC pre-emption and raised concerns about copper retirement and other issues (see 1706120022). Complaining that the draft is “very antagonistic” in tone about the copper issue and raising concerns that some statements could undercut pending CPUC proceedings, Picker abstained from voting. But the other four commissioners voted in favor of the draft comments, with instructions to edit the comments to address Picker's and Commissioner Liane Randolph's concerns in the hours before Thursday’s comments deadline at the FCC. Randolph said she generally supports the comments but wanted to pare the copper verbiage. Picker complained about reading the draft comments for the first time the previous night. CPUC Assistant General Counsel Helen Mickiewicz apologized, saying it was an unusual circumstance that occurred due to the FCC’s speedy pace on the infrastructure rulemakings. Meanwhile, comments are starting to roll in at the FCC in docket 17-79. The FCC should adopt a broadly applicable “deemed granted” remedy when local governments fail to act on infrastructure siting applications within the FCC’s “shot clock” time limit, the Free State Foundation said. FSF also urged the FCC to tighten the time frames: “Arbitrary restrictions on new siting and modification applications and lengthy permit processing delays by local governments pose barriers to wireless broadband deployment and infrastructure investment.”
Three challenges to FCC business data services rules were filed in three different circuits, the commission told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in a letter (in Pacer) Thursday. An attached "notice of multicircuit petitions for review has been filed with the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation of Multicircuit Petitions for Review," said the letter, which listed the cases: Ad Hoc Telecom Users Comm. v. FCC, No. 17-1153 in the D.C. Circuit, CenturyLink v. FCC, No. 17-60439 in the 5th Circuit and Citizens Telecomms Co. of Minn. v. FCC, 17-2296 in the 8th Circuit. A brief D.C. Circuit order (in Pacer) Thursday consolidated an earlier Sprint and Windstream challenge to the BDS rules with the Ad Hoc challenge. The FCC asked the D.C. Circuit Tuesday to remand an AT&T challenge to a 2016 BDS tariff investigation order for further agency consideration (see 1706140012).
U.S. policy is moving toward more deregulation and reliance on antitrust enforcement to address market abuses, said American Enterprise Institute visiting scholar Jeffrey Eisenach, a member of then-President-elect Donald Trump's FCC transition team. In a speech at an FCBA event Wednesday, Eisenach gave a big thumbs-up to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, and he singled out William Kennard, chairman from 1997 to 2001, for laying a deregulatory foundation. “What is the path forward? I think Chairman Pai is on it," Eisenach said. "He’s not only insisting on and promoting debate around the facts, the issues, and analysis, but also ... cheerfully using communications skills.” Eisenach is "especially enthusiastic" about Pai's proposal to create an Office of Economics and Data. He credited Kennard for devising a strategic plan in the late 1990s that envisioned an agency transition from industry regulator to market facilitator as the internet and other innovations eroded distinctions between market segments. He said that plan was the "touchstone" of the Trump FCC transition team. “After many delays and detours, we seem to be back on a path that … will lead to the replacement of ex-ante regulation in the communications sector with a framework ultimately grounded in antitrust," he said. Eisenach said President Jimmy Carter and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., collaborated on airline and trucking deregulation in the late 1970s, and President Bill Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., collaborated on the 1996 Telecom Act: “It’s far too much to hope that President Trump and Senator [Al] Franken [D-Minn.] will appear together at some point endorsing the same piece of legislation, but we have to hope." Government still will be needed, Eisenach said, such as in managing spectrum and providing subsidies and incentives to build out broadband; the question is how best to do it. He said there's a role for government to fund some broadband infrastructure efforts in remote rural areas. "Far and away, not the biggest waste of government money by any stretch would be to just do some direct spending in conjunction with incentives," he said, while warning against overdoing it. Eisenach congratulated and joked about ex-Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, whom Trump said he would nominate to another term at the FCC (see 1706140046 and 1706140065). "Better late than never, but better now than sooner. So, I can’t resist. I’m happy she’s coming back to the commission and I’m so happy she’s been gone. Sorry,” he said, drawing some laughs.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai told the National Congress of American Indians Wednesday he's fully committed to working with the tribal governments on siting and other issues. Pai said he has had a number of meetings with tribal officials since becoming chairman in January. Tribal approvals are seen as a potential stumbling block, especially for wireless infrastructure approvals (see 1706020053). “I honor and embrace that trust relationship and my responsibilities as the Chairman of the FCC,” Pai said in written remarks. “Those responsibilities include a commitment for the Bureaus and Offices across our agency to work collaboratively with our Office of Native Affairs and Policy (ONAP). This will allow ONAP to seek input through all available means -- including consultation with Tribal leaders on a government-to-government basis.” Pai noted he just completed a weeklong trip with meetings from Milwaukee to Casper, Wyoming. The focus was on the digital divide and helping communities catch up, he said: “Rural Americans, including many in Indian Country, disproportionately find themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide.” Pai said one of the most "meaningful" meetings was with tribal representatives in South Dakota. Much is at stake, he said. "We don’t bemoan the digital divide in Indian Country because some people can’t play online games like Candy Crush," Pai said. "We focus on these issues because Internet connectivity has become vital to full participation in modern life."