NTIA and the Rural Utilities Service sought comment by June 10 on the Broadband Opportunity Council's objectives, said a notice in Monday's Federal Register. It said the council's objectives are to engage with industry and other stakeholders to understand ways the government can better support the needs of communities seeking to expand broadband access and adoption; identify regulatory barriers that unduly impede broadband deployment, adoption or competition; survey and report back on existing programs that support or could be modified to support broadband competition, deployment or adoption; and take all necessary actions to remove these barriers and realign existing programs to increase broadband competition, deployment and adoption.
The FCC docket for the Comcast/Time Warner Cable transaction is closed, said the chiefs of the International, Media, Wireless and Wireline bureaus in an order Wednesday. Comcast, TWC, Charter Communications and the spinoff that the deal would have created withdrew their applications Friday (see 1504270038), the order said. The docket’s termination means all parties that filed for access to confidential information have two weeks to “destroy or return to the Submitting Party all Stamped Confidential Documents and Stamped Highly Confidential Documents,” the order said.
Customers he sees want high-capacity wireline broadband service but “are far less interested in retaining their traditional wired voice service,” said Jimmy Todd, CEO of Nex-Tech of Lenora, Kansas, in a meeting with FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly. The absence of a data connection service plan mechanism “imposes a substantial hardship upon customers who want to take broadband service, but want to use wireless or voice over Internet Protocol technology for their voice service,” Todd said. “The current universal service rules preclude support for the same facilities that were serving the customer before he or she terminated voice service.” The filing in docket 01-92 was made by WTA, Advocates for Rural Broadband, which also sent representatives to the meeting with O'Rielly.
The Copyright Office’s new Fair Use Index will give the public searchable summaries of major fair use decisions, Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante said Tuesday. The office created the index in response to the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator’s 2013 Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement. The index is searchable by category and type of use, the Copyright Office said. The index “not only helps to make the doctrine more accessible, but also serves to re-emphasize the significance of this right as part of our culture,” Pallante said in a news release.
EarthLink asked the FCC Enforcement Bureau to resolve a Communications Act sections 201 and 202 complaint the company filed in 2004 against SBC Communications and SBC Advanced Solutions, saying in a letter posted Tuesday that “the delay has been extraordinary.” EarthLink had brought a complaint against the SBC entities over practices related to SBC's wholesale asynchronous digital subscriber line service that EarthLink said violated sections 201(b) and 202(a). EarthLink said it attempted to address the violations directly with SBC before filing the complaint and followed prescribed complaint rules. The bureau did a full investigation, collecting information on the complaint through January 2005, EarthLink said. The company said it never received an explanation of the delay, saying federal courts have ordered the FCC “to act on matters that were pending for significantly less time.”
The Downloadable Security Technical Advisory Committee plans meetings May 13, July 7 and Aug. 4, said Tuesday's Federal Register. “At the May and July meetings, the committee will discuss Working Group reports and any other topics related to the DSTAC's work that may arise.” In August, the committee will discuss and consider a full draft report. The DSTAC’s final product is due in September, said its Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act-mandated charter.
A lawyer for NCTA said it and CableLabs want more testing of Globalstar's terrestrial low-power service for broadband before the FCC allows TLPS. The company's proposal to provide a terrestrial service that's co-channel with its mobile satellite service operations shows that an emissions mask at the top of the 2.4 GHz unlicensed band isn't needed, wrote NCTA lawyer Paul Margie of Harris Wiltshire. "Any action on Globalstar’s TLPS proposal should be accompanied by a relaxation or elimination of the strict unwanted emissions mask." The company hasn't provided "compelling evidence" to keep the mask, said the filing posted Tuesday to docket 13-213 on a conversation Margie and CableLabs and NCTA officials had with an aide to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. Globalstar has said CableLabs' demos, which that R&D group said raised TLPS concerns, were flawed and the service would be a "good neighbor" to Wi-Fi operations in the band (see 1504240035).
The FCC is considering a draft order that would let Pandora own a broadcast station as long as the company is less than 49 percent foreign owned, said an agency official. Pandora asked the commission to sign off on its plan to buy KXMZ (FM) Box Elder, South Dakota (see 1411260042), even if it were 100 percent foreign owned, because the company has been unable to verify how foreign owned it is, said Garvey Schubert attorney Melody Virtue, who represents Pandora. “Most publicly traded companies are widely held.” She said the 49 percent threshold reportedly in the draft order would let Pandora proceed with the transaction. The order also includes a requirement that Pandora monitor its ownership going forward, said an FCC official. Pandora and FCC staff have been in contact over how the order would work, and the monitoring conditions are expected be acceptable to Pandora if the order is approved by the full commission, Virtue said. A Media Bureau spokeswoman had no comment.
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts spoke with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler last week before the company backed out of the deal to buy Time Warner Cable Friday in the face of regulator opposition, according to an ex parte filing in docket 14-57. April 20, Roberts “emphasized that Comcast, as it has in proven in prior transactions, will live up to the commitments it made in the docket,” the filing said. Industry officials familiar with the proceedings told us that concern about Comcast’s record on prior transaction conditions was one of the factors in FCC opposition to the deal (see 1504230060). Charter Communications, Comcast and TWC formally withdrew their applications for the Comcast/TWC Friday, in an ex parte letter filed in docket 14-57. The Comcast and Charter spinoff that was to be created out of Comcast/TWC, also withdrew its application, the filing said.
Spectrum sharing is critical to Wi-Fi, NCTA said Monday in a post on its blog. “By increasing the amount of spectrum that Wi-Fi can share, our spectrum supply can keep pace with the tremendous growth in Wi-Fi usage and jump-start a new generation of Wi-Fi that can reach speeds of up to a gigabit per second.” The group sees special promise in sharing the 5.9 GHz band with automakers who plan to use the spectrum for crash avoidance systems (see 1402040029). The spectrum was allocated more than 15 years ago for that use, NCTA said. It said that auto manufacturers haven't developed "a commercial product despite millions in government subsidies, which means that today, while there are neither auto nor Wi-Fi technologies in the band, is the perfect moment to rethink how these frequencies can be best utilized and shared and to develop a true win-win solution.”