Public Safety Likely to be Focus of Sept. 11 FCC Meeting
The next FCC agenda meeting is Sept. 11, according to the agency Web site. For the anniversary of the 2001 terror attack, the meeting is expected to include major public safety orders. Chief among them is an order being circulated by Chairman Kevin Martin and addressing Association of Public Safety Communications Officials claims that carriers should be held to identification requirements measured on a public safety answering point (PSAP) basis, not statewide averaging.
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Martin promised quick turnaround on an order dealing with the APCO complaint. Carriers hope the FCC will delay a decision, allowing more study before imposing new location requirements. The FCC is also expected to take up several orders on the 800 MHz rebanding, including one which would impose benchmarks that Sprint Nextel must meet. That order raises some of the toughest 800 MHz rebanding issues before the FCC.
Also a possible agenda item is a rulemaking on cable franchises. In a March 5 order streamlining video franchising for Bells (CD March 6 p3), the FCC said it would issue a cable rulemaking in six months. That order is circulating now, commission sources said. The March order said the FCC had “tentatively” found that cable operators shouldn’t automatically get deals like the Bells’ until their current municipal contracts expired. Cable officials called that unfair. The order circulated by Martin upholds that earlier finding, said an FCC official. When contracts are up for renewal, the draft order says, cable companies can take advantage of limits on public access channel and related fees, the official said. The order envisions “very modest changes” in new cable franchises, the official said.
Other media items circulated by Martin late Tuesday in hopes of quick votes is a dual carriage order and one on program access rules, said an FCC official. Martin’s office circulated a draft order proposing to extend a ban on exclusive cable programming for five years, as many small cable operators want. Comcast and other large companies agitated against that step. They said increased video competition has outdated the need to ban exclusive carriage deals for cable channels affiliated with operators. The program access order would not let satellite providers, cable operators and Bells get binding arbitration in carriage disputes, said the FCC source. Included in the order is a notice of proposed rulemaking asking how cable operators might offer channels individually, said the official.
Martin’s dual-carriage order would force cable operators to make digital broadcasts available to analog customers along with carrying the digital signals, said the FCC official. The item may be more palatable to commissioners, including Robert McDowell, who signaled that they would vote against a digital must-carry order, the FCC source said, cautioning that it’s far from clear whether Martin will get two other votes on the dual-carriage rule. Martin circulated the media rulemakings in time for the Sept. 11 FCC meeting, asking commissioners to vote on them beforehand or be prepared to decide on them at that event, said the official.