Rockefeller, Waxman Urge FCC to Focus Only on DTV
The incoming Commerce Committee chairmen asked FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to take up only DTV items at the commission’s Dec. 18 meeting. Commissioner Michael Copps quickly expressed agreement, but it was unclear how Martin will respond. The request, in a letter sent Friday, may have cost Martin support from Democrat commissioners on contentious matters not involving DTV, industry sources said. Late Thursday, the FCC released its Dec. 18 agenda listing all of the items that Martin circulated late last month.
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Ensuring a smooth DTV transition should be “the most important challenge for the Commission over the next nine weeks,” said incoming House Commerce Chairman-designate Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and presumed incoming Senate Commerce Chairman Jay Rockefeller, (D-W.Va.). “At a time when serious questions are being raised about transition readiness, it would be counterproductive for the FCC to consider unrelated items, especially complex and controversial items that the new Congress and new Administration will have an interest in reviewing.” The FCC should focus only on “matters that require action under the law and efforts to smooth the transition to digital television,” they said.
Rockefeller and Waxman sent the letter to Martin out of concern that the DTV items on the agenda need all the attention of the commissioners, said aides to both members. The digital transition “needs to be issue No. 1,” a Rockefeller spokesman said. “We're not convinced the FCC is ready” for the transition. Congress also has concerns that the government isn’t managing efficiently DTV consumer education and the converter box coupon, the spokesman said.
Industry officials said the letter from Democratic Hill leaders puts pressure on Copps and Adelstein to back away from supporting Martin’s free wireless broadband proposal. If the Democratic commissioners “are looking for a reason not to act” on some items on the Dec. 18 agenda, “this could give them an excuse,” said Curt Stamp, the president of the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance.
Copps said Friday that he “couldn’t agree more that the FCC needs to be drinking only from the DTV faucet for the next 67 days -- and the weeks beyond,” he said. “As I meet with consumers around the country, I realize how much more help they are going to need to make this transition work.”
It’s unclear how the letter will affect Martin. The FCC “just received the letter from Senator Rockefeller and Congressman Waxman,” said commission spokesman Matt Nodine. “We are reviewing it and will reach out to the other offices.”
The letter could be a boon for opponents to some of the measures set for a Dec. 18 vote, but Martin may not bow to the pressure, an industry lawyer said. “While this letter seems to be rather helpful, I think the chairman clearly has an agenda that he wants to move forward and it’s tough to say what will influence him one way or the other,” the lawyer said. “Clearly the incoming chairmen have made their views pretty clear … but does that stop him? There are probably only one or two people that know the answer to that.”
The letter “has pretty much quashed any slim chances of something moving,” at the December meeting, though action on controversial items hadn’t seemed likely prior to the letter, another industry official said. It sends a message that the new Congress and administration want to handle the controversial issues but doesn’t necessarily indicate a move by the Hill to stop any particular item on the agenda, the official said.
The letter puts “in even greater jeopardy” the non-DTV items on the December agenda, “many of which were already controversial,” said a Stifel Nicolaus note Friday. And the letter “appears to eliminate the already slim prospects this Commission will overhaul telco intercarrier compensation and universal service funding, and will likely affect a host of other proceedings,” the analysts said. The letter “leaves the FCC some wiggle room, but not much, to act on matters beyond DTV and items with a statutory deadline such as forbearance petitions, particularly if they involve public safety or are consensus driven,” they said.
Congress shouldn’t tell the FCC to back off issues if it’s not willing to up take those issues itself, said Dan Isett, policy director of the Parents TV Council. “It would be a different situation if Chairmen Waxman and Rockefeller were both teeing these issues up going into next year, but I haven’t seen any indication of that,” he said. “To use that as a reason to discourage FCC action is unconscionable.”
2.3 GHz Interference
In the Dec. 18 agenda, the FCC said it will consider interference rules for the 2.3 GHz band. The rules are meant to solve a decade-long dispute between wireless communications service and satellite radio. The WCS Coalition said it was “preposterous” for Sirius XM to argue that modifying out-of-band emission rules for the wireless communications service would constitute a license modification. “There is no unconditional guarantee of exclusive, interference-free use of spectrum, increasing the risk of interference does not rise to the level of a modification of license,” said Paul Sinderbrand, WCS Coalition counsel, in a letter to the FCC, citing the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in AMSC Subsidiary Corp. v. FCC. Sirius XM’s arguments are “transparent eleventh hour ploys to delay resolution of these proceedings to the detriment of the WCS licensees and, more importantly, the public interest in expanding mobile broadband availability,” he said.
Sirius XM bases its argument on a Supreme Court ruling in FCC v. National Broadcasting Corp., wrote James Blitz, Sirius regulatory counsel, a day earlier. In that case the Supreme Court said “additional interference to a licensee constitutes a modification,” Blitz said.