The Senate Antitrust Subcommittee may hold a hearing in late January or early February on the Comcast-NBC Universal merger, said Hill sources. Hearings likely will wait until after the companies submit their application to the FCC, which could be in the next week, one Hill source said. The House Commerce Committee is considering a Feb. 4 hearing (CD Jan 15 p9).
The House Commerce Committee is considering a hearing Feb. 4 on the Comcast-NBC Universal merger, Hill and industry sources said. The House Judiciary Committee and the Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees also have jurisdiction over the merger.
The FCC proposed amending emergency alert system rules to require national testing and data collection. In its latest rulemaking notice, issued Thursday, the commission sought comment on whether the proposed change would “effectively ensure accurate EAS testing at the national level.” Currently, FCC Part 11 rules provide for periodic national EAS testing, but mandates only state and local testing. No U.S. president has ever issued a national alert, and it’s never been tested, the agency said. EAS testing was one issue raised last year in the Public Safety Bureau’s 30- day review.
Public safety leaders seeking a national public safety wireless network flew into Washington, urging Congress to immediately reallocate 700 MHz D-block spectrum. Police, fire and other representatives held meetings Tuesday with Congressional leaders and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, they said at a press conference that evening. More than eight years after communications between public safety agencies broke down during 9/11, “we still do not have the ability to communicate with each other,” said Chief Robert Davis, president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association. “We are profoundly disappointed that Congress and the administration have not acted to secure this critically needed spectrum for the protection of the public.”
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski circulated two items related to broadband data sharing last week. One takes up a petition by the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners for a declaration that rules don’t limit states’ collection of information from broadband service and infrastructure providers. The item on circulation is a proposed order resolving the narrow issue stated in the petition, an FCC official told us. Big phone companies have called the proposed rule an unjustified expansion of state authority (CD Nov 4 p5). The second item is a proposed order about Section 106(h)(1) of the Broadband Data Improvement Act, the official said. The section directs the commission to share with eligible bodies aggregate broadband data collected in FCC Form 477. The draft order interprets how the agency should share data, what “aggregate” means and how to protect the confidentiality of competitive data, the source said. Companies and consumer groups have fought over how much detail those requesting the information should get (CD Aug 3 p3).
An NCTA proposal being eyed by the FCC to shrink the Universal Service Fund met with resistance from rural carriers that could lose high-cost support under the plan. The cable petition, which would set up a two-step process by which parties can ask the FCC to reassess universal service support levels for specific geographic areas, is one of several cost-saving measures under consideration by the FCC broadband team (CD Dec 10 p1). In comments last week, rural ILECs said adopting the proposal would undermine the National Broadband Plan.
Net neutrality rules are needed to prevent ISP price discrimination that reduces content developer incentives to create for the Internet, said New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity in a report released Thursday. Allowing ISPs to move to a model like cable TV where service providers may charge for content access would lock out independent and startup content makers, said economics fellow Scott Holladay in a conference call Thursday. Permitting discrimination isn’t the way to promote broadband deployment, said Executive Director Michael Livermore. “Content providers are the last ones you would want to tax to fund the network, because [they] are generating positive externalities. You don’t go out and tax people that are basically creating free value for the economy.” Livermore endorsed the FCC’s proposed rules, which he said provide clear, high-level guidelines, while allowing the agency to take a case-by-case approach when necessary. “The [proposed] rule actually operates at a fairly high level of generality, and so it sets the stage and provides some degree of certainty for people making business decisions, but at the same time there’s lots of flexibility in the rule for the FCC on a case-by-case basis to adjudicate new questions.” The same rules should apply to wired and wireless networks, said Holladay, because they're both “limited resources that face the same type of constraints.”
The FCC and NTIA launched new Web sites Thursday as government agencies work to meet President Obama’s openness directive. The FCC took the wraps off its long-awaited Reboot.FCC.gov site, which includes an official FCC blog and a discussion forum for users to submit, vote and comment on ideas for reforming FCC processes and redesigning the agency’s Web site. Meanwhile, NTIA and Rural Utilities Service (RUS) revealed BroadbandMatch, a forum for broadband stimulus applicants to connect and form partnerships.
Civil rights advocates lambasted the FCC’s defense for waiving sunshine rules in October only for blog comments. Last month, FCC Associate General Counsel Joel Kaufman told the civil rights group that differences between blog comments and ex parte filings made waiving sunshine restrictions appropriate for only the Open Internet blog in advance of the FCC’s Oct. 22 meeting on network neutrality (CD Dec 11 p11). In an application for review Tuesday, the League of United Latin American Citizens said the waiver unfairly locked out people without Internet access. “This is not just a question of some members of the public being relegated to ’steerage’ while others are given priority in first class; rather, it is about the Commission leaving members of the public at the dock while the net neutrality ship sails away.”
Comprehensive FCC action by July on jurisdictional separations may be a long shot, given a short time frame and ongoing work on the National Broadband Plan, said officials for state commissions and state consumer advocates. The FCC may again extend the nearly nine-year-old freeze on separations, which expires June 30, they said. “Another freeze is certainly a possibility,” said Commissioner John Burke of the Vermont Public Service Board. If the FCC chooses to go in that direction, state regulators believe “interim changes to key factors are an absolute pre-requisite to extending final comprehensive review beyond June of this year,” he said.