BOSTON -- Cable industry criticisms of the FCC on the set-top box, special access and broadband privacy proceedings are lobbying as usual, Chairman Tom Wheeler told a closing-day crowd Wednesday at INTX 2016. Pointing to comments NCTA President Michael Powell made Monday about the cable industry being under a "relentless regulatory assault" (see 1605160033), Wheeler said, "The way in which lobbying campaigns tend to work these days, is first you set up a scenario of 'there's too much being done, we are being persecuted,' then you talk about what I call 'imaginary horribles.'"
A 60-day clock has started for comment on the DOJ's proposed final judgment on Charter Communications' buys of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks with conditions on its treatment of online video distributors, it said in a notice published Tuesday in the Federal Register. That 60-day period isn't expected to delay the close of the deals, which Charter last week said would happen on Wednesday. The DOJ proposed barring New Charter from any contractual alternative distribution method limits on online video distributors (see 1604250039).
BOSTON -- Any number of next steps, from a report or rulemaking to "some other option," are possible after the FCC's independent and diverse programming notice of inquiry and related workshops, said David Grossman, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn's chief of staff, on an INTX 2016 panel Tuesday. Jessica Almond, aide to Chairman Tom Wheeler, said Wheeler similarly is interested in some next step in the programming NOI, but gave no details on what. Wheeler is scheduled to talk Wednesday.
BOSTON -- A panel Tuesday of the FCC's four regular commissioners at INTX 2016 morphed into a referendum largely along party lines on the agency's set-top box rulemaking and broadband privacy rulemaking. Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Michael O'Rielly repeatedly debated the FCC's overall regulatory role. Section 222 in Title II of the Communications Act deals with telephone records, not broadband data services, so it can't be cited as a basis for broadband privacy regulation, O'Rielly said: "The words on the page [of the law] actually have to mean something." But Clyburn said "We are not in the 1800s" and it's up to regulatory bodies to interpret how older laws apply to modern technology. It's the job of the legislative branch to fix those laws, O'Rielly responded. The panel was taped as an episode of C-SPAN's The Communicators.
BOSTON -- Regardless of how the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rules on the challenge to the FCC order on net neutrality, that ruling could spur Congress to work on a legislative solution, congressional staffers said Monday at INTX 2016. "This issue is not going to be settled" until Congress acts, Senate Commerce Committee GOP telecom policy director David Quinalty said during a panel Monday on congressional communications policy.
Bemoaning a lack of openness and transparency and repeating recent criticisms about merger oversight, the FCC's two Republican commissioners -- Mike O'Rielly and Ajit Pai -- presented a litany of complaints about the agency on a panel at the FCBA annual seminar Friday. "I look forward to the next" chairman, O'Rielly said.
The FCC's set-top box, privacy and business data services proceedings top Chairman Tom Wheeler's to-do list of priorities, General Counsel Jonathan Sallet said at the FCBA annual seminar Friday. "Clearly the chairman's goal is to bring these -- and many other items -- home before the end of the year," Sallet said during a panel with him and former FCC general counsels.
NCTA Chairman Michael Powell launched the group's INTX 2016 show and exhibition with a lengthy broadside Monday against the FCC and its regulatory approach. "Most troublesome is an emerging government view that the communications market is bifurcated and should be regulated differently," Powell said. "Internet companies are nurtured and allowed to roam free, but network providers are disparagingly labeled 'gatekeepers' that should be shackled."
Looming FCC requirements for carrier identification digital video uplinks have satellite news gathering (SNG) truck operators raising red flags about what they said are regulations that could put them out of business by requiring SNG companies buy tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of new modulators. “The guys that sell this equipment are champing at the bit -- it’s great for them,” American Satellite Uplink President Don Collopy said. “It’s going to kill us.” The FCC, already having delayed implementation of its Automatic Transmitter Identification System (ATIS) rule for such transportable earth stations by a year, to September 2017 (see 1603040054) is considering whether to further delay implementation.
Applying to the FCC International Bureau for such international licenses and permissions as Communications Act Section 214 authorizations and transfers, submarine cable landing licenses, satellite earth station licenses and Section 310 rulings could get more complicated if the agency agrees to an NTIA request. Whether that NTIA-sought approach -- having the FCC require more information upfront with the aim being a streamlining of the approval process -- bears fruit, "we won't know until this is rolled out and plays out," David Klein, lawyer at Klein Moynihan, whose practice includes Section 214 applications for telco clients, told us Thursday.