Removing barriers to broadband deployment, such as pole attachment permitting and costs, needs to be an FCC and congressional priority, said American Cable Association President Matt Polka in an interview on C-SPAN’s The Communicators that was to be broadcast over the weekend and was posted online. Added TDS Senior Vice President-Corporate Affairs Drew Petersen, "It's not a glamorous issue," but such attachments can cost close to $40 per pole in rural areas requiring multiple poles, adding up to a significant financial hurdle to deployment. While 5G holds big promise, it likely won't be deployed in rural and suburban areas for years, said Petersen, an ACA board member. Polka said continued deployment of broadband -- including obtaining the financing and recouping costs -- is the biggest challenge facing cable ISPs. He said the FCC Communications Act Title II broadband service rollback opened the door to companies being more innovative in how they recoup those costs. He said as the country considers infrastructure-related spending or proceedings, broadband needs to be kept in mind. Petersen said TDS' most expensive portion of business is its fiber footprint, followed by access to video content. He said it has seen "some" cord cutting, though subscription VOD is largely complementary. TDS, which operates in 31 states, is expanding video subscriber numbers through bringing in IP-based video via its fiber network, Petersen said. Since cable operators are increasingly broadband-centric, whether "American Cable Association" is an outdated name "is a question we ask ourselves all the time," Polka said: "Our members are broadband forward" and ACA's board considered a name change a couple years ago, though it opted to keep the moniker because of its familiarity. Asked about AT&T buying Time Warner, Petersen said the urge to grow through deals is understandable, but smaller MVPDs and their subscribers end up paying higher prices for content to make up for the favorable terms and conditions big, merged companies are able to secure. Polka said Sinclair/Tribune should be denied even with divestitures of some stations.
One of the biggest issues in the FCC small satellites authorization streamlining rulemaking might be its definition of a smallsat, experts said at an FCBA event Thursday. The requirement that smallsats above a certain orbit have collision avoidance capabilities also could face pushback, said Spire counsel George John. Development of such propulsion technology for smallsats is still "getting there," he said.
The FCC fielded multiple requests for tweaking the requirements for registering C-band receive-only earth stations to help grease the path to registration, but it's not clear whether the agency will go that route, experts told us. With only a fraction of earth stations registered now, whether a significant percentage will end up registered similarly isn't clear. If the FCC can't get even a majority registered, it will be making rulings “on an invalid database," said Society of Broadcast Engineers (SBE) President Jim Leifer. "That’s my biggest concern.” The FCC didn't comment.
The C-band clearing plan proposed by Intelsat/Intel/SES and Ligado's terrestrial low-power broadband service (TLPS) proposal both involve reallocating satellite spectrum, but the proceedings differ widely on the details, and FCC activity on the former doesn't necessarily mean anything forthcoming on the latter, said spectrum and satellite experts. Both are part of a broader trend of satellite spectrum being repurposed for terrestrial broadband use, with struggling satellite companies often at the forefront of that, said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Project at New America.
Movie studios and regional sports networks (RSNs) could become antitrust sticking points for a proposed Comcast buy of Fox's nonbroadcast assets, antitrust experts told us. Comcast said Wednesday it's preparing an all-cash offer for the same Fox nonbroadcasting assets that Fox agreed to sell to Disney. It said the structure and terms of its offer, and the regulatory risk provisions, "would be at least as favorable to Fox shareholders as the Disney offer."
Globalstar, which unsuccessfully fought against allowing outdoor Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure (U-NII) devices to operate in the 5.1 GHz band, said it has evidence of growing degradation to its mobile satellite service (MSS) offerings. But spectrum and satellite experts said it isn't clear whether the FCC will take up the company's petition regarding whether the band can continue to allow sharing between MSS and outdoor U-NII operations.
Cable and leased access programmer (LAP) reaction to the FCC's proposed revisit of its cable leased access rules is hazy, as is whether issuing the further NPRM on June's FCC agenda (see 1805160051) will be a unanimous commissioner decision, experts said. The 2008 leased access order supported by the Leased Access Programmers Association and opposed by cable was never put into place, and the FNPRM that proposes rescinding that order could be a chance for "new thinking" on leased access that better balances rules tilted today toward cable, said LAPA Vice President Duane Polich.
Clearing more than 100 MHz of C-band for terrestrial use is feasible but "challenging," and will take substantial time, money and effort, Intelsat CEO Stephen Spengler said Thursday during a JPMorgan investor conference. Spectrum beyond that 100 MHz is "an order of magnitude" more difficult than the first 100 MHz, he said, adding the company hasn't started assessment work for going beyond the 100 MHz it, SES and Intel are proposing. Spengler said Intelsat is calculating what the price tag might be for clearing part of the band and moving some customers higher on the band, with expenses including potentially relocating some earth stations. "I wouldn't put in the billions [of dollars] but it's a sizable effort," he said. He said a lot of major headends have fiber connections, but there are 5,000 to 6,000 remote sites where fiber isn't an option instead of using C-band, and Ku-band suffers from inferior performance characteristics and that there isn't capacity available to relocate all the video and radio distribution supported by C-band. Spengler said the FCC is indicating an NPRM on C-band could be coming this summer, as expected (see 1804200003), and a final order could come in the first half of 2019. Comcast, which expressed concerns about C-band clearing to Commissioner Mike O'Rielly's office (see 1805110054), made similar presentations to aides to Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Brendan Carr, said a docket 17-258 filing posted Thursday.
The pair of non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) satellite applications on the June 7 commissioners' meeting agenda (see 1805160051) will likely get 4-0 approval and point to the FCC clustering future approvals, with others likely later this year, experts told us.
BALTIMORE -- Transportation Department test results on adjacent-band compatibility to GPS reinforces the belief of a threat that Ligado's plans for a broadband terrestrial low-power service (TPLS) pose to high-precision GPS receivers, Bradford Parkinson, vice-chairman of the Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) National Advisory Board, told us Wednesday during the board's meeting. "I want [Ligado] to succeed, but not at the expense of PNT." He said concerns remain that the FCC could move on approval of the company's applications. The FCC didn't comment.