Matt Daneman

The Supreme Court's ruling for DirecTV on binding arbitration language in customers' service agreements has little applicability in the real world, "but the consequences are profound" since it marks a landmark reversal of a state court decision on arbitration, on the grounds a state court misapplied state contract law, said Harvey Rosenfield, a founder of Consumer Watchdog. As a result, the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) now seems to supersede everything, including parties' contract terms, legal experts tell us. "What the majority did here was dangerous and leads to a very slippery slope. In effect, the majority just federalized a big area of contract law, which has traditionally been a subject of state regulation and oversight," said Imre Szalai, a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans and co-author of an amicus brief in the case.

The new iteration of FCC.gov is functional and -- at the very least -- doesn't make the site less usable, unlike the last upgrade and redesign, communications regulation practitioners told us Friday, the second day it had been live. "It seems to be easier to read, generally more like what you'd expect a modern website to look like," said Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld: "It looks like my internal bookmarks to things like ECFS [Electronic Comment Filing System] still work."

Rather than a definitive victory or defeat of the FCC net neutrality order, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is likely to deliver "a hodgepodge of wins and losses," NCTA President Michael Powell said in an interview for C-SPAN's The Communicators. "That will create a sort of Swiss cheese of a regime, which is part of what I've been concerned about all along. It will leave more confusion and complexity than it will stability and finality." The three-judge decision likely won't be issued for four months, and it will almost surely be appealed to the Supreme Court, Powell said.

The FCC likely will tweak its two-degree satellite spacing rules but not do away with them altogether when commissioners vote Thursday on Part 25 rule changes at their December meeting, one lawyer with a satellite client told us. Much of the industry's lobbying efforts in recent months have involved two-degree spacing, the most contested issue in the agency's array of proposed Part 25 changes (see 1508050034).

Any 5G deployment will need low- and mid-band spectrum allocations plus high band to enable such applications as IoT, and sizably different infrastructure from 4G, with many more small cell sites, said CTIA Chief Technology Officer Tom Sawanobori Wednesday at an FCBA telecom and wireless committees event. Unlike the traditional spectrum evolution where a technology came first, followed by technical requirements and regulations, 5G represents "a slightly different equation," said Michael Ha, FCC Office of Engineering and Technology Policy and Rules Division deputy chief. The increasing demand for bandwidth for data transmission and the relative lack of unassigned spectrum is pushing the move into the millimeter wave bandwidths to support 5G, Ha said. The spectrum frontiers rulemaking (see 1510230050) is looking at bands above 24 GHz for 5G, and the 2015 World Radiocommunication Conference identified some bands for 5G -- though 28 GHz, a subject of the FCC proceeding, wasn't included in the WRC work, Ha said. While numerous incumbent satellite operations already use that spectrum, Ha said, sharing is inevitable: "We know it's not going to be exclusive use." The satellite industry wants to be part of 5G -- such as in potential applications like driverless vehicles -- but also wants assurances and safeguards against harmful interference, said Satellite Industry Association President Tom Stroup. "We certainly are advocates of sharing, where it works." 4G has become ubiquitous in the U.S., with roughly 98.5 percent of the nation covered and traffic on the 4G network expected to sextuple over the next five years, Sawanobori said. Such applications as Voice over LTE are expected to become commonplace as soon as more products offer "high-definition voice," he said. 5G, by contrast, probably won't be deployed ubiquitously across the U.S. due to different business models, Sawanobori said.

A legal and regulatory settlement this week between John Deere and LightSquared includes ending legal claims against Deere by a former LightSquared investor and specific handset and base station power and out-of-band-emission (OOBE) limits. An ex parte filing posted Wednesday in FCC docket 12-340 includes a copy of the 15-page settlement agreement and mutual release announced by the two companies Tuesday (see 1512080022). Deere said in a statement Wednesday that it "looks forward to working with LightSquared and other spectrum users on the important dual goals of expanding mobile broadband networks while protecting GPS and other navigation technologies."

Some parties are raising red flags about Altice's planned $17.7 billion takeover of Cablevision. Monday was the deadline for comments on the transaction, and critics in docket 15-257 voiced concerns about Cablevision corporate debt and Altice's lack of clarity on its broadband interconnection policies. The deadline for responses is Dec. 22.

John Deere and LightSquared came to agreement on their mutual L-band use. LightSquared said Tuesday it will forego use of 1545-1555 MHz to end some disputes with Deere over its planned ground-and-satellite-based LTE broadband network. The Deere agreement "sets the framework for broadband/GPS compatibility," LightSquared President Doug Smith told us Tuesday. "The two services can coexist peacefully. This will be a good step forward." The CEO had set out to reach such deals (see 1512040039).

Half of the World Radiocommunication Conference-19 agenda is made up of items suggested by the Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (CITEL), including proposals on use of bands below 6 GHz for international mobile telecom (IMT) and bandwidth for high-altitude platform stations, said Julie Zoller, deputy head of the U.S. delegation to WRC-15. The tentative WRC-19 agenda -- still to be finalized by the ITU Council -- also includes CITEL-sponsored proposals on spectrum needs for a global aeronautical distress and safety system, 5 GHz radio local area networks, development of regulations for non-nongeostationary orbit fixed satellite service (FSS) systems in the V-band, a possible allocation of Earth exploration-satellite service in the 460-470 MHz band, and orbital position limits rules, Zoller said. She spoke Tuesday at the U.S. ITU Association (USITUA) annual meeting.

Experts believe the California PUC will follow its own schedule, rather than the FCC's shot clock, in reviewing Charter Communications' acquisitions of Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable. No one expects the deal to be done within the FCC's 180 days, particularly given the volume of data requested by the FCC, Paul Goodman, telecommunications senior legal counsel at the Greenlining Institute, told us. Given the Charter/TWC/BHN size, “this is more like an eight- or nine-month process,” he said, saying the CPUC typically “works hard to match” the FCC schedule. Any California delays (see 1511270047) shouldn’t derail the deal unless Charter starts to see signs federal or state regulators won’t be satisfied with answers or conditions and no sign-off is likely, Goodman said.