The Oklahoma Corporation Commission voted unanimously Thursday to allow at least 10 more months of study on a proposal to impose toll-free calling intrastate, citing the need for accurate communication and as much public involvement as possible. It’s key that all stakeholders address issues that could affect the availability of phone service throughout the state, the commission said. The proposal, previously in line to be forwarded to the Legislature April 1 (CD Mar 11 p12), won’t see action before Jan. 19.
The FCC is reviewing what changes might make sense for the agency’s retransmission consent dispute policies (CD March 11 p8), Chairman Julius Genachowski told the Senate Commerce Committee. “The events of the last two or three months confirmed that this is a subject that should be looked at seriously,” he said in a hearing Thursday. He and Christine Varney, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department Antitrust Division, pledged to narrowly review on the merits Comcast’s acquisition of NBC Universal.
New online tools allowing consumers to measure their broadband speeds and latency are aimed at educating consumers, supplying the FCC with data and encouraging better transparency in the industry, said FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau Chief Joel Gurin. Broadband service providers advertise certain speeds “and most people don’t have any intuitive sense of what that performance is. [The tools] can help people really make a connection between the numerical speed and the experience their getting with broadband,” he said.
Media venture capital and private equity investors are still looking for deals in ad-supported media, though they're also increasingly eying investments in gaming and mobile technology, executive told a conference Thursday. “I'm a big believer in advertising-supported companies,” said Richard Bressler, managing director of Thomas H. Lee Partners, which owns part of Univision and Clear Channel. Interactive ad technology companies are also catching investors attention, Allison Goldberg, managing director of Time Warner Investments, said at the Media Summit in New York.
Google’s proposed acquisition of mobile advertising company AdMob appeared to be drawing more regulatory scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission, experts said. The agency was reportedly looking for declarations from Google rivals.
Industry heeded his complaints, voiced in July, that the first filings on the National Broadband Plan were a sign the FCC could be in trouble, National Broadband Plan Executive Director Blair Levin said Thursday at a conference. In the end, groups came though with filings that helped shape the plan, Levin said in what’s expected to be his last speech before release of the plan Tuesday.
Disparate reactions greeted an order proposed Monday by an administrative law judge with the Illinois Commerce Commission opposing the proposed acquisition by Frontier Communications of Verizon landlines in that state. The companies questioned the order’s logic. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the Communications Workers of America, foes of the deal in Illinois and elsewhere, lauded the proposed order.
An Oklahoma proposal for a statewide toll-free calling plan is “fundamentally flawed” and should be set aside in favor of a “more targeted solution,” Verizon said in preliminary comments to the Corporation Commission. The plan proposes to ban “an entire class of competitors -- interexchange carriers -- from serving an admittedly competitive market,” the company said.
The Senate passed legislation reauthorizing satellite TV providers’ distant signal licenses for five years Wednesday. It’s a significant step for what has proven to be a difficult piece of legislation to complete. The Satellite TV Extension and Localism Act of 2010 (STELA) was an amendment to a larger jobs bill (HR-4213), which passed 62-36. The bill will next move to the House, where leadership will decide to vote on the bill as-is, or make changes with the Senate through a conference, industry and Senate officials said.
A combination with competitor Leap Wireless is appealing, MetroPCS Chief Financial Officer Braxton Carter said Wednesday, providing no specifics. “Obviously, we're very interested in the combination of our companies,” Carter said at an investor conference. Many potential benefits that made a merger attractive are no longer relevant now, but there are still many positive factors, he said. “It’s important to reevaluate what your options are.” He acknowledged fierce wireless pricing competition. Carter declined to comment further on whether the companies are in talks. Leap and MetroPCS dropped negotiations in 2007 after they couldn’t agree on price. Analysts had said a deal wouldn’t face significant regulatory hurdles but there would be significant regulatory, business and technology obstacles if one of the major national carriers agreed to buy Leap (CD Feb 3 p5).