The FCC Incentive Auction Task Force plans a public workshop May 24 on participating in the reverse auction, said a public notice in Thursday's Daily Digest. An online tutorial will be available before the workshop that includes an overview of bidding software and a review of the bidding procedures, the task force said. “We strongly encourage all participants to view the online tutorial before the workshop.”

Hughes Network Systems sought a "competitively and technologically neutral bidding process" in the FCC's planned Connect America Fund reverse auction of broadband-oriented support. Hughes also said the commission should include a Remote Areas Fund framework in a CAF Phase II auction order on the tentative agenda for its May 25 meeting (see 1605050036). A Hughes filing Wednesday in docket 10-90 summarized its meetings with FCC officials, including aides to all five commissioners. Hughes talking points said "satellite broadband covers America successfully" and decreases the number of Americans without broadband access to less than 1.5 million, but "satellite capacity limits will impose constraints on actual bidding." Hughes said a competitively and technologically neutral CAF auction would maximize participation and promote market efficiency. Any FCC fiber preferences would violate such principles and result in higher costs and fewer households served, it said. If the commission doesn't hold a "completely open auction," it should set "reasonable criteria for evaluating competing bids from different types of providers," recognizing factors such as data speed, latency, capacity and economic efficiency, said Hughes, and it proposed a bidding credit or point system to balance the factors. On satellite buildout duties, it said: "Satellite providers will always be able to serve very rural customers more quickly than terrestrial providers. How much more quickly depends on the extent to which funding allows for the reservation of capacity for customers that do not currently take service.”

CTA and its broadcast industry partners on the petition at the FCC for authorization of the physical layer of ATSC 3.0 (see 1604200051) plan no comments on the commission’s public notice by the May 26 deadline (see 1604260064), Julie Kearney, CTA vice president-regulatory affairs, told us at the ATSC Broadcast Television Conference Wednesday. CTA and its petition partners -- the Advanced Warning and Response Network Alliance, America's Public Television Stations and NAB -- may well file reply comments when those are due June 27, Kearney said. “We’re really excited about the petition,” she said. “We’re excited about the innovation” that broadcasters are bringing forth through ATSC 3.0, Kearney said. The petitioners agree “to stay together as much as possible” in comments at the FCC on the petition and the ATSC 3.0 rulemaking to follow, “but we don’t plan to file comments in the comment round,” she said. “So we will file joint replies, if necessary. We are working together as a cohesive group, as a cohesive unit. We feel really good about it.”

Sprint and Level 3 urged the FCC to "again reiterate" that long-distance companies (inter-exchange carriers or IXCs) don't owe local telephone access charges for so-called intraMTA (major trading area) wireline-wireless traffic. "We showed that the Commission has repeatedly made clear that the 'intraMTA rule' superseded the access charge regime," said a filing Tuesday by a Sprint counsel in docket 14-228. "LECs are only entitled to reciprocal compensation in connection with intraMTA calls and may not impose access charges on other carriers, including IXCs, carrying such calls. We urged the Commission to again reiterate its rule in answering the petition for declaratory ruling filed in this docket by the LEC Coalition." Sprint and Level 3 said it would serve the interests of all parties for the FCC "to reiterate its position" because hundreds of telecom carriers "are about to embark on costly discovery in connection" with a related U.S. district court proceeding. "That discovery is likely to be largely unnecessary once it is established that LECs are not entitled to impose access charges on intraMTA calls. Thus, it is now clear that, if the Commission waits to provide its guidance until the appeal of the recent district court decision, millions of dollars will be wasted," Sprint and Level 3 said. "We also noted that the one point on which the parties agree is that prompt action by the Commission is needed. The LEC Coalition recently 'reiterated its continuing support for its pending Petition for Declaratory Ruling'" (see here). LECs believe they're owed access charges for the intraMTA wireline-wireless traffic. A federal judge in November sided with a LEC motion to dismiss IXC federal claims (see 1511200070), but litigation continues.

There is a negative bias in the rating outlook of U.S. telecom providers, S&P Global Ratings said in an emailed news release Tuesday on a new report (paid access). "A combination of aggressive shareholder-oriented financial policies, mature industry conditions, intense competition, converging technologies that could lead to increased investments and acquisitions, and spending to acquire wireless spectrum licenses or enhance network capabilities could hurt telecom companies' credit quality over the next couple of years," S&P Global Ratings credit analyst Allyn Arden said. The report cites "low discretionary cash flow" (DCF or "cash from operations minus capital expenditures and dividends") as a "key risk" because it reduces company financial flexibility. "Industrywide DCF is weak because of elevated leverage, including unfunded pensions and other post-retirement obligations, hefty capital spending requirements, and substantial dividend payouts. In aggregate, we estimate that the industry's overall DCF as a percentage of debt is only about 1%-2%," the release said. Arden said that is significant because the companies also face low growth, pressuring their ability to maintain their ratings without allocating more free cash flow to debt reduction.

Working with the Federal Aviation Administration, the FCC made considerable progress on curbing migratory bird deaths through the transition from steady-burning lights on communications towers to flashing lights, FCC biologist Joelle Gehring said Friday in a blog post. The FCC and FAA jointly won the Presidential Migratory Bird Stewardship Award recognizing the importance of that work, Gehring said. "Communications towers … serve as deadly roadblocks on the paths of birds as they travel,” she wrote. Current research suggests some 7 million birds collide with towers in North America every year during their spring and fall migrations, she said. A documented 239 species of birds have collided with towers, resulting in their deaths, she said. “For the past six years, the FCC partnered with the FAA to protect migratory birds and to address this problem and revise the standards used for lighting communications towers and transition from steady-burning tower lights to flashing tower lights,” Gehring said. “The publication of revised lighting rules last year marked the culmination of a multi-year effort to significantly reduce mortality rates of migratory birds resulting from collisions with communications towers.”

The FCC's E-rate budget will be $3.94 billion for funding year 2016 (beginning July 1), a 1 percent increase from the $3.9 billion budget in the current funding year, said a Wireline Bureau public notice Friday in docket 02-6. The E-rate program, which gives schools and libraries telecom discounts, is subject to annual inflation adjustments. Meanwhile, consultant Billy Jack Gregg projected the contribution factor for carriers paying into the overall USF program would drop from 17.9 percent to 17.6 percent of interstate and international end-user revenue, if the industry revenue base stays constant. The decline would occur because USF demand is projected to fall in the quarter due to out-of-period adjustments, Gregg said in an email May 2. But if revenue falls -- and it has been trending down over the years -- the contribution factor could be higher than 17.6 percent, he said, noting the Universal Service Administrative Co. will issue its revenue projections at the end of May.

NAB “strongly supports” an FCC rulemaking notice on improving the accuracy of the TV white spaces database, NAB said in comments filed Friday. The TVWS database “contained numerous errors and inaccurate data,” and a solution that incorporates automatic geolocation in all TVWS devices could address the problem, NAB said. “Eliminating the professional installation option for determining a device’s location will strengthen the database, protect licensed users from harmful interference, and facilitate further deployment of TVWS technology by making TVWS devices more consumer friendly.” The commission should proceed “expeditiously,” NAB said.

Both broadcast and cable interests continue to lobby the FCC on proposed changes to retransmission consent negotiation rules. People who have been part of recent retrans ex parte meetings told us the agency doesn't seem ready to circulate soon for commissioner approval new rules for the totality of circumstances test for good-faith negotiations, with the FCC perhaps still trying to figure out what it plans to do. But, given the agency staff taking part in those meetings, it seems likely the FCC is intent on getting feedback on the NPRM on 15 negotiation practices (see 1509020061). In a meeting with Chairman Tom Wheeler aide Jessica Almond, NAB said it cited the pro-competitive aspects of bundling, such as efficient economies of scale and cost savings, and the role they play in fostering creation of new and diverse programming, said a filing Thursday in docket 15-216. NAB also said multichannel video programming distributors "are the true masters of the bundle" with their double-, triple- and quadruple-play packages, "sometimes giving consumers little or no choice to select just one service if they prefer." NAB said the FCC should be "tickle[d] that MVPDs -- in this one instance -- are asking for the government to intervene to severely curtail or eliminate completely the ability of broadcasters to offer programming bundles." NAB also said it backs changing or eliminating media cross-ownership rules, citing "today's intensely diversified media marketplace." The American Television Alliance and member Mediacom, meanwhile, met with Media Bureau and Office of General Counsel staff to argue the FCC has authority to direct broadcasters to grant retrans consent for a limited period, said a Thursday filing in the docket. While Congress said MVPDs can't retransmit a broadcaster signal without that broadcaster's consent, lawmakers never limited FCC authority to require a station to give consent on a limited-time basis, ATVA/Mediacom said. Instead, Section 325 of the Cable Act and sections 201(b) and 303(r) of the Communications Act are sources of FCC authority to adopt such a rule, they said: "It is safe to say that there is virtually no part of a broadcaster's operations that are within its 'unqualified' control and immune from the Commission's regulatory authority absent an express and specific withdrawal of that authority by Congress." ATVA/Mediacom also said the FCC's requiring that a broadcaster consent to interim carriage would be akin to its authority to deem an interim franchise to have been granted to a competing cable operator after a franchising authority failed to act on a pending franchise application. Congress directed the agency to prohibit unreasonable denials of franchises, and the FCC would be now allowing unreasonable denials of retrans consent by requiring interim carriage, they said.

Amazon, AT&T, LG Electronics and Samsung were among tech companies marking the fifth anniversary Thursday of Joining Forces, the White House veterans initiative, by pledging that a big proportion of all their new hires in the next five years will be veterans and their spouses. The pledges of the companies collectively will mean the hiring in the next five years of 110,000 veterans and their spouses and the enrollment of 60,000 more in training programs, first lady Michelle Obama told business leaders at a Thursday ceremony streamed live at WhiteHouse.gov. Veterans and their spouses “are simply the best employees around,” Obama said. Training and hiring them “isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do for your bottom lines,” she said. That's “especially true when it comes to tech jobs and industries,” she said. For years, “some of the biggest technological innovations, from the Internet to GPS, have come from the U.S. military,” she said. If veterans now working in military tech jobs “can set up wireless networks in Baghdad or do satellite reconnaissance in the mountains of Afghanistan, I’m pretty confident that they can handle whatever’s happening in Silicon Valley,” she said. LG Electronics USA every day sees “first hand the commitment, skills and values that veterans bring to the tech sector," said CEO William Cho in a Thursday statement. In the U.S., LG employees include U.S. military veterans and spouses who have served in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Gulf Wars, Vietnam, on embassy duty and at bases across the country and around the world, the company said. Amazon will hire 25,000 veterans and spouses in the next five years, and will enroll an additional 10,000 in cloud computing training programs, CEO Jeff Bezos said at the ceremony. AT&T will hire 20,000 military veterans by 2020, the company said in a Thursday statement. “Military experience is great preparation for a successful career at AT&T," said CEO Randall Stephenson. "Veterans’ leadership, integrity and commitment to service make them outstanding employees.” LG isn't disclosing a specific number to be hired, but is vowing a target of up to 10 percent of new hires, "based on annual hiring needs," spokesman John Taylor texted us Thursday.