Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel slammed FCC direction on media consolidation and Sinclair's planned buy of Tribune Media, the proposed ATSC 3.0 transition and rolling back Title II net neutrality regulation under the Communications Act. Her speech drew NAB and 3.0 supporter pushback, as well as some plaudits from other Democrats. “This is the first time I’ve seen that she’s been willing to be very vocal about her disagreements with her colleagues," said Gigi Sohn, an Open Society Foundations fellow and former aide to previous Chairman Tom Wheeler, a Democrat. Rosenworcel said she wanted "to make a little ruckus" and believes in fighting to make the "future work for all," according to her prepared remarks to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Thursday (see 1710120012).
Video industry groups and others put forth proposals including adding "standstill" rules and eliminating network nonduplication and syndicated exclusivity for video market rules changes as part of FCC preparation of its 19th annual video competition report. Tuesday was the deadline for docket 17-214 comments, with replies due Nov. 9 (see 1708250052). The Ajit Pai FCC is generally expected to avoid further video regulation (see 1703170017).
Jessica Rosenworcel in her first policy speech since rejoining the FCC as a member Aug. 11 expressed concerns Thursday on Sinclair's buy of Tribune Media, the transition by TV stations to ATSC 3.0 and her agency's course on net neutrality. "I am concerned the Commission is gearing up to approve a transaction that will hand a single broadcast company the unprecedented ability to reach more than 70 percent of American households," she said of the deal worth about $4 billion. She called current 3.0 plans "not a great boon for consumers, it’s a tax on every household" with a TV.
The FCC should require broadcasters transitioning to ATSC 3.0 to simulcast 1.0 to a similar coverage area and community of license as before the transition, said NCTA in Oct. 4 visits with aides to Commissioners Brendan Carr and Mike O’Rielly, said an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 16-142. NCTA met with FCC staff on a similar matter last week (see 1710020044).
The “engineering trade-offs” of building ATSC 3.0 reception into smartphones would make a tuner mandate “inappropriate" for those devices, and the FCC should “refrain from considering such a requirement sought by the broadcasters,” said Skyworks Solutions, a supplier of front-end modules and other components for smartphones, in a filing posted Friday in commission docket 16-142.
The FCC needs to be sure broadcasters’ ATSC 3.0 deployment won't "disrupt consumers or impose costs and burdens on cable operators,” NCTA told commission staff in Thursday meetings, said an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 16-142. NCTA wants the FCC to require broadcasters “to continue to transmit a robust ATSC 1.0 signal" during the transition. “Rather than end certain key transition requirements after an arbitrary three-year period,” as NAB's Sept. 8 filing proposed, the commission “must continue to require simulcasting until it determines that conditions warrant allowing a broadcaster to no longer provide an ATSC 1.0 signal,” it said. During the move, NCTA thinks the 1.0 “simulcast stream must continue to serve the same coverage area and community of license from a ‘host’ station as it did prior to the launch of the ATSC 3.0 signal on its regularly assigned channel,” it said. “The ATSC 1.0 simulcast signal should be required to transmit the same format as before the transmission of the companion ATSC 3.0 signal, with the same programming except where technically infeasible due to the nature of ATSC 3.0.” If 3.0 signal transmissions are to be “completely voluntary,” as broadcasters have proposed, “there is no basis for allowing broadcasters to use access to an ATSC 1.0 signal to secure new carriage rights for ATSC 3.0 signals in a manner that imposes costs and hardships on MVPDs and their customers,” said the cable group. NAB didn’t comment.
Broadcasters relocating ATSC 1.0 signals during the move to ATSC 3.0 should be required to give MVPDs 90 days' notice, AT&T said Friday in FCC docket 16-142. Stations should have to provide an additional 30 days' notice if the shift happens during the repacking, AT&T said. “Relocation of broadcast stations’ ATSC 1.0 signals will result in significant and costly burdens for nationwide satellite distributors such as AT&T.” A broadcaster relocating its signal requires engineers to make physical changes to AT&T’s equipment, which is often in remote locations, it said. Difficulty is exacerbated during the incentive auction repack “given the potential need to coordinate among repacking stations, channel sharing stations, and ATSC 3.0 transition stations simultaneously and across the nation,” AT&T said. Broadcasters haven’t shown why the notice requirements requested by MVPDs are a burden, it said.
T-Mobile “has no issue with voluntary adoption of ATSC 3.0 technology," but is “concerned” about calls for an FCC mandate to “force inclusion of the technology” in smartphones, it told Media Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology staff in Tuesday meetings, said a filing Wednesday in commission docket 16-142. “Counter to the assertions of NAB” that it and its fellow 3.0 petitioners never called for tuner mandates (see 1709250053), “several parties, including NAB members, have argued for Commission action to mandate ATSC 3.0 reception in mobile devices,” said T-Mobile. Its PowerPoint presentation to FCC staff listed the Advanced Television Broadcasting Alliance of low-power TV interests as calling for a tuner mandate in smartphones when 3.0 broadcasts are available to 25 percent of the U.S. population and noted that NAB TV board members Sinclair and Gray have seats on the alliance board. Other 3.0 “mandate proponents” include Free Access & Broadcast Telemedia and Sinclair’s One Media subsidiary and Mark Aitken, Sinclair’s vice president-advanced technology, T-Mobile said. The carrier referenced One Media's May 9 comments in the FCC's 3.0 rulemaking in which it appeared to dip a toe in the water of backing future tuner mandates, though it actually stopped well short of asking the commission to impose them now (see 1705110053).The PowerPoint also referenced an Aitken quote from our Sept. 13 report (see 1709120020) in which he said that “our concern, be it demonstrated by T-Mobile and others, is that, in fact, the free market is not functioning the way that regulators believe it can or should.” That report also quoted Aitken as saying: “To be clear, we’ve not asked for a mandate. We believe in the free market. We hope that the free market can prevail.” The PowerPoint said T-Mobile was the "largest winner of 600 MHz band spectrum" in the incentive auction, and is "working to rapidly deploy competitive wireless services" in that band.
Though NAB and “fellow” ATSC 3.0 petitioners (see 1604130065) “consistently made plain” they aren’t seeking a tuner mandate for fixed or mobile devices, “six different parties representing wireless interests have felt compelled to publicly oppose such a mandate,” said an NAB letter posted Monday in FCC docket 16-142. “It is curious that some key players in the wireless industry display such great fear over the potential of increased competition for mobile video delivery,” said NAB, referring to letters filed in the past two weeks by Ethertronics, Ericsson, Motorola Mobility, Nokia, Qualcomm and T-Mobile. All opposed 3.0 reception in smartphones as impractical and said a mandate requiring it would be a bad idea (see 1709200016). “Why else would this list of companies fear a ghost?” asked NAB. “If anything, the Commission should recognize that this advocacy demonstrates the potential of Next Gen TV to create real competition in the marketplace. Indeed, it may be one of the strongest arguments for moving forward to approve the use of Next Gen TV as quickly as possible.”
NAB isn't asking the FCC to alter the 39-month repacking timeline, but wants Commissioner Brendan Carr to “ensure” broadcasters aren’t penalized for missing deadlines “due to circumstances beyond their control,” CEO Gordon Smith said in a meeting Tuesday, recounted a filing posted Friday in docket 12-268. “Ironically, T-Mobile’s constant concern about maintaining the current 39-month timeframe demonstrates that T-Mobile has little or no confidence that the deadline will be met,” it said. NAB also said the FCC should look closely at how T-Mobile’s possible merger with Sprint "may impact how the Commission approaches repacking" (see 1709220056). The meeting also touched on Microsoft’s proposals for reserving channels for white space use in the TV band, the filing said. “It makes no sense to inject a new complexity -- especially for an unproven and thus far failed technology” into the already complicated repacking and ATSC 3.0 transition processes, the group said. It urged the FCC to take up the petitions for reconsideration of the 2010 and 2014 quadrennial ownership reviews: “The prior review was a ‘review’ in name only; it did not take seriously the Commission’s job to determine whether the existing broadcast ownership rules are in the public interest.”