February 2010

FCC Promotes Native American Radio

The Federal Communications Commission adopted a First Report and Order that gives tribes a priority to obtain broadcast radio licenses in tribal communities.

The Order provides an opportunity for tribes to establish new service specifically designed to offer programming that meets the needs of tribal citizens. The Order also fosters localism and diversity, key media policy goals of the Commission and the Congress.

Although well over a million Native Americans and Alaska Natives live on over 55 million acres of tribal lands across the United States, only 41 radio stations are currently licensed to native tribes. To address this imbalance, the First Report and Order establishes the Tribal Priority under processing rules. The Tribal Priority gives precedence to federally recognized Native American Tribes and Alaska Native Villages, or companies controlled by tribes that want to establish new radio stations designed to serve communities located on tribal lands.

Should the FCC Share Outage Info with the States?

The Federal Communications Commission's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau invites public comment on the petition for rulemaking filed by the California Public Utilities Commission. The CPUC requests that the FCC grant state public utilities commissions direct access to the Commission's Network Outage Reporting System (NORS) database. The CPUC also informally requests that the Commission act to allow the CPUC password-protected access to the NORS database that is "limited to California-specific disruption and outage data." NORS is the web-based filing system through which certain communications providers submit reports to the Commission of disruptions to communications as required by the FCC's rules. Reports of service disruptions filed in NORS are presumed to be confidential. Currently, the FCC shares NORS data only with the Department of Homeland Security.

Rockefeller Raises Concerns about Verizon-Frontier Deal

On October 9, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) sent Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski a letter expressing concern about Verizon's sale of 4.8 million residential telephone lines to Frontier Communications. West Virginia is the only state for which the applicants seek the transfer of nearly every residential line in the state, so Chairman Rockefeller asks whether the deal is good for his state. he also asks the deal be reviewed with special emphasis on how it will impact broadband investment in the state.

On January 5, Chairman Genachowski replied saying that other commenters in the FCC's review of the deal had raised similar concerns and that the Commission will determine if transaction will serve the public interest and ultimately will benefit consumers.

Genachowski Answers PEG Concerns

Last year, a number of Members of Congress wrote Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski to urging prompt attention to a Petition for Declaratory Ruling regarding the treatment of local public, educational, and governmental access (PEG) channels on the AT&T U-verse cable TV system as well as another petition, a group of Michigan cities led by Dearborn, asking for relief concerning Comcast's plan to digitize PEG channels, requiring basic service subscribers to pay extra just to continue to receive PEG channels.

On January 4, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski sent a reply saying 1) each Comcast cable television system in Michigan generally will continue to deliver PEG channels in analog format on the basic service tier until all channels on the basic tier are delivered in digital format, and 2) the Commission's Media Bureau continues its review of the record with respect to the remaining Petitions that are pending before the Commission. The Petitions, he said, raise complex and important issues requiring careful analysis of the law governing the carriage of PEG programming by multichannel video programming distribution systems. Chairman Genachowski has directed the Bureau to complete its review of the record and to develop recommendations on how to proceed expeditiously.

Is there new life for the public safety D block of spectrum?

Remember all that planning and strategizing at the Federal Communications Commission about how to set up a national broadband powered public safety network—something that police, fire, and medical first responders could use across the country? Well, the first signs of new life for that long-delayed scheme surfaced a few days ago when the FCC's Homeland Security Bureau chief announced that a new proposal would be included in the Commission's National Broadband Plan to Congress, now due on March 17.

But the news disclosed by the FCC's James Barnett is a bit of a downer to the big public safety agencies, who want the government to scratch the extant plan to auction off the spectrum needed for the service, and just give 20MHz of it to them instead. "It would be great to have 20 MHz," Barnett told attendees at the APCO Winter Technology Summit in Orlando, Florida. "The problem that we have right now as we pursue this is that the D Block is dedicated to commercial use—we're actually under a mandate to auction it." A Congressional mandate, that is. The 'D Block,' as Ars spectrum auction watchers doubtless recall, was the only part of the massive 700 MHz spectrum auction in 2008 that failed to sell. The rest was auctioned off handily to the tune of $19.6 billion. Why that one glitch? Here's a quick refresher course on the D Block Blues.

University finds free online classes don't hurt enrollment

Free online courses aren't sapping enrollment numbers—in fact, they're actually helping to spread the word.

Those are the preliminary findings out of Brigham Young University, which experimented recently by granting free access to a selection of its distance learning courses. Though further study is needed in order to see whether there's a significant impact, educators are beginning to see that offering free materials isn't the end of the world after all. The university's Independent Study offerings have been attractive to students who are unable to make class regularly, either due to geographic distance or because of scheduling conflicts. Its Open CourseWare section offers the general public six classes—three university courses and three high school courses—that anyone on the Web can step through. (May I personally recommend the Financial Planning course? A lot of people could use it these days.) Of course, you won't get any credit for taking the course for free, and that's why BYU hopes you'll pony up the cash and enroll.

FCC Advisor Advocates Universal Service Fund Reform

Federal Communications Commission Senior Advisor Carol Mattey told the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association that broadband is as important today as television and radio were in the last century.

Consumer Reports Gives Seal of Approval to "Connected TVs"

Consumer Reports has addressed the growing interest in bringing Internet video to the TV by testing new Internet-capable TVs and Blu-ray players and rating them in its March issue in a "TV meets Web" report.

The magazine has rated over 20 TV sets starting at a list price of $1,000 that can stream online movies, as well as four broadband-capable Blu-ray players starting at $150. It said that lab tests showed that setting up the devices and using them to access online content was easy, and that "picture quality was decent if not quite up to the claimed resolution." Consumer Reports also tested another dozen or so TVs that can display other types of online content besides movies, such as YouTube videos or digital photos stored on Picasa and Flickr, but noted that "Internet browser capabilities on Web-enabled TVs and Blu-ray players are limited." In advising consumers on adopting the new Internet-capable devices, the magazine noted that buying an Internet-enabled Blu-ray player or a dedicated streaming box like Roku was a more cost-effective way to get the new online movie services than buying a connected TV. It also warned customers to check which movie services were available before buying a device, noting that certain brands were aligned with different services like Netflix or Amazon Video On Demand.

FOX: Retrans Could 'Fix' Broadcast Model

News Corp. chief operating officer Chase Carey said that the media giant is on the cusp of a retransmission-consent revenue windfall that could ultimately fix the broken broadcasting model.

"It [retrans] puts us on a course where we can generate the profits we should if we run a good network," Carey said. "Simplistically you could say it fixes it. It certainly puts it in a competitive place where it has a dual revenue stream like successful cable networks do and those that it increasingly competes with."

He said that News Corp's owned- and-operated stations have completed retransmission-consent deals with two of the top 10 distributors. Carey estimated that about half of News Corp.'s station deals will expire in the next two years, not including similar deals that will run out for its affiliate stations. News Corp. has expressed a desire to get involved in those negotiations too.

Concern Over Ed Tech Changes

Groups representing school technology officials voiced concern Wednesday with the Obama administration's proposal to consolidate some education technology programs as part of its fiscal year 2011 budget plan, which was released Monday.

The Consortium for School Networking, the International Society for Technology in Education, and the State Educational Technology Directors Association argued that the proposal to "infuse" technology throughout other programs and zero out funding for the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program may hamper technology education innovations. The program, created under the No Child Left Behind elementary and secondary education law during the Bush administration, provided education funds to states for technology hardware, software and professional development.

"Congress and the president included EETT as a core provision of the current ESEA law in recognition of the importance of driving the next generation of innovations in teaching and learning, assessment and continuous improvement, and cost-efficiency in coordination with other federal, state and local school improvement strategies," the groups said in a statement. "We fear that years of investments through EETT and the E-Rate, coupled with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act investment, may be devalued or lost entirely without adequately funding EETT or a successor program."

Benton

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