Broadcasting&Cable

The Roanoke Valley Broadband Authority, which has opposed a bill to put conditions on municipal broadband buildouts in Virginia, said the latest iteration of the bill—amended Feb. 13 in the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee—is no longer a threat to municipal broadband. The telcom-backed bill—introduced in the Virginia assembly in Jan—would have allowed for municipal buildouts but only if they targeted unserved areas, which it defined as those where the average broadband speed is less than 10 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up. It would also have required an independent study to identify unserved areas before any buildouts and would have put conditions on overbuilding of any existing service at any speed. A municipality would also have had to provide access to rights of way on a first-come, first-serve basis to commercial providers and could not have cross-subsidized its broadband with regulated utility money. The bill was already re-crafted once after the VA governor threatened to veto it.

Ohio, Utah and Nevada are the first states to sign off on the merger of broadband providers CenturyLink and Level 3 Communications, according to CenturyLink. The merger is valued at $34 billion including debt. The merger was announced Oct 31, and applications were filed with the FCC and for antitrust review by the Department of Justice in December.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai plans a vote on a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) at the Feb 23 public meeting that would allow broadcasters to start rolling out the new ATSC 3.0 transmission standard on a voluntary basis. The NPRM will also ask a lot of questions about how that should happen and its effect on the marketplace. American Cable Association commended Chairman Pai for issuing the draft and for asking all those questions. One of those is: “whether small, rural, low-power, and NCE broadcasters would face unique circumstances with regard to the voluntary provision of ATSC 3.0 that we should consider in this proceeding," followed by suggestions on how to ease those burdens. ACA says that is appropriate, but that the FCC should also ask the same questions about small pay-TV providers and how to ease their burdens as well.

House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) says there could be a resolution on rolling back the Federal Communications Commission's broadband privacy framework as early as Feb. 13.

"We are talking and working with the Senate on this," she said. "I think using the [Congressional Review Act] to invalidate the rulemaking] is fine. That would be the most expedient way to address the concerns and we are working with the Senate to make sure we can do that." Chairman Blackburn she would try to make sure that there was no privacy gap given that once the FCC reclassified ISPs under Title II common carrier regulations, the FTC was prevented from regulating broadband privacy due to its common carrier exemption. "I would think there would be a way to work through that so you don't have a gap in oversight."

Gigi Sohn, former top counselor to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, took aim at new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's reversal of a handful of Lifeline subsidy authorizations.

Chairman Pai took to the Internet himself to defend the move after critics said he was undercutting the program for subsidizing essential communications services, in part blaming news stories he said had gotten the story wrong. But Sohn said the criticism was justified. In a post labeled "Defending the Indefensible," on the Benton Foundation Web site, Sohn said that the bottom lines was that Pai and his fellow Republican Commissioner Michael O'Rielly "fundamentally disagree with the structure and goals of the Lifeline program and will seek to undermine it in word and deed." Sohn argues there were no procedural flaws that should have resulted in withdrawing the authorizations approved by the FCC under Wheeler.

Veteran cable critic Sen Claire McCaskill (D-MO)—ranking member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations—wants Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to limit "overly restrictive" alternative delivery method (ADM) and unconditional most-favored-nation clauses in programming contracts. The FCC, over Pai's objection, proposed to do just that in a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) last September stemming from an inquiry in 2016 into program diversity.

In a letter, Sen McCaskill said in the committee's investigation into programming practices—based on documents from "many of the largest cable and satellite providers" and interviews with distributors and networks—she concluded that the clauses may be limiting consumer choice and said based on that investigation, limiting them "will succeed in removing these obstacles and facilitate competition in an industry increasingly dominated by a few large companies.

To establish a baseline for a promised flood of network neutrality comments to the Federal Communications Commission, as of Feb 9, the proceeding was listed as the third most active proceeding in terms of comments with 178 comments in the past 30 days. Universal Service Fund comments and Lifeline subsidy compliance forms are the busiest dockets with over a thousand in each. At a press conference this week, Senate Democrats urged fans of the FCC's Title II-based Open Internet order to flood the FCC with new comments in support given that Republican chairman Ajit Pai is a strong opponent of that reclassification. The FCC received more than four million comments when the FCC was coming up with the last Open Internet order, a stat Democrats often cite in arguing that the rules have broad support and should not be rolled back.

CenturyLink has secured a contract to handle even more online security for the Federal Communications Commission. In 2012, CenturyLink won a contract to provide MTIPS (Managed Trusted Internet Protocol Service) to the commission through 2017 at an estimated $2.64 million. The ISP said it has also won the contract to provide similar services to the FCC's Gettysburg (PA) IT facility, the primary nexus for FCC inquiries and complaints. That is valued at $875,000 over five years. “CenturyLink looks forward to providing its market-leading MTIPS infrastructure to the FCC’s Gettysburg IT center and helping protect both the center and the commission from network attacks,” said Erich Sanchack, CenturyLink senior VP and general manager, federal government. In December, CenturyLink secured an $11.4 million contract (three years at $3.8 million per year) to provide VoIP service to the state offices of U.S. senators. That contract could actually total $26 million if the government picks up four one-year options.

House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) says she will give the Federal Communications Commission first crack at the Open Internet order before taking legislative steps. That comes amidst some Democratic Sens' and others declaring to fight for the Title II-based net neutrality rules, including any weakening by Congress, while other legislators and industry groups are pushing for a legislative solution.

Chairman Blackburn—joined by Full Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR), was asked what she thought the timetable would be for a network neutrality bill. She said "let's let the FCC go in and do what they are able to do, make the first move on that. I think we allow them to take those first steps." Asked how the FCC's and Congress' role in addressing the rules would dovetail, she said that after FCC Chairman Ajit Pai takes whatever actions he takes, "the opportunity that we will have as a legislative body will be to take action that will move forward on some principles and definitions and make sure we don't end up in the situation again where we had agency overreach and an agency that decides they want to go off script."

While Democratic Sens were suggesting that the Federal Communications Commission's Open Internet order is fine as is and nothing is needed to be done to alter those protections—either legislatively and certainly not a rollback by the FCC—a legislative solution to resolve the issue was getting a lot of votes from outside groups Tuesday. That came after Sens Ed Markey (D-MA), Al Franken (D-MN) and others held a press conference to say they would fight any attempts by the FCC to reverse the Open Internet order or legislative attempts in a Republican-controlled Congress to weaken it.

In a joint press statement, The Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council, the National Urban League and others called for "a permanent statutory solution that enshrines the basic open internet principles into law. These core principles are not controversial and should not be subject to endless litigation, regulation, and reconsideration. A statute locking in net neutrality would protect net neutrality no matter how the political winds blow."