Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

The FCC is seeking nominations for membership on its Intergovernmental Advisory Commission (IAC), which provides guidance to the Commission on issues of importance to state, local and tribal governments, as well as to the FCC. The IAC, formerly known as the Local & State Govt. Advisory Committee, was formed in 1997. It’s composed of 15 elected and appointed officials who provide advice on a broad range of issues, including cable and local franchising, public rights-of-way, facilities siting, universal service, broadband access, barriers to competitive entry and public safety communications. FCC Chmn. Powell will appoint 7 local, 5 state and 3 tribal officials. The Commission is particularly interested in applicants from geographic areas not represented in the past, such as Southern states, for example, Fla., Ga., La., S.C. and Tenn., and from Southwestern states such as Ariz., Nev., N.M., and Utah. The FCC also is interested in applicants representing rural areas and people with expertise in homeland security matters, such as emergency response systems, public safety spectrum and interference matters. Applicants should be local, state or tribal officials and be eligible for the intergovernmental exemption from the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Nominations should be received by the Commission no later than Sept. 29.

A federal court ruled that Washington regulators’ state telecom customer privacy rules infringed on Verizon’s constitutional commercial free speech right to communicate with its customers. The ruling by Judge Barbara Rothstein, U.S. Dist. Court, Seattle, granted Verizon’s motion for summary judgment (Case C02-2342R). The rules adopted by the Wash. Utilities & Transportation Commission (WYTC) in Jan. were to be the toughest telecom consumer privacy regulations in the nation. They would have barred Verizon from providing customer information to any affiliate or 3rd party and from using telecom customers’ records to market any products or services unrelated to telecom unless the customer agreed in advance to such use. The rules were stayed by the federal court in Feb. The court said Verizon had raised compelling questions about the constitutionality of the state’s new regulations. FCC rules allow customers who don’t want their personal information used for marketing purposes to opt out of information sharing, meaning the carrier must delete such information from any marketing lists it sells or uses. Verizon applauded the ruling, saying the court had recognized that the FCC’s privacy rules were working successfully in Wash., just as they were elsewhere. The WUTC said it was disappointed by the decision and was exploring its next legal steps.

If telecom executives were to choose our next President, George W. Bush apparently would win in a walk. With only 5 months remaining before the Iowa caucuses, telecom executives are giving in significant amounts to the Bush reelection effort, with Democrats such as Sens. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Lieberman (D-Conn.) trailing, according to an analysis of 70,000 individual donations reported to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Lieberman’s poor performance among telecom executives contrasts with his impressive performance among Internet-related executives, highlighted in today’s Washington Internet Daily. These 2 stories conclude a 5-part series (CD Aug 27 p4, Aug 28 p3).

There’s a lot of money being recruited for presidential campaigns from mass media executives, but no consensus on where that money should flow, according to an examination by our affiliated publication Washington Internet Daily of about 69,000 campaign donations to 2004 presidential candidates. The data are current through June 30 and were filed by the campaigns at the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

Satellite operators rushed the FCC in the wee hours of Wed. morning in seeking to be the first new applicants following publication of the space station licensing rules in the Federal Register. The new rules, adopted in April, established a queue for geostationary satellite orbit (GSO) and non-GSO (NGSO) applications (CD April 24 p6). The application freeze that was in effect could be lifted only by publication of the rules in the Federal Register. While the Commission hadn’t revealed when publication would be, FCC International Bureau (IB) Asst. Chief Thomas Sullivan said early applicants knew to look at the Federal Register preview on the Website or the IB Electronic Filing System (IBFS) site.

Defenders of state line-sharing mandates to promote competition in DSL wholesaling took heart Tues. in what they saw as the failure of the FCC’s Triennial Review order to bar state mandates explicitly. The Commission adopted a procedure that would hold off any federal court ruling ending the state rules, and meantime there were plausible scenarios that could reconcile the 5 FCC commissioners with one another and the states on the issue, they said.

Cingular Wireless opposed an application for review by Anne Arundel County, Md., of an FCC Wireless Bureau decision that found federal law preempted parts of a county zoning ordinance that covered radio frequency interference (RFI). Last month, the bureau concluded federal law preempted parts of the local rules, which require that before receiving a county zoning ordinance certificate, wireless tower owners must demonstrate a tower didn’t interfere with a county’s public safety operation. If interference were demonstrated, the county could revoke a zoning certificate. Cingular challenged the ordinance and the county sought dismissal of the petition, saying the courts, rather than the FCC, had exclusive purview over local govt. zoning actions involving wireless facilities. The bureau disagreed with the county’s arguments, granting Cingular’s petition for a declaratory ruling. In its latest filing, Cingular opposed the county’s request that the Commission review that decision. Citing the Communications Act, Cingular said: (1) The FCC has “exclusive jurisdiction” to regulate radio frequency interference. (2) The adoption of zoning amendments designed to authorize the county to regulate radio frequency interference is precluded by a field preemption in the Constitution’s supremacy clause. Cingular contended that the county’s petition was “premised on the incorrect notion that the FCC is powerless to remedy RFI.”

State regulators plan to spend the next 2 weeks poring over the text of the FCC’s newly released Triennial Review order on network unbundling, preparing detailed summaries of what the order does and what the FCC expects from the states with regard to unbundled network element platforms (UNE-P) and other complex network unbundling issues being referred to state commissions, officials said. With release of the full order Thurs., the state commissions put into motion their plans for implementing the communication and information- sharing channels they have been setting up on a national and regional basis for the past 6 months.

Acknowledging the huge public outcry over the FCC’s new media ownership rules, Chmn. Powell said Wed. he would form a new task force to study localism in TV and radio broadcasting and hold a series of public hearings. His announcement set off a firestorm among critics, who said he should have done that long before the FCC voted 3-2 June 2 to loosen media ownership rules. Powell and his supporters insisted localism and structural ownership were 2 separate issues, and he refused to grant a stay of the new rules, due to take effect Sept. 4. Several public interest groups and 2 FCC commissioners asked for a stay.

Public safety groups petitioned the FCC for reconsideration of a decision that set dates for moving to narrowband equipment in spectrum below 512 MHz. The Federal Law Enforcement Wireless Users Group (FLEWUG) raised concerns with some of the interim deadlines for public safety users transitioning to more efficient 12.5 kHz-capable equipment: (1) The decision to bar certification of equipment capable of operating at one voice path per 25 kHz of spectrum, including 12.5 kHz-capable equipment that also provided for a 25 kHz mode, starting Jan. 1, 2005. (2) The decision to bar the manufacture and import of 150-174 MHz and 421-512 MHz band equipment that could operate on a 25 kHz bandwidth starting Jan. 1, 2008. Those dates will “preclude a graceful migration to the next generation of technology, reduce competition among manufacturers and inhibit interoperability among federal, state and local public safety agencies,” FLEWUG said: “In so doing, the Commission runs the risk of compromising critical homeland security initiatives.” The group suggested extending the Jan. 2005 certification deadline to Jan. 1, 2008. It said that “by enabling backward compatibility plus manufacture and importation of multimode equipment through 2013 public safety agencies across the nation would be able to complete the transition to narrowband operations in a more timely fashion.” A separate challenge was filed by the Assn. of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO), the International Assn. of Fire Chiefs, the International Municipal Signal Assn. and others. The goal of the rules is to move licensees to narrower channels and increase the number of channels available in the same spectrum, APCO said. “Prior efforts to ‘refarm’ land mobile spectrum have been ineffective, due in part to the absence of a requirement that licensees convert to more efficient narrowband radio equipment by a specific date,” the filing said. “Instead, the Commission had merely used its equipment authorization process to force manufacturers to offer narrowband equipment, without any concurrent requirement that users purchase or deploy narrowband capabilities.” APCO told the FCC it didn’t object to an end date for public safety operators to convert to narrowband equipment, and suggested it be moved up to 2013 from 2018. But the public safety groups took issue with interim deadlines for the transition. If not changed, APCO said the near-term dates would “prevent public safety licensees from adding critical capacity and coverage for existing systems, locking them into current channels and equipment supplies, or forcing them to expend scarce resources to replace prematurely their entire radio systems.” Separately, paging carriers challenged the order, including the American Assn. of Paging Carriers, Allied National Paging Assn., Arch Wireless and Metrocall. They said that to the extent the rules compelled them to convert their Part 90 paging frequencies to 12.5 kHz, they would “be forced to replace their existing systems and equipment at significant and unnecessary cost and with substantial disruption of services provided to their customers.” The carriers took issue with a previous FCC decision to exempt all Part 90 paging-only frequencies below 800 MHz from any narrowbanding requirement. They told the Commission that they believed that the inclusion of paging-only frequencies in the narrowbanding mandates was inadvertent. They said it wasn’t technically possible to intermix 25 kHz base stations with 12.5 kHz base stations in the same paging system. That would mean carriers would have to “flash cut” their existing 25 kHz systems to 12.5 kHz equipment or overlay “complex and costly” networks to accommodate 12.5 kHz modes.