March 2007

DIGITAL TELEVISION
Giving Away the Airwaves
Let's Get Started on DTV
Shapiro Cites DTV "Fear-mongering"

INTERNET/BROADBAND
Not Neutrality
Our National Broadband Strategy is Hope Without Action
Digital Tornado: The Internet and Telecommunications Policy

OWNERSHIP
EchoStar: Beware Liberty-DirecTV
AT&T Has Done the Deals. Now It Needs Results.
Court can't see Cablevision for what it is

EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS
IG Criticizes Work On Wireless Network For Law Enforcement

QUICKLY -- Florida Senate Amends Franchise-Reform Bill

DIGITAL TELEVISION

GIVING AWAY THE AIRWAVES
[SOURCE: New York Times 3/27/1997, AUTHOR: Bob Dole]
[Commentary] Ten years ago, then former Senate Majority Leader Bob
Dole (R-KS) decried the giveaway of valuable spectrum in order to
help broadcast TV stations transition to digital technology. He
valued the giveaway at $12-70 billion and noted the lack of coverage
of the issue in the mainstream press. "The broadcasters insist that
they need these airwaves -- on which they will duplicate their
programming in digital -- to make the transition to high-definition
television. O.K., but why not pay a fair price?" Dole wrote. As it
is, this mandated transition to digital television is going to cost
taxpayers plenty. Consumers will find their current televisions
rendered obsolete by digital broadcasts. Replacing all 222 million TV
sets in the country could cost upward of $200 billion. That's pretty
serious sticker shock for ''free'' broadcast television. He
concluded: "Taxpayers should demand better from the President,
Congress, the F.C.C. and the broadcasters. After all, we're talking
about billions of dollars -- and that's your money."
http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F00E13F93D5E0C74...
(requires registration)

LET'S GET STARTED ON DTV
[SOURCE: center for American Progress, AUTHOR: Mark Lloyd]
[Commentary] The biggest problem with the transition to digital
television in the United States is that the Federal Communications
Commission under the Bush administration has locked the public out of
the process of determining what the benefits of the transition might
be. What's more, yesteryear's Republican-controlled Congress set the
rules regarding this transition. Thus the public interest obligations
of digital broadcasters remain undefined and insufficient money has
been set aside for the digital conversion. Both problems need to be
addressed by Congress this year. Let's get the transition to digital
underway and spend the money allocated by the 109th Congress. The
110th Congress must devote the resources to determine whether there
remain unmet needs. And if poor Americans are cut off because funds
run out, Congress must then allocate additional funds to ensure that
all Americans can make the transition to digital TV.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/03/digital_tv.html

SHAPIRO CITES DTV "FEAR-MONGERING"
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Suggesting there was some"fear-mongering" about the transition to
digital, Consumer Electronics Association President Gary Shapiro said
on Monday that "consumers do not demand these [digital-to-analog
converter] boxes as much as some people think they will." Speaking
after a CEA forum in Washington on the DTV transition, Shapiro said
the transition "will be uncomfortable and different, but that if we
do our jobs right most consumers will know what their options are."
During a forum panel on the transition, Shapiro said there was more
alarmist talk than was justified given that there had been
transitions before. However, he likened this one more to that between
the horse and buggy and the car--more complicated than the transition
from black and white television to color. "Less than 15% of homes
will really be shut out totally," by the February 2009 transition to
digital, he said, "and of those, some of them want to be shut out,"
he said. "There is fear-mongering going on, and frankly, it has
become a political issue. Democrats are saying the Republicans didn't
give enough money and the Democrats now are saying 'oh, we need more
money.'" National Cable & Telecommunications Association President
Kyle McSlarrow said he thought the difference between this and other
transitions was that it was a government-mandated flash-cut to the
new technology, which could require a pretty large education campaign
to get right.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6427969.html?display=Breaking...
* Shapiro: Dems Fear-Mongering DTV Move
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6427985.html?display=Breaking+News

INTERNET/BROADBAND

NOT NEUTRALITY
[SOURCE: In These Times, AUTHOR: Brian Cook]
Why are the Communications Workers of America opting out of the Save
the Internet coalition? Last May, when the House was considering
pro-neutrality legislation, CWA President Larry Cohen wrote a letter
to the House Judiciary Committee, arguing that if such a bill passed,
"investment in the physical infrastructure necessary to provide
high-speed Internet would slow down, the U.S. will fall even further
behind the rest of the world, and our rural and low-income
populations will wait even longer to enter the digital age."
Meanwhile, at the state level, the CWA has vociferously opposed
attempts, most notably in Michigan, to mandate net neutrality in the
local and state franchise agreements with telecommunications
companies that set up conditions of service quality and community
benefit provisions. Debbie Goldman, a research economist at the CWA,
says the union is simply more concerned with building out networks
and increasing their speed, which she believes will render moot any
concerns about congestion. "If we have 100 mbps, we'd have so much
capacity that the whole issue [of congestion] goes away," Goldman
says. "The real goal is getting big, big broadband so that there
isn't an issue of congestion, which then raises concerns about
whether there'd be different types of service. That's the real goal:
How do you get it built? How do you get to big broadband?"
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3081/not_neutrality/

OUR NATIONAL BROADBAND STRATEGY IS HOPE WITHOUT ACTION
[SOURCE: ISP-Planet, AUTHOR: Alex Goldman]
The Freedom to Connect Conference saw calls for a "national broadband
strategy" and although it's true that the current non-strategy is
failing, it's not clear what would succeed. FCC Commissioner
Adelstein shared his hopes for the future.
http://www.isp-planet.com/politics/2007/adelstein_f2c.html

DIGITAL TORNADO: THE INTERNET AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS POLICY
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission 3/27/1997, AUTHOR: Kevin Werbach]
Ten years ago, the FCC released a staff-written Working Paper on the
potential challenges and questions raised by the Internet for policy
makers. This paper addresses three overlapping telecommunications
policy areas that relate to the Internet: law, economics, and public
policy. Legal questions arise from the difficulty in applying
existing regulatory classifications to Internet-based services.
Economic questions arise from the effects of Internet usage on the
telecommunications infrastructure, and the effects of the
telecommunications infrastructure on the Internet. Public policy
questions arise from the need to maximize the public benefits that
the Internet brings to society. The paper identified three policy
goals: 1) Promote competition in voice, video, and interactive
services. 2) Facilitate network investment and technological
innovation. 3) Allow all citizens to benefit from advanced technologies.
http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/OPP/working_papers/oppwp29.pdf

OWNERSHIP

ECHOSTAR: BEWARE LIBERTY-DIRECTV
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Linda Moss]
EchoStar Communications warned federal regulators to be wary about
John Malone's plan to re-establish Liberty Media's "market power," in
terms of programming clout, by purchasing News Corp.'s stake in
DirecTV, the nation's largest direct-broadcast satellite provider.
EchoStar, the No. 2 DBS company, filed a petition last Friday asking
the Federal Communications Commission to deny approval of Liberty's
$11 billion purchase of News Corp.'s 39% ownership of DirecTV unless
there are commitments "to ensure that consumers and the programming
market are not adversely affected." EchoStar cited the kind of
tactics it alleged Liberty was able to engage in the past in when it
benefited from an association with another distribution outlet --
namely Malone's then-cable company, Tele-Communications Inc. EchoStar
claimed that "it is well-established that TCI and Liberty operated
ruthlessly in acquiring and creating programming and in its treatment
of unaffiliated MVPDs [multichannel-video-programming distributors]
and programmers."
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6427946.html?display=Breaking+News
See also --
* NCTC Weighs In on Liberty-DirecTV
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Linda Moss]
News Corp. shouldn't be allowed to "escape" its obligation to abide
by binding arbitration for its regional sports networks after it
divests its ownership in DirecTV, the National Cable Television
Cooperative told federal regulators. The NCTC told the Federal
Communications Commission it should continue to enforce certain
restraints -- including submitting to arbitration for some
programming disputes -- it imposed on News Corp. back in 2003 in
approving its acquisition of a major stake in DirecTV.
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6427693.html?display=Breaking+News

AT&T HAS DONE DEALS. NOW IT NEEDS RESULTS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Matt Richtel]
In December, AT&T closed on an $86 billion acquisition of BellSouth,
capping a string of multibillion-dollar takeover deals, and leaving
the company ready and needing to compete through execution, not
acquisition. But there are nagging questions. Is AT&T's broadband
strategy flawed? Is its foray into television in shambles and
destined for failure? Has the revenue growth from acquisition
obscured more fundamental, underlying vulnerabilities? Some analysts
say that AT&T has set itself up poorly to compete in providing video
and high-speed Internet services, which are considered essential to
the telecommunications product bundle.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/business/27telecom.html
(requires registration)

COURT CAN'T SEE CABLEVISION FOR WHAT IT IS
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Editorial Staff]
[Commentary] The Supreme Court ruled more than 20 years ago that
recording TV shows on your VCR is legal. Nowadays, technology allows
your cable company to essentially keep those shows on its VCR, not
yours. Yet a federal court has ruled that this system violates
copyright law. What's the difference? This is not a case of
technology changing behavior. It's a case of the law failing to
adjust to new technology. As the world becomes more connected and
digital, it will become less important where people choose to store
the data they've paid for. Law and policy should reflect that, and
let the best technology win the marketplace.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-ed-cablevision27mar2...
(requires registration)

EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS

IG CRITICIZES WORK ON WIRELESS NETWORK FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Spencer S. Hsu and Charles Babington]
The federal government has spent $195 million on a long-promised
wireless radio network for the nation's law enforcement agencies that
is at "high risk of failure," the Justice Department's inspector
general reported yesterday. Inspector General Glenn A. Fine blamed
delays, funding shortfalls and infighting among the Justice, Homeland
Security and Treasury departments, whose 81,000 agents are expected
to use the $5 billion system when it is completed by 2021. The
federal partnership is "fractured in its approach and disjointed in
its goals," Fine reported. "The system that results from this
partnership likely will not be the seamless, interoperable system
that was originally envisioned and . . . may not be adequate in the
event of another terrorist attack or national disaster." Members of
Congress, which is controlled by Democrats, blamed a failure of
administration leadership for the problems reported by Fine.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR200703...
(requires registration)
* Audit criticizes feds' $5 billion wireless system
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20070327/a_wireless27.art.htm

QUICKLY

FLORIDA SENATE AMENDS FRANCHISE-REFORM BILL
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Linda Haugsted]
A telephone-company-friendly franchise-reform bill passed late last
week by the Florida House of Representatives was amended in a Senate
committee to require penetration into one-half of the low-income
homes passed by a new provider. The previous version of the bill did
not have specific milestones for build-out or specific protections
for low-income neighborhoods. Build-out guidelines in other states
have required penetration of 25%-40% of low income neighborhoods by
the fifth year of operation.
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6427857.html?display=Breaking+News
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