June 2014

Public Knowledge’s Senior Staff Attorney Jodie Griffin recently testified before the Senate Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet in Washington.

In a hearing entitled “Preserving Public Safety and Network Reliability in the IP Transition,” Jodie drove home the necessity of the fundamental values of the phone network carrying over to new technologies, as the IP transition moves forwards and underlying technologies continue to evolve in new and exciting directions. 100 million Americans still rely on traditional copper wire landlines; 85 million in said subset also have a mobile phone or other voice product.

This can be interpreted one of two ways: either (a) political theorists have had it wrong all, and humans are fundamentally irrational to the point that they enjoy writing two checks, or (b) traditional phone services offer users in the marketplace a service they value.

And yet, reports have surfaced indicating consumers are being forced off of legacy copper systems by providers, which heightens the need for more hardened protections in IP-based systems to ensure public safety. Ensuring that new technologies protect basic values with similar robustness to historic systems is critical, as is preventing rural and disadvantaged citizens from falling through the gaps during the transition process.

As Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) highlighted in reference to the loss of services on Fire Island (NY) and in Mantoloking (NJ) following Hurricane Sandy, transitions have the potential to quite significantly impact consumers in ways not evident at the outset.

The Federal Communications Commission has launched a video consumer support service, the ASL Consumer Support Line, specifically designed to enable consumers who are deaf and hard of hearing to engage in a direct video call with a consumer specialist at the FCC.

The service will allow deaf and hard of hearing consumers to communicate in their primary language, American Sign Language (ASL). Until now deaf and hard of hearing consumers only had the option to communicate using relay services or by filing a complaint form online.

Federal Communications Commission Media Bureau chief Bill Lake says that the FCC has granted the sale of 36 full-power TV stations, representing 12 different deals, since mid-March, which it issued guidelines about deals with associated sharing arrangements.

That is according to Lake in prepared testimony for the June 11 media ownership hearing in the House Communications Subcommittee. Lake outlined various steps the FCC has taken regarding media ownership rules, including making TV joint sales agreements (JSAs) over 15% of ad time attributable as ownership interest, new processing guidance from the Media Bureau on processing TV station license transfers involving JSAs and other sharing agreements (broadcasters have sued the FCC over both those), and the decision to combine the congressionally mandated 2010 and 2014 media ownership quadrennial reviews into what will become a 2016 review -- June 30, 2016 is the target date for completion.

As to why the FCC has yet to produce a quadrennial review report to Congress years past the initial deadline, Lake pointed out that the FCC, under a previous chairman, had a media ownership item responsive to the review teed up in 2012 that could never get three votes needed for approval -- Republicans opposed it and some Democrats were concerned that the FCC had taken the action without sufficiently gauging its impact on ownership diversity. He said that the new timetable of June 2016 will allow for more input on how the market has changed since then.

With Verizon struggling to bring FiOS to every corner of New York City as promised, the company has been arguing with landlords about gaining access to buildings where tenants might want to buy Verizon's fiber-based Internet, phone, and TV service.

Verizon's fiber now passes buildings in "90 percent of the Bronx, 89 percent of Brooklyn, 94 percent of Manhattan, 90 percent of Queens and virtually the entirety of Staten Island," the company says. That's short of the 100 percent Verizon was supposed to achieve by June 30, 2014 according to its franchise agreement. And the percentage of buildings where residents can actually buy FiOS is lower.

Verizon now blames Sandy but claimed it was "ahead of schedule" after the storm.

"The various percentages refer to the amount of fiber in the streets and avenues, our obligation. The numbers have nothing to do with building penetration," Verizon spokesperson John Bonomo said.

Verizon has been filing petitions with the State Public Service Commission to gain access to several hundred buildings in order to conduct pre-installation surveys and then wire up the buildings. In some cases these petitions have allowed Verizon access, but other attempts were plagued by miscommunications and mistakes.