John Eggerton

AT&T senior executive vice president-external and legislative affairs Jim Cicconi says that AT&T has no "plans or intent" to adopt the "discriminatory business models" that Title II advocates say could create Internet fast and slow lanes.

Cicconi blogged that no ISPs have expressed a "desire or right" to engage in any of the following practices -- and AT&T has no plans to change its position. He also argues that classifying Title II as Internet access would not only not prevent paid priority, it would allow it and could shield it.

Cicconi says the current discussions about network neutrality don't appear to have a common understanding of paid prioritization, the Federal Communications Commission's 706 authority or Title II regulation. He pointed out that the court's ruling in the Verizon decision -- remanding no-blocking and anti-unreasonable discrimination rules back to the FCC -- allows the FCC to enforce ISP statements of broadband practices.

Cicconi also said there is no paid prioritization as described by Free Press and no one plans to do any of that, he asserted, saying ISPs have broadband practices policies that prohibit them, which the FCC can already enforce.

Almost a dozen Republican senators say they are deeply troubled by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler's plan to preempt state laws inhibiting municipal broadband, or what they characterize as usurping states’ rights and forced taxpayer funding of broadband competition.

In a letter to Chairman Wheeler dated June 5, the senators -- including Sens Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), both members of the Communications Subcommittee -- referred to Chairman Wheeler's April 30 speech to the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, a group the FCC chairman once headed -- that he believed the FCC had the power and the duty to preempt. The senators said they were deeply concerned that the FCC would "force taxpayer-funded competition against private broadband providers"-- something the cable industry is also concerned about for obvious reasons.

They suggested "inserting" the FCC into economic and fiscal affairs in "such a cavalier fashion" was a states' rights issue. They said the states can better protect against unnecessary spending, debt and waste than unelected bureaucrats. Opponents of preemption have argued that the laws are on the books because elected representatives of the people concluded they should be, a point the senators made.

"State political leaders are accountable to the voters who elected them, and the Commission would be well-advised to respect state sovereignty," they said. "The last thing the Commission should do in these trying fiscal times, with so many other important priorities, is usurp state policy with respect to municipal broadband,” they said.

Also signing on to the letter were Sens Deb Fischer (R-NE), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Tim Scott (R-SC), Mike Enzi (R-WY), John Barrasso (R-WY), Pat Roberts (R-KS), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), John Cornyn (R-TX), and Tom Coburn (R-OK).

Sen Ed Markey (D-MA) and Public Knowledge both said that classifying broadband as a Title II service could be a public safety must-have. At a hearing in the Senate Communications Subcommittee on the safety and network reliability issues related to the IP transition, Sen Markey said he agreed that it may be necessary for the Federal Communications Commission to reclassify broadband under Title II to insure that VoIP 911 calls get completed.

In her testimony for the hearing, Public Knowledge senior staff attorney Jodie Griffin said that the DC circuit's decision overturning open Internet rules "called into question the FCC's ability to continue applying certain fundamental policies" to an IP-based phone network, particularly its ability to require VoIP providers to complete all calls, or prohibit them from blocking calls.

Sen Markey agreed with Griffin's assertion that unless the FCC can assure that ability to insure core values like access and reliability under Title I, which she suggests the court signaled it can't, the FCC should reclassify.

Comcast has now filed both parts of its proposed merger with Time Warner Cable at the Federal Communications Commission and the heavy lifting on vetting the deal, and comments about the deal, can begin in earnest.

Comcast filed with the FCC the public interest statement, exhibits and license applications for its spin-off of 3.9 million customers, which it promised to do to try and assuage concerns about the size of the combined company. A key public interest point the company makes is how the creation of the new company, SpinCo, will bring more competition to the marketplace--while the TWC merger will not reduce it, Comcast has already pointed out.

"The SpinCo transaction will create substantial public interest benefits," says Comcast. "While SpinCo will be a new company, it will be larger than all but four other cable companies in the United States and will have a tightly integrated, contiguous service footprint. This scale and geographic scope will facilitate investment in innovation and high-quality services within SpinCo’s footprint. From the outset, SpinCo will be well positioned to compete aggressively in the highly competitive markets for high-speed Internet, voice, and video services."

Comcast will not own shares in either Charter or SpinCo after the closing of the spin-off, the company says, and for the first eight years would not be allowed to own more than 1% of SpinCo shares. "In short, SpinCo will be entirely independent of Comcast," the cable operator told the FCC.

In advance of the Senate Communications Subcommittee hearing June 5 on the IP transition, Subcommittee Chairman Mark Pryor (D-AK), Sen Bill Nelson (D-FL), chair of the Subcommittee on Science and Space, and parent Commerce Committee Chairman Sen Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) have asked the Government Accountability Office to study how the communications sector plans to "guarantee" resiliency and reliability as they transition to new technologies.

The senators want the following questions answered:

• To what extent has the communications sector transitioned from traditional copper-based networks to IP networks?
• As part of the nation’s critical infrastructure, what action has the federal government taken to ensure the reliability and robustness of communication networks that have transitioned to IP?
• What key challenges do IP network operators face during times of crises and how do the challenges affect consumers?
• To what extent do priority access programs for emergency preparedness communications exist for IP networks?

The chairs of a couple of Federal Communications Commission oversight subcommittees in the House have asked the FCC for an "update" on its current workload and "backlog of issues" currently pending.

That came in a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler from Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Tim Murphy (R-PA).

Rep Walden has been a big supporter of FCC process reform, including helping achieve House passage of the FCC Process Reform Act, which passed the House in March.

“In order to better understand the scope of the commission’s challenge, we respectfully request that the commission update the committee on current workload, the magnitude of the current backlog of issues pending before the commission and its bureaus, and efforts to manage current and backlogged work," they wrote. The Representatives said the report included reforms that, if instituted, would improve "transparency, efficiency and responsiveness.”

The Federal Communications Commission has approved a technical change in the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (CALM Act) that it says could further reduce the volume of TV commercials.

It has given stakeholders a year to comply with the new standard, as the National Association of Broadcasters had requested. The Act requires broadcasters and multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) to monitor and control the volume of commercials to make sure they are not louder than the surrounding programming.

The FCC received more than 20,000 complaints about loud commercials in the year since the FCC began enforcing the CALM Act in December 2012, but the good news was that the complaints have been on a steep downward curve, from 4,777 in December 2012 to 656.

Larger operators must conduct annual spot-checking of commercials for the first two years, after which that requirement sunsets. Smaller operators and stations don't have to spot check, but stations and operators of all sizes must test in response to a "pattern or trend" of complaints -- rather than, say, a single complaint -- involving their station or system.

Neither the Justice Department nor the Federal Trade Commission have any antitrust issues with Gannett's purchase of six London Broadcasting stations for $215 million.

Since the Federal Communications Commission and FTC/Justice usually coordinate their reviews, the FCC is likely not to have any issues either, though it looks beyond antitrust to public interest benefits.

The Gannett/London Broadcasting deal was on a list of mergers that were granted early termination of Hart-Scott-Rodino antitrust reviews, which are divvied up between the FTC and DOJ. They don't say who vets which, but DOJ usually handles TV station deals. Early termination means FTC/DOJ find no reason to block or condition the deal.

US broadband networks have generally topped their European counterparts thanks to the model of promoting facilities-based competition among private companies.

That is according to a just-released report from University of Pennsylvania Law School Professor Christopher Yoo, who says his comparative case studies show that utility-style (as in Title II-style) regulation of the Internet in Europe have been a hindrance to broadband speeds, access and innovation.

"Some claim the European model of service-based competition, induced by stiff telephone-style regulation, outperforms the facilities-based competition practiced in the US in promoting broadband," says Yoo in the executive summary. "Data analyzed for this report reveals, however, that the US led in many broadband metrics in 2011 and 2012."

The report did find that while US broadband was more expensive than Europe for tiers above 12 Mbps and US download speeds during peak times (weekday evenings) averaged 15 Mbps, below Europe's average 19 Mbps, the US was better at approaching advertised speed (96% of advertised vs. Europe's 74%) and also better in terms of latency and packet loss. Yoo attributed the disparity between networks to the differing regulator models.

A pair of senior senators has asked Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler to vote on a final order eliminating its sports blackout rules by the beginning of August.

In a letter to the chairman, Sens John McCain (R-AZ) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said that given that the FCC gave notice back in December 2013 that it thought the rules should go, it was time to move expeditiously to follow through -- it voted unanimously for a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking eliminating them.

The National Football League prevents the TV broadcast of any game not sold out 72 hours before game time. The FCC blackout rules backstop the league by preventing cable or satellite operators from airing a game blacked out on broadcast TV.

In December, it proposed eliminating that rule and leaving blackouts to private negotiations among rightsholders and distributors. "We agree wholeheartedly with the Commission that 'the sports blackout rules have become obsolete,'" they wrote, "and we believe the record clearly supports the FCC's tentative conclusions in favor of eliminating this unnecessary rule...We ask that you commit to bringing the final order to a vote within the next 60 days [the letter was dated June 2]."