Multichannel News

AT&T said it will deliver gigabit service to 11 more metro areas as it also drops the “GigaPower” name and starts to employ a new umbrella brand -- AT&T Fiber. The additional metros that will get 1-Gig from AT&T Fiber include Gainesville and Panama City (FL); Columbus (GA); Central Kentucky; Lafayette (LA); Biloxi-Gulfport and Northeast Mississippi; Wilmington (NC); Southeastern Tennessee and Knoxville; and Corpus Christi (TX). AT&T said the expansions increase its commitment to bring gigabit service to parts of at least 67 metros, and expects to have 45 of them online by the end of 2016. AT&T Fiber service is already deployed in 29 metro areas spanning 3 million “locations,” the company said, noting that it’s on track to exceed 12.5 million locations planned by mid-2019.

Charter Communications has filed suit against the city of Louisville (KY) over what it says are materially more burdensome regulations and franchise obligations it is subject to relative to video competitors Google Fiber and AT&T's U-verse. Wearing its First Amendment hat, Charter said that the government "may not favor one similarly situated member of the press or other speaker over another without special justification," which it said Louisville Metro lacked.

Given that the city refused to lighten Charter subsidiary Insight Kentucky Partners's regulatory load to bring it in line with its competitors, Charter said it had no choice but to head to court. (Charter acquired the Louisville market in 2016 after merging with Time Warner Cable.) The suit was filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Kentucky. Charter's main points are that it is simply asking for the equal treatment state and federal law allows; that consumers will suffer if competitors can move its wires around without telling Charter and that treating competitors differently hurts, rather than promotes, cable competition.

AT&T confirmed that it is sunsetting Internet Preferences, a targeted Web advertising program it has been using in tandem with its lower-cost GigaPower broadband service tiers. In Austin (TX), for example, AT&T has been selling a Premiere tier of the 1-Gig service for $70 per month, when subscribers agreed to participate in Internet Preferences alongside a Standard version, without the targeted ad option, for $99 per month.

AT&T said that, starting in October, all GigaPower customers, regardless of whether or not they previously chose to opt-in, will receive the stand-alone 1-Gig service for $70 – a price that happens to match up with Google Fiber’s stand-alone gigabit offering. “To simplify our offering for our customers, we plan to end the optional Internet Preferences advertising program related to our fastest internet speed tiers,” AT&T said. “As a result, all customers on these tiers will receive the best rate we have available for their speed tier in their area."

Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Edith Ramirez says she has assurances that as part of Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler's set-top rule plan, device makers will be held to the same privacy requirements the FCC can impose on Internet service providers. That came in an FTC oversight hearing in the Senate Commerce Committee.

Sen Jerry Moran (R-KS) pointed out that the FCC did not have jurisdiction over device manufacturers and had said the FTC would be able to enforce device privacy on the third parties beyond the FCC's reach. The FCC does not have authority over edge providers or device makers. Sen Moran pointed out that Chairman Wheeler had told the committee that he had worked with the FTC in writing the set-top rules and that they would require manufacturers to comply with privacy rules that the FTC could enforce. He wanted confirmation of that. Chairwoman Ramirez pointed out that in comments to the FCC on the set-top proposal, it had recommended that those third parties be required to make a "consumer-facing statement" pledge that they would comply with the same privacy rules the FCC can impose on cable companies, which would allow the FTC to take action where necessary. That is because the FTC can go after violations of that pledge under its authority over unfair and deceptive practices. Chairwoman Ramirez said Chairman Wheeler had indeed indicated his intent to make such a pledge a part of the rules.

Liberman Broadcasting, parent of Spanish-language network Estrella TV, has asked the Federal Communications Commission's Media Bureau to reconsider its decision to reject Liberman's program carriage complaint against Comcast for lack of standing, saying to read a TV broadcast station out of the definition of video programming vendor is illegal.

On Aug. 26, the FCC's Media Bureau said the broadcasters' retransmission issues with Comcast did not equate to program carriage under the FCC rules because it was not a video programming vendor under those rules and so did not have standing to bring the complaint. But in a Petition for Reconsideration filed Sept. 26, Liberman said the bureau had ignored the plain language of the law when it concluded it was not a video programming vendor--"programming ...provided by a television broadcast station." Liberman says that error alone justifies reconsideration. Additionally, Liberman said it had supplied enough evidence for a prima facie case against Comcast. The FCC said it had not. Liberman also said that the bureau had erred in not considering distribution of Estrella TV outside its broadcast footprint.

The Senate Commerce Committee has scheduled a Federal Trade Commission oversight hearing. Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) announced that the hearing will be Sept 27 at 10 am. Look for broadband privacy to be a hot topic of conversation.

Committee Republican Sens have been pushing the Federal Communications Commission to take a page from the FTC's privacy oversight and focus on tailoring broadband privacy to the sensitivity of information, and to adopt an opt-out, rather than opt-in, regime for information sharing, which has been the FTC's approach. The FCC inherited oversight of broadband privacy from the FTC when it reclassified Internet service providers as common carriers, which the FTC is excluded from regulating under the false and deceptive authority the FTC uses. There could also be questions about the recent court decision that called into question whether buying a common carrier could insulate edge providers from FTC privacy regulatory authority.

[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler has served up a “compromise” rule on set-top boxes. After the original proposal was met with overwhelming opposition, Chairman Wheeler retreated and reconfigured a new version of the same old rule. Much like the dealer in three-card monte, Chairman Wheeler has changed the game to appear responsive to the players when, in fact, he still holds the “money card.” It seems Chairman Wheeler has the same problem as President Barack Obama when presented a choice to sacrifice existing industries with proven track records in favor of newer, sexier and techier entrants. Broadcasters, cable and telecommunication companies have been on the losing end of many of Chairman Wheeler’s most significant rules, as opposed to tech. And this has led to criticism of an anti-business — or at least anti-incumbent — bias.

When it comes to the rules on set-top boxes, the growing chorus of content creators, distributors, programmers, advertisers, manufacturers, copyright and privacy advocates deserve a straight answer responsive to their demonstrably legitimate concerns. The Chairman has all the cards in hand to toss out a compromise that will allow every player in the set-top game to walk away from the table a winner.

[Adonis Hoffman is chairman of Business in the Public Interest and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. He is the former chief of staff and senior legal advisor to FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn.]

Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, took the opportunity of a speech on competition policy in Chicago Sept 16 to endorse Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler's new set-top plan. Furman pointed out that the first action taken under an executive order last April calling on agencies, including the independent FCC agency, to identify "creative" ways to promote competition, was to file comments in support of the FCC's original (unlock the box) set-top proposal. Furman said that the White House was pleased that Chairman Wheeler had "actively" listened to stakeholders to "improve the proposal." "[We] believe that [chairman Wheeler] is charting out a responsible way to address their meaningful concerns while being responsive to Congress's explicit directive to ensure a healthy set-top marketplace." That shout out comes as House and Senate Democrats, studios, unions, ISPs, and others are calling for a reboot citing concerns about the FCC's authority over a proposed app standards licensing body and the impact on copyrights and contracts.

The Office of Management and Budget is hearing it from Internet service provides on the new enhanced transparency rules the Federal Communications Commission adopted, but has yet to implement, as part of the Open Internet order and what they argue was the FCC's lowballing of those obligations and costs. The Open Internet order was adopted over a year ago, but the enhanced transparency rules require OMB to sign off on any new paperwork burdens before they take effect per the Paperwork Reduction Act, which OMB has yet to do. In comments on that paperwork review, AT&T said the FCC's estimates of the data collection requirements failed to pass the "straight-face test." It said the FCC's analysis was slipshod and superficial and should be rejected by OMB.

For example, said AT&T, the FCC will require ISPs to measure packet loss, something they have not previously had to do, and so so in undefined "peak periods." AT&T says that would cost far more than FCC estimates and might even cost more for AT&T's compliance alone than the FCC estimated for all the transparency requirements for the entire industry. While the FCC has estimated compliance costs industrywide at $640,000, AT&T says new packet loss testing and reporting could cost it millions of dollars a year. "Finally, the FCC has provided no serious explanation of the practical benefits to consumers of measurement and disclosure of packet loss. Packet loss, which depends on, among other things, router buffer size, is unlikely to be of any value to consumers, and attempts to reduce it could actually impair service quality. And the OIO didn’t even attempt to explain the benefits of disclosing packet loss," AT&T told OMB.

AT&T has taken aim at the Computer & Communications Industry Association in comments at the Federal Communications Commission, calling CCIA's compromise proposal on set-tops, "a thinly veiled repackaging of the notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM)’s unlawful, unwise, and unworkable unbundling proposal." CCIA members include Google, Amazon, Dish and Tivo. The CCIA proposal was billed as a bridge over the divide between the FCC's "unlock the box" proposal and the National Cable & Telecommunications Associations app-based "ditch the box" proposal, but the white paper submitted recently read more like a defense of the FCC proposal, saying the NCTA alternative is " light in detail and heavy with loopholes" and would "box out" competition, while the FCC proposal is a solution that gives consumers "real choice."

The FCC proposal is to require MVPDs to provide their program and data streams to third parties for apps and competitive navigation devices. NCTA has countered with a proposal for an app that third parties could use to display MVPD programming alongside over-the-top programming, but would retain the channel lineup and that includes contractual placements and protections. AT&T pointed out in its critique of CCIA that while the white paper purports to remedy the copyright and contract issues raised by allowing third party access to MVPD's--like AT&T's U-Verse--disaggregated programming streams and data, CCIA instead explicitly concedes that its proposal would not hold third parties to all contractual requirements. "Because third parties are not parties to and lack access to programmers’ private contracts, there should be no expectation that competitive navigation devices can or should have to follow those restrictions," AT&T says, quoting from the CCIA white paper filing to the FCC.