Rulemaking petition denied on grounds relating to auction, interference and frequency coordination. The Wireless and International Bureaus and the Office of Engineering and Technology (Bureaus) have denied a 2008 petition by the Utilities Telecom Council and Winchester Cator, LLC that asked the Commission to open the 14.0-14.5 GHz band for terrestrial point-to-point and point-to-multipoint communications. The requested allocation would have served critical infrastructure industries, including electric utilities and emergency responders. Other services would have been permitted on a preemptible basis. The Bureaus disagreed with the petition’s argument that the band could be licensed without an auction. They also had concerns about interference into...

[Blogmeister’s Note: We haven’t heard much about porn copyright trolls in a couple of years, but a recent decision by a federal judge in California caught our eye. The judge slammed a troll operation, and he did it with flair – his opinion opens with a quote from a Star Trek movie (“The Wrath of Khan”) and proceeds to riff off the Star Trek theme throughout its 11 pages. Our colleague Tony Lee volunteered to report on the decision because – or so we thought – he had been involved with porn copyright trolls in the past (defending against them, he assures us). What...

Proposed law looks to address multiple aspects of TV in the MVPD era, including bundling, broadcast abandonment and blackouts. True to his reputation as a maverick, Arizona Senator John McCain has authored a bill seemingly designed to please nobody, while arguably disserving just about everybody. Dubbed the “Television Consumer Freedom Act of 2013”, it consists of clumsily crafted legislative language that mashes together in one bill three disparate and contentious aspects of the current video delivery system. In only one of those three areas does McCain’s proposal come to remotely practical terms with the problem...

New Media Bureau policy opens door for reduced fines for first-time violators of some paperwork rules. The FCC’s enforcement actions often leave us shaking our heads wondering if the bureaucracy recognizes the challenges faced in real life by those it regulates. But occasionally there are rays of hope.  Case in point: the Media Bureau has revised its policy for enforcing certain paperwork obligations against student-staffed noncommercial educational (NCE) radio broadcast stations. The revised policy provides an opportunity for such stations to avoid crushing forfeitures which could end up shutting the stations down. Last July, we blogged...

A bit of Fletcher Heald family news. Our colleague, Davina Sashkin, and her hubby, Bill Schreiner, welcomed William A. Schreiner, III, into their family – and the greater FHH fold – this past week. Mom and young Liam are doing well.  Liam is pictured, angelically asleep, at left. (Tip to Davina and Bill: don’t get used to this.) We here in the CommLawBlog bunker wish them all the best. And Liam’s arrival reminds us that today is Mother’s Day. Permit us to diverge slightly from our usual FCC-centric mission to provide this public service announcement. If you haven’t already done so, we recommend that you turn off...

If you have the vague sense that you might like to file comments in response to the bizarre invitation for comments relative to the FCC’s indecency policies, but you’re still trying to figure out exactly what those policies are in the first place, you're in luck. The General Counsel’s office and the Enforcement Bureau have extended the deadlines. Comments are now due by June 19, 2013 and reply comments by July 18. Unfortunately, the public notice announcing the extensions does not shed any more light on the indecency inquiry. As previously reported here, the inquiry posed on April Fool’s Day is, at best, cryptic...

Antennas would use directional pointing rules to avoid interfering with satellites. The FCC is looking to expand the use of wireless services, particularly in-flight Wi-Fi, on aircraft traveling over the contiguous United States.  In a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), the FCC has proposed the establishment of a new air-ground mobile broadband service in the 14.0-14.5 GHz band. The proposal was first advanced by Qualcomm, which hopes to augment the recently authorized (just last December) satellite-based connections to aircraft with a nationwide network of air-to-ground stations that would allow plane passengers to connect more easily and cheaply to the Internet. Unlike satellite...

The full FCC agrees with the Wireless Bureau that FiberTower’s failure to construct resulted from its own business decisions. FiberTower loses again. The full FCC has backed the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau’s decision to cancel 698 licenses held by the company in the 24 GHz and 39 GHz auctioned fixed microwave bands, for failure to construct sufficient facilities. As we explained last December in our sister publication FHH Telecom Law, FiberTower is not alone in its difficulties. Nearly all of the area-wide licensees in the four auctioned bands used to communicate between fixed points – at 24, 28, 31, and 39 GHz –...

The more the merrier: Major telecom reform measure marks turning point in regulatory approach.  [Blogmeister’s Note: We welcome a new guest contributor, Ernesto Velarde-Danache, an attorney with offices in Mexico and Texas who is familiar with Mexico’s regulatory activities vis-à-vis its telecommunications industries. Ernesto has provided us with the following recap of a new law recently passed by the Mexican national legislature. As outlined below, the law, which is awaiting ratification by a majority of Mexico’s states, will have a major impact both on Mexico’s telecom industries and on foreign investors who might now be able to participate in those industries.] For so many years...

Request reopens matter laid to rest just six years ago. The FCC has reopened the difficult question of technical standards for radio receivers. Everyone agrees that poor receivers impair efficient use of spectrum. In particular, receivers that respond to a wider swath of frequencies than necessary can receive interference from unwanted signals close by the intended signal. Just ask LightSquared, whose plans to use mobile satellite frequencies on terrestrial towers failed because its signal was close enough to GPS frequencies to overpower some GPS receivers. Less selective, more interference-prone receivers are cheaper to manufacture. Market forces are not much help because a more...

FCC proposes rule changes to help combat contraband cell phone usage in correctional institutions. If The Shawshank Redemption had been set in 2013 rather than 60 years or so earlier, this prison-yard exchange between inmates Andy Dufresne and Red would probably go something like this: Andy: I understand you're a man who knows how to get cell phones. Red:    I'm known to locate cell phones from time to time…but what would you want one for, Andy, to update your Facebook status? The problem of contraband cell phone use in correctional institutions for social media status updates is very real. And while...

It’s a buyer’s market when it comes to FM construction permits. [WARNING! While Auction 94 has closed, strict federal anti-collusion rules remain in effect for several more weeks. Parties who were involved in any way in the auction – including folks who filed applications but then elected not to participate in the auction – should refrain from discussing any aspect of the auction with anyone who was similarly involved in the auction.] Another auction of FM construction permits has come to an end (although the FCC has not yet posted the final results – we’ll update this post...