Matt Daneman

Numerous parties interested in the diverse programming NPRM on the FCC's Thursday agenda tell us they expect a 3-2 vote along party lines. Republican Commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O'Rielly seemingly don't think the agency has the authority to set new rules limiting most-favored-nation (MFN) and alternative distribution method provisions in program carriage agreements -- the focus of the NPRM (see 1609080083), one person who has been in multiple ex parte meetings with eighth-floor staff told us.

More competition than ever, hobbled by analog-era regulations: that's how multiple commenters described the video market as the FCC readies its 18th video competition report. NCTA, in a filing posted Thursday in docket 16-247, said the annual inquiry -- now treated as routine, done by the Media Bureau without consideration by the full commission -- "misses the point: The development of true marketplace competition means that a great many regulatory measures are no longer needed and should, if anything, be curtailed." Small and midsize multichannel video programming distributor representatives argued the market is too tilted in programmers' favor to be considered competitive.

Charter Communications is opposing the part of FCC's set-top box proposal that would require cable modems be broken out on customers' bills and their cost unsubsidized. Saying it would be "more than happy" to note on customers’ bills that its modems are free, Charter in a blog post Wednesday said it "doesn’t stand to reason that customers will benefit from forcing companies to start charging for modems they currently give away." Compared with much of the set-top proceeding, cable modems are "a sleeper issue, but it offers a road map to undermining the retail market [for set-tops] and kill[ing] off the set-top box retail market before it ever gets off the ground," Andrew Schwartzman, outside counsel for Zoom Telephonics, told us Wednesday. Zoom repeatedly pushed the FCC for cable modem conditions on Charter's buys of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks (see 1511270051, 1511240028 and 1511040045) and has backed the FCC on the cable modem portion of the set-top proposal.

The increased capacity in the satellite universe will mean challenges for satellite operators focused on traditional wide-beam coverage, Intelsat CEO Stephen Spengler said at a Goldman Sachs investor conference Wednesday. "People putting up standard wide-beam capacity, they are going to have [internal rate of return] challenges when it comes to replacing those satellites," Spengler said. "It is not a sustainable model." He said Intelsat is moving to a model of its high-throughput Epic constellation providing spot beam coverage in dense areas of high demand, and using wide-beam coverage in areas like ocean coverage. Spengler said North America is a little-changed market for media distribution and direct-to-home coverage, and Ultra HD is coming but "slow in developing." The company's North American broadcaster and programmer customers are taking their time planning for Ultra HD, given higher production costs and the expense of Ultra HD infrastructure, he said, saying Ultra HD might be more readily adopted by over-the-top providers. Spengler said he sees a long tail for media distribution via satellite despite the growing prevalence of fiber networks due to the large number of communities off the fiber grid or that lack sufficient fiber connectivity. Close to 5,000 cable headends are served by satellite and a sizable number will remain "well into the next decade," he said.

Comcast plans to roll out a wireless offering in early or mid-2017, based on its Verizon mobile virtual network operator (see 1605170057) and integrating Comcast's Wi-Fi hot spots, CEO Brian Roberts said Tuesday at a Goldman Sachs investor conference. The company in July promoted Greg Butz from Comcast Cable executive vice president-sales and marketing operations to president, Comcast Mobile, Roberts said. He said Butz and a team of about 150 have been readying the wireless offering. Roberts didn't say if the company would broadly roll out the offering next year or beta test it, saying it would be "an in-footprint strategy."

Despite Ligado assurances its terrestrial low-power service plans, with proper protection zones, won't cause interference to National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration downlinks sharing the same spectrum, NOAA said interference problems it has from Ligado operations (see 1608120033) demonstrate otherwise. "Nothing Ligado has done or shown ... has changed our view," said NOAA Chief Information Officer Zach Goldstein told us. On whether sharing is possible at all in the 1675-1680 MHz band, he said, “We don't know. We don't have a technical solution as we stand here today -- that doesn't mean we can't develop one.”

With the FCC set-top box proceeding an existential threat in the eyes of some pay-TV operators (see 1609190048), lobbying on the independent and diverse programming rulemaking on that also is on the Sept. 29 commissioner meeting preliminary agenda has been and will likely remain relatively quiet this week, multiple cable industry officials and insiders said. If an order comes out of the NPRM, they said, there undoubtedly will far more intense lobbying by multichannel video programming distributors and programmers.

Congress has discussed making the Department of Transportation the lead agency on regulating and overseeing any nontraditional space missions, taking no action yet, said George Nield, Federal Aviation Administration associate administrator-commercial space transportation. The FAA, as part of DOT, "would be happy to play sort of lead role -- not take over everything but be the front door," Nield said, saying the private sector "would love to have one-stop shopping." Nield said Friday that House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee member Jim Bridenstine, R-Okla., has been leading the push. Bridenstine's office didn't comment.

DirecTV and MasTec Advanced Technologies, one of its contractors, were out of bounds firing a group of employees who griped to a Florida TV news station about pay policies, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled Friday, upholding a 2011 National Labor Relations Board ruling. DirecTV and MasTec said the workers' comments weren't protected concerted activity because of malicious untruths and flagrant disloyalty. Judges Judith Rogers and Sri Srinivasan -- who wrote the majority opinion (in Pacer) -- said the court's interest isn't where that line between protected and unprotected activity sits but on the correctness of NLRB's finding that the workers' appeal is on the protected side of that line. Judge Janice Brown dissented. The pay policy required MasTec installers to hook up DirecTV set-top boxes to customer phone lines, with MasTec setting up financial incentives and punishments for hook-up quotas, the D.C. Circuit ruling said. MasTec fired nearly all technicians who were part of a TV news broadcast about the policy, the court said. An NLRB administrative law judge said going public is protected activity, but their statements were so disloyal and disparaging that they weren't protected. The full NLRB disagreed that the comments to the TV news crew reached that level. Judges' decision Friday said MasTec workers' on-air comments "were neither so disloyal and incommensurate with their labor grievances nor so maliciously untrue as to fall outside" of National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) protections. They also dismissed DirecTV arguments that because the direct broadcast satellite company is the fired workers' employer's customer, the workers had no protected rights to criticize it, ruling DirecTV clearly committed an unfair labor practice in causing MasTec to do the firings. In her dissent, Brown said the workers crossed the line from labor dispute to public disparagement aimed at eroding the companies' reputations. "This is not a close case," Brown said, pointing to the workers' telling the station that MasTec was requiring them to lie to customers when it had not done so, and was trying to have them scare customers into accepting the service: "By soberly repeating that joke to a public audience without its context and as though it were a serious instruction, these technicians left the NLRA and its protections behind." DirecTV in a statement said it agreed with the dissent and is "considering [its] options.” MasTec didn't comment.

Microsoft is claiming "a profound negative impact" on video game consoles like its Xbox 360S from Globalstar's proposed broadband terrestrial low-power service (TLPS). Those assertions could mire the proceeding before the FCC for months, satellite industry consultant Tim Farrar told us Wednesday. "Things were coming to a head one way or another -- either to move forward or say nothing will happen this year -- and this likely ensures the latter." Nintendo also raised red flags about possible TLPS interference (see 1607060042). Globalstar rebutted Microsoft's concerns.