Matt Daneman

Public, educational and government channels and local communities are lining up in opposition to one aspect of the FCC proposal to broaden the definition of multichannel video programing distributors to include certain types of over-the-top providers. If what the NPRM proposes becomes a rule, PEG channels and allies said they fear that cable operators' OTT services won't need to carry the programming or pay franchise and/or PEG fees that fund the channels. "In these proceedings, you sometimes get the law of unintended consequences," Merlyn Reineke, CEO of Montgomery Community Media in Rockville, Maryland, told us. "That’s our fear on the PEG side."

Altice's plan to buy Cablevision for $17.7 billion likely won't face major regulatory hurdles or raise any barriers to its pending takeover of Suddenlink, experts told us. "Probably at the end of the day there's not a lot of 'there' there" in terms of grounds for objections or public interest concerns, said cable lawyer Barbara Esbin with Cinnamon Mueller. "It's not Comcast/Time Warner."

Verizon expects its first LTE-U products -- small cells for enterprise indoor uses -- to roll out next year, said Patrick Welsh, assistant vice president-federal regulatory affairs. Field tests this fall will use different LTE-U configurations alongside existing Wi-Fi in a pair of office buildings, Welsh said. LTE-U has become an increasingly heated battleground between wireless carriers and Wi-Fi advocates such as the cable industry over concerns of LTE-U interference with Wi-Fi (see 1509100035). At the CTIA conference this month in Las Vegas, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler urged the industries to jointly create their own interference standards. "We expected folks to have questions about new technology," Welsh said Wednesday at a Verizon briefing and demo for reporters on LTE-U. The pushback "is part of the process," he said. But Welsh said he was surprised by the level of opposition in the face of test data and LTE-U specifications. Cable companies "are asking ... to be essentially the gatekeepers of unlicensed spectrum," Welsh said. Some LTE-U interference criticism has involved lack of "listen before talk" access features such as in Europe and Japan. There's nothing stopping Qualcomm and Verizon from adding "listen before talk" to its LTE-U, except that it would delay rollout, said Tamer Kadous, Qualcomm director-engineering. "It's wrong to think LTE-U is inferior to Wi-Fi because it doesn't have 'listen before talk,'" Welsh said, saying the European and Japanese standard exists because of government radar installations, not Wi-Fi. "We don't have those government radar systems here, so we don't have those government regulations," Welsh said. Qualcomm and Verizon demonstrated their LTE-U/Wi-Fi interoperability testing, with a Qualcomm test room lined with multiple Wi-Fi access points and an LTE-U access point that was switched on as the company measured throughput -- which remained unchanged. "This is a very extreme case, a harsh interference environment," said Dean Brenner, Qualcomm senior vice president-government affairs. In the second part of the testing, an array of smartphones all streamed YouTube video, while one conducted a Skype call, in the same room. "What matters is not paper specifications -- what matters is the consumer experience," Brenner said.

Whether many communities seek carriage of different broadcast signals under new satellite market modification rules the FCC adopted earlier this month remains to be seen, experts told us. The new rules "certainly give [broadcasters] more options and more ways to reach consumers," said Steve Ennin, president of communications analytics firm Centris Marketing Science. But Frank Jazzo of Fletcher Heald, who has represented a number of satellite and broadcast clients, said, "I wasn't aware of a lot of demand [for satellite market modifications]. I'm not sure how many changes we are going to see."

After the main part of a summer FCC administrative law judge hearing ended over whether a cable operator discriminated against an independent programmer by moving the indie to a less-popular channel tier, both sides traded filings on who is at fault. That came Friday in docket 12-122. That Cablevision never considered moving an affiliated network, rather than Game Show Network, from basic cable to a sports tier, and dangled the option of its return to basic only if GSN affiliate DirecTV gave good carriage to Cablevision-affiliated Wedding Central, makes it indisputable that GSN was discriminated against, said the indie. The operator countered that GSN's assertions lack any proof: "GSN has not introduced a single piece of direct evidence that Cablevision discriminated ... to favor its affiliated programming networks, WE tv and Wedding Central."

The Transportation Department's proposed study of LightSquared's proposed L-band LTE network and possible GPS interference "waste[s] scarce taxpayer dollars [and] will not produce any information of value to the FCC," a company spokeswoman said Friday. DOT set an Oct. 9 deadline for comments for its draft test plan on establishing criteria for power limits for transmitters in GPS-adjacent bands, it said in a Federal Register notice Wednesday. DOT isn't developing standards either for GPS receivers or transmitters operating in adjacent bands, but the interference tolerance masks "will be used to assess the adjacent band interference power levels that can be tolerated" by Global Navigation Satellite System receivers, the agency said. The draft test plan gives broad outlines of the study parameters. For example, the categories of receivers operating in the 1559-1610 MHz band to be studied are aviation, cellular, general location/navigation, high precision, timing, networks and space-based receivers. The details of the test procedure are being developed, but the testing is expected to take up to nine days, DOT said. "Instead of developing a plan to enable technological advancement and spur spectrum innovation, the DOT is proposing to set limits on spectrum use by promoting the continued use of outdated filter technology in receivers," the LightSquared spokeswoman said. This latest plan follows a 2012 DOT testing plan aimed at setting up "the framework for definition of the processes and assumptions that will form the basis for development of the GPS adjacent-band compatibility for GPS civil applications," she said. "It has taken DOT almost four years to propose a vague study that is absent procedures or timelines and will not answer the critical question of whether wireless broadband would cause any actual harm to the accuracy of GPS devices." Roberson and Associates is doing a LightSquared-commissioned study of the scope and degree of L-band LTE network interference to GPS, and results are due this fall. That plan has faced criticism from the GPS industry as being redundant to the DOT planning effort (see 1508250070).

The FCC began review of Charter Communications buying Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable, adopting protective order rules Friday. The controversial rules were the hurdle to be cleared before the informal 180-day shot clock started. The rules were adopted 3-2 two weeks ago, and Commissioners Mike O'Rielly and Ajit Pai strongly criticized them in dissents released Friday.

Globalstar is committing to its terrestrial low-power service (TLPS) plan being Wi-Fi based, not LTE-U, in hopes of helping speed along regulatory approval for the controversial broadband service, Barbee Ponder, vice president-regulatory affairs, told us. In an FCC filing posted Thursday in docket 13-213, the company said its private Wi-Fi channel in the 2.4 GHz band "is based on the existing IEEE 802.11 standard commonly referred to as 'Wi-Fi,'" and it doesn't plan to set up any service in unlicensed spectrum. It won't deploy LTE-U in the 2.4 GHz band until the FCC allows LTE-U deployment in unlicensed spectrum, the satellite company said.

A long line of local broadcasters is lobbying the FCC to preserve the exclusivity rules that Chairman Tom Wheeler indicated he hopes to eliminate (see 1509040016). ITTA said their demise needs to be paired with prohibitions on measures that would act "as an end run around repeal of the rules."

Wi-Fi advocates and the wireless industry are increasingly jousting over LTE-unlicensed. The WifiForward coalition labeled LTE-U users "spectrum bullies," in a short advocacy video put on YouTube Tuesday. The animated video shows a schoolyard bully-like tablet running on LTE-U pushing around smartphones and smart watches. "If Wi-Fi won't work, we all suffer," the video narrator says. "We can insist on politeness, ensuring that Wi-Fi and other new technologies can live in harmony and preventing spectrum bullies from disrupting unlicensed bands." WifiForward launched in 2014 with the goal of increasing the amount of unlicensed spectrum available for Wi-Fi use (see 1402140055). In a conference call Tuesday with reporters, Wi-Fi advocates said licensed assisted access standards should be finalized by the spring and until they are other LTE-U iterations shouldn't be approved (see 1509080046). Such unlicensed spectrum bands used in everything from cordless phones and baby monitors to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi "have been incredibly useful to consumers," said David Young, Verizon vice president-public policy, in a blog Wednesday. "The FCC’s 'permissionless innovation' approach to unlicensed spectrum has been an incredible success, unleashing torrents of innovation in spectrum bands that were once considered useless." Unlicensed spectrum "is poised to unleash a new wave of mobile innovation," said Young. LTE-U "will benefit consumers, competition and innovation," said Scott Bergmann, CTIA vice president-regulatory affairs, in a statement Wednesday: "Unlicensed spectrum has always offered an opportunity for permissionless innovation and we look forward to continuing to educate all stakeholders about the benefits of LTE Unlicensed."