LONG BEACH, Calif. -- The growing gray area of streaming services being delivered by cable providers needs to be addressed by local franchise authorities (LFA), speakers urged at NATOA’s annual conference Wednesday. Keller & Heckman localities lawyer Sean Stokes said since states' broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program funding proposals need to show steps carriers will take to reduce costs and barriers to deployment, carriers will likely use this as an invitation to look for more limits on municipal authority over the management of rights of way or pole attachments. He called it “a rerun” of the same pushes made for deployment reforms to aid 5G rollouts.
Matt Daneman
Matt Daneman, Senior Editor, covers pay TV, cable broadband, satellite, and video issues and the Federal Communications Commission for Communications Daily. He joined Warren Communications in 2015 after more than 15 years at the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, where he covered business among other issues. He also was a correspondent for USA Today. You can follow Daneman on Twitter: @mdaneman
The FCC's abdicating its internet oversight authority in 2017 largely neutered the agency's ability to protect online privacy and to require ISPs to address lengthy outages, Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said Tuesday as she announced the agency was moving to take that authority back. Reclassification of broadband as a service under Title II would end having to often jury-rig legal justifications for actions the agency is taking, she said, saying October's agenda will include a draft NPRM on reinstating the agency's 2015 net neutrality rules. The move met loud criticism, including from inside the FCC, as well as support.
Smartphones with mobile supplemental coverage from space (SCS) service will be the norm within a handful of years, with it becoming inevitable that every handset will offer the capability and all mobile carriers will partner satellite operators on direct-to-device service offerings, mobile and satellite industry experts told us. Others question the demand for SCS service.
Some state broadband directors said they don't anticipate multiple rounds of broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program bidding by providers due to the tight 12-month time frame between when NTIA approves initial state proposals and when finalized proposals with the list of subgrantees are due to the agency. There's also concern there will be serviceable locations that don't get provider bids, and it's not clear how to address those without more bidding rounds, said Brian Newby, North Dakota broadband program director, at a Broadband Breakfast webinar Wednesday.
Different states could see varying levels of interest from ISPs in bidding on broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program projects due to how they craft project requirements, cable industry experts say. Among these are prevailing wages for subcontractors and middle-class affordability offerings. Unclear is how many BEAD eligible areas end up with just one bidder, or none, we're told.
Expect the rapid growth in space launches to continue in coming years, driven by NASA and national security demands as well as by “almost unquenchable demand” for data via satellite connectivity, Peter Knickerbocker, Bank of America space practice manager, said Wednesday at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce aerospace conference in Washington. He said as many as 40,000 satellites could be in orbit by 2030. Knickerbocker also said venture capital investing in space dropped 50% in 2022, and investors' confidence will rebound when they see investment success stories.
Expect to see other MVPDs and programmers striking deals that marry traditional linear networks with streaming options, akin to the agreement Disney and Charter Communications struck ending their blackout 2309110034), pay-TV industry watchers and experts say. "It doesn't stop there," sports network and media rights consultant Lee Berke told us.
A year after the FCC adopted a five-year deorbit rule for low earth orbit (LEO) satellites (see 2209290017), space regulatory experts see the rule becoming a norm for many space operators, but it's less clear if many other countries will codify it into their own rules. Getting U.S. market access means agreeing to the five-year deorbit, which makes the U.S. rule a de facto international standard in many cases, they said.
Proposals from GOP presidential hopefuls Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy to abolish the Commerce Department face long odds of coming to fruition, but space experts told us the calls raise new questions about how that would affect commercial space operations and the operators that the entity currently regulates. Right-leaning groups want a new Republican administration to consider restructuring Commerce’s space regulatory operations. House Communications Subcommittee leaders, meanwhile, believe the chamber can resurrect the Satellite and Telecommunications Streamlining Act (HR-1338) to revamp the FCC’s satellite regulatory process.
With a blackout of Disney channels on its channel lineup last week, Charter Communications unveiled Friday what it had been pitching to the programmer -- a plan for what it said was a sustainable video model that marries linear video with direct-to-consumer (D2C) apps. Without buy-in to this model, Charter is "moving on" from the traditional video distribution model, Charter CEO Chris Winfrey said in a call Friday with analysts and media. "This is not a typical carriage dispute," he said.