The FCC’s new regulatory fee schedule was published in the Federal Register Thursday and part of it took effect then, said an agency notice in the publication (http://1.usa.gov/1lXG8vC). The usual 30-day period after publication would “not allow sufficient time for the Commission to collect the FY 2014 fees before FY 2014 ends on September 30, 2014,” said the FCC. The new schedule (CD Sept 3 p11) shifts the percentage of the costs of the International Bureau that must be supported by satellite operators, ended the AM expanded band exemption, increases the annual de minimis threshold from under $10 to $500, eliminates several regulatory fee categories and adopts a regulatory fee for toll-free numbers managed by a responsible organization, said the commission. All the provisions except the de minimis increase, the eliminated regulatory fee categories and the toll-free category took effect Thursday, said the commission. It said those three provisions will be effective in FY 2015.

Dish Network argued that its upcoming over-the-top (OTT) streaming service would be hurt if Comcast is permitted to buy Time Warner Cable. Comcast alone could block Dish’s OTT video in Philadelphia and Chicago, but Dish could still survive “if its service was offered unimpeded in the TWC-dominated markets of New York, Los Angeles, and Dallas,” it said in an ex parte filing posted Wednesday in docket 14-57 (http://bit.ly/1qizrFI). If Comcast/TWC controls half or more of relevant high-speed broadband lines nationally, “Dish’s ability to offer a mainstream OTT service to the audience most likely to adopt that product at the outset could be greatly, perhaps fatally, curtailed,” it said. The combined companies also will be able to extract lower prices from programmers, which will force programmers to extract even higher rates from smaller pay-TV providers “to compensate the programmers for lost revenue,” it said. Dish also argued that Comcast/TWC will have the incentive and ability to restrict programmers’ ability to grant digital rights to competing pay-TV and OTT video providers. Dish continues to get its facts wrong, a Comcast spokeswoman said. After the proposed transaction, Comcast “will only make up about 35 percent of broadband subscribers nationwide -- and that doesn’t even include wireless broadband which will provide even more competition in the future,” she said. Comcast’s transaction with NBCUniversal has provisions for OTT providers “to access the NBCUniversal content,” she said. Neither Comcast nor NBCUniversal has the ability to control other programmer decisions with regard to OTT services, she said.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler should avoid finger pointing and stop “inventing rumors” about the incentive auction, said NAB Executive Vice President-Strategic Planning Rick Kaplan in a blog post response (http://bit.ly/1BsP3st) to Wheeler’s speeches to wireless conferences Tuesday (CD Sept 10 p1). Blaming NAB’s petition for review of the auction order for a possible delay is “not only wrong, but will create the very uncertainties and distractions” the FCC is concerned about, Kaplan said. If the NAB wins its court challenge and that leads to a delay for the incentive auction, it’s not the association that should take the blame, but the FCC, Kaplan said. NAB “has laid out why we believe the FCC has acted outside the law,” Kaplan said. “If the FCC insists on seeing the litigation through and loses, then it has no one else to blame but itself.” Wheeler blamed broadcasters in his speech as an alternative to blaming the FCC’s “misguided policy decisions,” Kaplan said. “It is definitely easier than blaming the fact that would-be spectrum sellers still have no idea what kind of return they can reasonably expect in the auction.” Recent FCC rules for broadcaster sharing arrangements and net neutrality proposals have “undermined trust with the very industries needed to participate in the auction,” Kaplan said. NAB still believes the auction can succeed, he said, saying “it would sure help” if broadcasters “had a partner at the helm of the FCC.” The commission had no comment.

Both sides are only half correct in the net neutrality debate, said Consumer Federation of America Research Director Mark Cooper Wednesday on a panel co-sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute. Those opposing regulation trumpet the role of private investment in spurring the development of the Internet, but underestimate how public policy “tilled the ground” for the innovation, Cooper said. He cited the spending of public funds on research and development, and pricing policies like bill and keep designed to promote use. Those seeking strong regulation are wrong to deny “the important role the private sector played,” he said. Looking ahead, he said, the ability of ISPs to “extract rents,” particularly in areas where they have market power, could stifle innovation by edge providers. At the same time, regulations work best in “static” environments, and despite assurances that Title II regulations can be tailored through forbearance, “regulations are difficult to undo,” Cooper said. The panel on Cooper’s research into the combination of public investment and public policy was one of several through Friday at the FCC, in which academics present research on broadband regulation. The agency’s rural broadband experiments were inspired by Google’s process, in which it asks communities to apply for the company’s 1 gigabit broadband, said Jonathan Chambers, chief of the Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis, during a separate portion of the daylong event. The experiments, in which broadband providers, communities and others submitted applications on what they would build using agency funds, is intended to provide information to help guide the agency’s ability to use funds effectively to promote deployment, he said. Applicants, for instance, were asked to describe how they would provide speeds of 25/5 Mbps for less than the agency’s cost model for providing those speeds, he said. The process spurred Minnesota to create a broadband fund to provide funding for some of the ideas, he said.

The tentative agenda for the FCC meeting Sept. 30 includes an order to eliminate the sports blackout rules, and a comprehensive review of licensing and operating rules for satellite services, the commission said in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1COFw0t). The sports blackout rule item comes after FCC officials told us some commissioners strongly wanted to end the rule (CD Aug 4 p6). The FCC received thousands of letters from the public on both sides of the issue last month, including from the “Protect Football on Free TV” campaign. It’s time “to sack the sports blackout rules for good,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in an op-ed in USA Today (http://usat.ly/WMjUAW). There are nearly 20,000 letters from that campaign, led by former NFL player Lynn Swann, an NFL spokesman said. He also referred us to Swann’s August statement urging the FCC to “put sports fans interests above pay-TV special interests and keep the rules” (CD Aug 26 p15). The current system is “working a lot better for the league [NFL] and its owners than it is for the fans, who on average pay nearly $500 to take a family of four to a game,” he said. “If the league truly has the best interest of millions of American fans at heart, they could simply commit to staying on network television in perpetuity.” FCC rules shouldn’t reinforce a system “that works against viewer choice,” said John Bergmayer, Public Knowledge senior staff attorney. Private parties shouldn’t be able to use government regulations “as an excuse to limit what people can see,” he said in a news release (http://bit.ly/1tIqqHh). Also at the meeting, the commission will vote on a Further NPRM to streamline and update Part 25 rules on licensing and operation of satellites and earth stations, the FCC said. The comment period on the streamlining of more than 100 rules closed last year (CD Feb 15/13 p4). Also on the agenda are an NPRM revising rules for unlicensed operations in the TV bands and new 600 MHz band, and an NPRM on the needs of wireless mic users, it said.

A project team will do research, prototyping and usability-testing to complete a data and stakeholder-driven design for www.fcc.gov. The first phase of the project is expected to be completed by mid-January, said FCC Chief Information Officer David Bray in a blog post (http://fcc.us/1pyb0O4). That phase will focus on audience research, content research, prototyping and usability testing, and search and analytics, he said Friday. The second phase will include a “fully functioning, responsively designed website with updated content and robust search capability,” he said. The third phase involves improving the FCC’s employee intranet website, he said.

An NPRM on the incentive auction and low-power TV will be circulated to the FCC commissioners’ offices next week, LPTV Spectrum Rights Coalition Director Mike Gravino told us Friday. The information came from Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake, Gravino said. The FCC and bureau declined to comment. Lake said the NPRM was in the works at April’s NAB Show. Auction-related NPRMs on Part-15 unlicensed spectrum, wireless mics and aggregate interference will go on circulation at the same time, Gravino said. After the LPTV notice, the commission will also hold a LEARN (Learn Everything About Reverse-Auctions Now) session on the impact of the auction on LPTV, Gravino said the bureau told him. “While the exact date is not available, we anticipate this important event to be held in October or November 2014,” Gravino said in an email to coalition members (http://bit.ly/1xml6Mb). “We are glad the FCC has stepped up and is now giving LPTV their full attention for our very important rule making.” Though Fletcher Heald LPTV attorney Peter Tannenwald said it’s good that the FCC is moving quickly to address LPTV issues, he said the timing might also make the rulemaking more difficult, since many details of the auction still remain unclear. The LPTV rulemaking will include the issue of construction permits (CD Sept 5 p8), LPTV channel sharing, and how the commission will handle displacement filings, Gravino said. The Wireless Internet Service Providers Association, which had opposed an extension for LPTV CPs, “looks forward to participating in the Commission’s proceeding so that important issues about the rights of LPTV permittees and licensees can be fully considered in advance of the incentive auction,” said Vice President Alex Phillips.

FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly recently spent eight days touring Alaska as a guest of the state’s congressional delegation. Among his takeaways was enforcement of the notion that Alaska is unique, O'Rielly said Friday in a blog post (http://fcc.us/1lFDFFM). “Seeing it again, however, reminded me not only of its immense size, but also of its uncompromising terrain,” he said. Another observation is that Alaska schools need connections, not Wi-Fi, he said. “My visit reaffirmed the serious concerns that have been expressed with shifting the E-Rate program’s attention from basic connectivity to Wi-Fi.” O'Rielly said he also took note of the extent to which federal subsidies have distorted the communications marketplace there. “My conversations with providers in the state highlighted the number of Federal programs and the influence of these programs on Alaskan communications,” he said. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler also recently toured the state (CD Sept 3 p12).

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit granted NAB’s emergency motion asking that its challenge of the commission’s incentive auction order (CD Aug 19 p1) be expedited, a Friday court order said. The FCC supported the NAB motion, saying it was in the public’s interest to resolve the NAB’s petition for review “as promptly as possible” (CD Aug 29 p1). Per the FCC’s request, the court order allows the timing of the case to change if additional challenges to the auction order are filed. The current briefing schedule for the case would be completed in December, after which a date for oral argument would be scheduled, the order said. The D.C. Circuit’s timeline “closely tracks” with the NAB request, said NAB Executive Vice President-Strategic Planning Rick Kaplan. “The great thing is that all of our goals align here; everyone, especially NAB, wants to see these issues resolved expeditiously.” The schedule for the court proceeding makes it “crystal clear” that the legal issues can be resolved “well before the mid-2015 start of the auction,” emailed Expanding Opportunities for Broadcasters Coalition Executive Director Preston Padden. The FCC declined to comment.

Correction: The dates when comments on intercarrier compensation for VoIP calls were due was Aug. 4, replies Aug. 14 (CD Sept 3 p7).