The FCC signaled Friday that it had approved an Amtrak request for positive train control spectrum only two days after a final amendment was submitted in March and had been expediting, and would continue to do so, requests for such spectrum.

An FCC source pointed out that with two different positive train control (PTC) systems, passenger and freight, it was not simply a case of finding spectrum along rail rights-of-way and handing it over.

With some fingers being pointed at the FCC, and questions from the Hill, about the commission's role in PTC spectrum and antenna issues in the wake of the Amtrak train crash in Philadelphia, FCC Wireless Telecommunications chief Roger Sherman weighed in with a blog on Friday.

Following the accident NTSB and Amtrak officials talked about the need for PTC (which has been mandated by Congress by year's end but was not installed on the tracks where the derailment occurred) and how it could have prevented the accident.

"We continue to be actively involved in helping freight and commuter trains such as Amtrak acquire spectrum," Sherman said. "In fact, the FCC approved Amtrak’s application for spectrum for the Washington D.C. to New York corridor after an expedited review and just two days after Amtrak submitted a final amendment to the agency in March 2015."

"The railroads are seeking commercial spectrum to deploy PTC, which – by law – must be acquired at auction or from third parties," continued Sherman. "Since Congress passed the law in 2008 requiring PTC [by Dec,. 31, 2015], the FCC has been working closely with railroads and Amtrak to identify available spectrum on the secondary market and to approve transactions quickly."

Sherman pointed out that the railroads are the ones who need to activate and use the technology and Congress did not fund PTC spectrum acquisition.

"In 2008, Congress passed a law requiring Amtrak and other commuter and freight railroads to deploy interoperable PTC systems by December 31, 2015, but did not designate spectrum, a finite resource, for PTC use or make funds available for railroads to acquire access to spectrum."

"The Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration has primary authority to ensure PTC systems are activated and work properly. As the nation’s communications agency, the FCC helps facilitate spectrum acquisition by freight and commuter trains. We also manage the mandatory historic preservation and environmental reviews of PTC system infrastructure." There have been some issues with poles on tribal lands.

Only hours before the derailment, in a Senate budget hearing, Wheeler had talked about positive train control, saying the issue has two parts: spectrum and the placement of antennas. He said the FCC had recently eased power restrictions for commuter lines to reduce the number of poles required, and opened up and transferred spectrum, including that spectrum to Amtrak in the Northeast corridor.

Wheeler also said that since he had become chairman, the FCC had instituted new procedures such that the agency was able to process more applications for placement of the poles that hold the antennas than the railroads were currently submitting. He said the FCC could now handle 2,800 requests a week, which he said the railroads could not keep pace with.

"I think we are making some real serious progress on PTC," he told the senators.

Back in February, in response to a letter from Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) about the status of PTC deployment, Wheeler said: "PTC has the potential to save lives, prevent injuries, and avoid extensive property damage. Expediting PTC deployment remains one of the Commission's highest priorities, and we continue to devote substantial resources toward this goal."

Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler essentially branded the broadband competition landscape a vast wasteland, evoking an earlier FCC chairman's iconic dressing down of the broadcast industry over its programming.

Wheeler was addressing Wednesday's opening session at the National Cable & Telecommunications Associations' INTX show in Chicago Wednesday (May 6). And while he talked about regularizing pole attachment rates, something NCTA has been seeking, and praised the NCTA as the leading broadband association for its network buildouts and programming prowess. But if they were applause lines, pins could be heard audibly dropping as he signaled that Title II was going to be the law of that competitive wasteland. There was polite applause at the beginning and the end, sandwiched between was a stunned silence.

Cable has clearly had some tough times under Wheeler's watch.

The chairman has branded ISPs as gatekeepers with the incentive and opportunity to be anticompetitive, and backed preempting state laws limiting broadband buidouts on the premise they were the handiwork by proxy of incumbent ISPs looking to discourage competitors.

NCTA's largest member, Comcast, had to abandon its Time Warner Cable play after the Wheeler-led FCC signaled the deal would not pass muster no matter what conditions were applied. That followed the FCC Democrats' decision to reclassify broadband under Title II regs, which NCTA has called a "disaster."

Wheeler invoked all those in his speech, defending preemption, saying Title II was going to be the law of the land, and saying the broadband industry was not competitive enough, and the FCC would be working to change that.

Wheeler signaled that Comcast's decision — which came after the FCC forced its hand — to back off of the Time Warner Cable merger was necessary given the sweep of broadband history. "Brian Roberts' leadership that it's 'time to move on' was not only a thoughtful response, but also directionally correct," he said.

"It is time to look forward, not backward," he told the audience. "This is not the time to dwell on the reasons why both the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice reached the conclusion that this proposed transaction would not be in the public interest."

But Wheeler did give the underlying reason why the FCC was not going to approve it.

"[I]t is important to understand that the tipping point from cable to broadband came while the transaction was under review," he said. "We recognized that the industry had changed and we saw concrete evidence of the new competition and business models made possible by high-speed Internet access."

"In other words, we recognized that broadband had to be at the center of our analysis, and that video was, in essence, an application that flows over networks and that could be supplied both by the owners of facilities and by competitors that use broadband pathways to compete against the owners of those broadband pathways."

He said there was not nearly enough of that competition, which is when he hit cable operators with their own "vast wasteland" paperweight.

"You don't have a lot of competition, especially at the higher speeds that are increasingly important to the consumers of online video," he said. The FCC has made 25 Mbps its new high-speed target, one NCTA has said is OK as an aspiration, but not as a way to suggest there is not competition where lower speeds are offered.

"More competition would be better," he added. "That is why we granted the preemption petitions filed by two communities that wished to expand their gigabit networks into surrounding areas, including where people had no broadband at all."

"I recognize the challenges of overbuilding, and to encourage it is not to assume its immediate appearance."

"And while I know it is an anathema to your geographically-defined way of looking at the industry, I believe — as some have already demonstrated — that it can also be an opportunity. Many years ago at NCTA [Wheeler used to be president] we passed out Lucite paperweights in which were embedded small dried flowers. Imprinted on them was, "Plant a flower in the vast wasteland."

"By bringing competitive alternatives to television viewers, this industry did just that— and the video business was changed forever. Then your industry went on to upgrade, compete with the telcos, and dominate broadband. Now the question is whether consumers will have competitive alternatives for broadband. To harken back to what you did before, will you now plant a flower in the competitive broadband desert?"

NCTA responded to the chairman's remarks with a general statement thanking the participation of all the commissioners. "We are grateful that chairman Wheeler and commissioners Clyburn, O'Rielly, Pai and Rosenworcel are all participating at INTX. As strong supporters of an open and robust Internet that is delivering ever-increasing speeds and a great experience for American consumers, we appreciate that Chairman Wheeler would use the show to highlight the importance of net neutrality. Cable is the largest broadband industry in America and our networks are ushering in an exciting transformation of how consumers are enjoying content and experiencing new entertainment services. The INTX show is just a small example of how the cable industry is providing a platform of possibilities that is open for all kinds of transformative services and groundbreaking opportunities."

FCC chairman Tom Wheeler says that Republican FCC reform proposals would hurt, not help, his agency, delaying decisions and invite litigation.

That is according to Wheeler's prepared testimony for an April 30 House Communications Subcommittee hearing on a trio of Republican backed FCC process reform bills.

Those bills would require the commission to list the items that have been approved at the bureau level on delegated authority, to publish the drafts of rulemakings when they are circulated to the other commissioners by the chairman's office before a vote and to publish rules the same day they are voted on.

But Wheeler says those bills will not improve the FCC's ability to help consumers and the public interest of respond more efficiently to businesses that need the FCC to be efficient.

"I have reviewed the legislative proposals at the center of this hearing," he says, "and have serious concerns that these proposals fail that test. They would create burden without concomitant benefit."

He says the bills "single out" and "would hurt, not help, the Commission's work and mission." Rather than cut through red tape, he says, they would add new layers.

On the issue of singling out the FCC for special treatment, he said that "creating agency-specific processes has serious and negative effects. It would add additional procedural steps and would slow the decision-making process, risking paralysis when the FCC needs to be nimble to keep up with a sector that operates at Internet speed."

He also said they would increase litigation and complicate that judicial review, while discouraging innovation. To check out Wheeler's examples of the damage he thinks the legislative proposals could do to FCC process, go here.

Wheeler also plans to point to the reforms he has already instituted without the need for the blunt instrument of legislative mandates.

He says those include reducing "backlogged" requests from petitioners and licensees by 44%, closing more than 1,500 dormant dockets, resolving over 2,000 applications in the Wireless Telecom Bureau that were over six months old and reducing Media Bureau pending applications for review by 57%.

As to transparency, he points out that the FCC launched a new Consumer Help Center, is reworking its website to make it easier to navigate and search, has expanded online filing, and last month launched a task force staffed by the offices of all five commissioners to review FCC processes and make recommendations.

"We are moving ahead without legislation. In fact, a number of once hot topics, which were once the subject of legislative proposals, have been addressed through non-legislative process reforms, such as posting the Commission's budget on our website, establishing minimum comment periods, and including draft rules with Notices of Proposed Rulemaking," he said.

"The subcommittee's press release says that more transparency is always better, so I look forward to knowing more about who's lobbying members of Congress before these kinds of bills and discussion drafts are introduced," said Free Press Action Fund policy director Matt Wood. "In some respects, the FCC's current process is far and away more transparent than anything Congress does. Anyone can look at the FCC ex parte record to learn both who's meeting with the Commission and what they're saying."

"This unqualified praise and enthusiasm for transparency should apply to the legislative branch, too. In their sudden zeal for openness and accountability, subcommittee members should take a hard look at their own practices."

Look for FCC chairman Tom Wheeler to defend his new network neutrality rules in his speech at Cable Show 2014 on Wednesday morning. He will tell his cable audience that if anyone is looking to celebrate his supposed gutting of the Open Internet rules, they can "put away the party hats."

He will also say that that if anyone tries to divide the Internet 'haves' and 'have nots,' he will not hesitate to use Title II reclassification if he feels it is warranted.

According to his prepared remarks, Wheeler, himself a former president of NCTA, will underscore that any Open Internet rules the FCC produces will be tough, enforceable and lay to rest misconceptions about what the proposal is meant to accomplish, said an FCC official speaking on background.

He will also remind the cable audience that the federal appeals court that remanded the rules back to the FCC concluded that "broadband providers represent a threat to Internet openness” and have “incentives to interfere” with competitors.

The chairman will make the case that the commission needs to act quickly to get legally sustainable rules on the books to insure that consumers, entrepreneurs and innovators have the protections they need. 

Here is an excerpt from the chairman's prepared remarks, obtained by Multichannel News.

"If you read some of the press accounts about what we propose to do, those of you who oppose net neutrality might feel like a celebration was in order. Reports that we are gutting the Open Internet rules are incorrect. I am here to say “wait a minute.” Put away the party hats. The Open Internet rules will be tough, enforceable and, with the concurrence of my colleagues, in place with dispatch."

There has been a great deal of talk about how our following the court’s instruction to use a “commercially reasonable” test could result in a so-called “fast lane” and Internet “haves” and “have-nots.” This misses the point that any new rule will ensure an open pathway that is sufficiently robust to enable consumers to access the content, services and applications they demand and ensure innovators and edge providers are able to offer new products and services.

"Put another way, the focus of this proposal – on which we are seeking comment – is on maintaining a broadly available, fast and robust Internet as a platform for economic growth, innovation, competition, free expression, and broadband investment and deployment. Our goal is rules that will encourage broadband providers to continually upgrade service to all. We will follow the court’s blueprint for achieving this, and, I must warn you, will look skeptically on special exceptions.

"Let me be clear. If someone acts to divide the Internet between 'haves' and 'have nots,' we will use every power at our disposal to stop it. I consider that to include Title II. Just because it is my strong belief that following the court’s roadmap will produce similar protections more quickly, does not mean I will hesitate to use Title II if warranted. And, in our Notice, we are asking for input as to whether this approach should be used."