Complete Story
12/20/2016
FCC Republicans Oppose Action in Enhanced Transparency ‘Gap’
The FCC Republicans have assured American Cable Association president Matt Polka and other association heads that they have been working hard to get the enhanced transparency waiver extension approved and would not support any adverse FCC action against any operator not in compliance as of the Jan. 17 date on which the enhanced transparency rules take effect.
The FCC small business waiver from those rules expired last week and compliance officers are wondering what they will have to do and when.
When the Republicans get the majority three days later, on Jan. 20, they are expected to extend the waiver and then perhaps moot it by taking aim at the Open Internet order of which it is a part.
Republican commissioners Ajit Pai and Michael O'Rielly did nothing to dampen those expectations, saying that they planned to "seek to revisit" enhanced transparency, and the Title II Net Neutrality proceeding more broadly, as soon as possible.
FCC chairman Tom Wheeler actually circulated an item extending the waiver but only to systems of 100,000 subs or fewer (the trigger for the one-year waiver extension that the FCC granted last year but expired Dec. 15), which the FCC called truly small operators.
