FCC Releases Tentative Agenda for August Open Meeting

The FCC has released its tentative agenda for its August 5th open meeting.  Like its July meeting, this one is fairly light, with only two agenda items scheduled for adoption.  One is a proposed NPRM and NOI which will "seek to remove regulatory barriers to the use of spectrum for wireless backhaul and other point-to-point and point-to-multipoint communications, to promote broadband competition and investment in rural and non-rural areas."  This issue was recommended by the National Broadband Plan, as we discussed earlier.The other agenda item is not directly related to broadband, but can be seen as perhaps a precursor of things to come.  The second agenda item involves a Report and Order and FNPRM to ensure that advanced voice communication devices are hearing aid-compatible.  This comes during the FCC's celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), which has recently become both a political and industry issue.  As we discussed earlier, both the House and Senate are currently considering similar bills that would update the ADA to require advanced services and devices be ADA-compliant, including Internet videos and mobile devices, as well as reinstate the FCC's video description rules.  The Senate bill (S.3304, Pryor) was recently moved out of subcommittee to the Senate Commerce Committee on July 15.  Similarly, the House bill (HR 3101, Markey) was heard and marked-up by the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, then forwarded to the full Committee on Energy and Commerce on June 30.  As Sen. Kerry asserted during hearings on S.3304, Congress intends to pass new ADA laws before the end of the year.  With the finance and healthcare bills taken care of, and the fact that Markey's House bill, which had been stuck in subcommittee since June 2009, was marked up and sent to committee a couple weeks ago, we could indeed see a new law that would impose new ADA requirements on a broad spectrum of industry players, including content providers, programming distributors, device manufacturers and application developers.