Level 3 will pay nearly $1 million and must meet call completion benchmarks in response to an investigation by the FCC Enforcement Bureau into the company’s completion of long-distance phone calls to rural areas. Level 3 agreed to complete the calls to rural ILECs at a rate within 5 percent of that in non-rural areas. Rural telco representatives told us they're pleased the commission is stepping up enforcement, but are stumped by the 5 percent benchmark that could lead to many more missed calls.

The FCC Wireless and International bureaus approved the combination of T-Mobile and MetroPCS. Tuesday’s order on a deal that will strengthen the No. 4 U.S. carrier wasn’t a close call in the bureaus’ view. The order doesn’t require T-Mobile to sell off any assets and it doesn’t impose a requirement that the combined company maintain its current employment levels, as sought by the Communications Workers of America and others. Unlike most orders on major transactions, but as expected (CD March 8 p3), commissioners didn’t vote on the deal. MetroPCS stockholders still have to vote to approve the transaction. They are slated to do so at a special meeting April 12.

The FTC will continue to focus on consumer privacy and Do Not Track (DNT) rules under new Chairman Edith Ramirez, said FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection Acting Director Charles Harwood during a Direct Marketing Association panel Tuesday. Ramirez will prioritize continuity from former FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz’s tenure, Harwood said: “She understands that being the new Chairman doesn’t mean you need to have entirely new programs” because companies have to make decisions based on what they expect from the agency and “can’t change on a dime.” Under Ramirez, the agency will be data-driven, Harwood said: “She is a very rigorous, data driven individual."

New proposed state laws may interfere as Texas fights to reorganize its state USF, which provides several hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and reduce the support it gives out by the start of 2014. The Legislature previously demanded its state regulators make the changes. The Texas Public Utility Commission tried to begin that process in a docket this year, but has encountered resistance from telcos that suggest the Legislature may modify its USF laws yet again in the current session.

CTIA warned the FCC that if it imposes a text-to-911 mandate on carriers, the order may not survive a court appeal. Verizon, which has sued the FCC over its data roaming mandate and net neutrality rules, said the FCC should monitor how well voluntary agreements work before imposing rules. The FCC approved a further NPRM asking questions about how the commission can best make sure that all wireless subscribers will one day be able to send emergency text messages to public safety answering points, amid warnings that widespread ability to do so could be many years way (CD Dec 13 p12).

Cisco won’t abandon its set-top business, but will focus on delivering software, including its Videoscape Unity video platform that has gained design wins with Norwegian and Belgium cable operators, said Marthin De Beer, Cisco senior vice president-video and collaboration group, Tuesday at the Piper Jaffray conference in New York.

The publishing, telecom and other sectors oppose new top-level domains (TLDs) that are generic but not brands, they said in comments that were still being filed Tuesday in an Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers consultation that ended March 7 (http://xrl.us/bon3i4). Requests by Amazon and Google for generic names such as .book, .music and .cloud generated significant opposition. Other comments said ICANN should stay out of determining what a “closed generic” TLD is, and let antitrust regulators resolve any competition problems that might arise and refrain from stymieing innovation.

Senators of both parties bowed a bill Monday to permit cellphone users to unlock their phones to switch carriers, as was expected (CD March 7 p7) . The Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act offers a legislative fix that one sponsor called a narrow change that restores an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) for cellphone firmware unlocking that permits consumers to use their phones with other carriers once their contract terms have expired. A White House official last week advocated for legislative fixes to give consumers greater control over their devices, after the Copyright Office last year removed an exemption for cellphone firmware unlocking granted in previous triennial reviews of the 1998 law.

The FCC’s Technological Advisory Committee will look closely at communications resiliency in a broadband world as a major focus over the next year, TAC Chairman Tom Wheeler said at the start of the advisory group’s meeting Monday, TAC’s first meeting of the year. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski stopped by the meeting to say the charter of the TAC had been renewed so it could continue its work.

Some newer video products would need to be capable of passing on to users video descriptions from TV stations and multichannel video programming distributors’ emergency on-screen crawls within two years of a draft FCC order taking effect, agency officials said. They said the draft Media Bureau order would require mobile DTV products and DVR and Blu-ray players to be able to pass on audio narratives of warnings originally rendered on the screens of TV station and MVPD programming viewers. The TV licensees would be responsible for converting what’s in the crawls into secondary audio programming channels, and the SAP content would need to be available to users of the consumer electronics, agency officials said. CEA, NAB and members have sought exclusions or more time for mobile DTV equipment (CD Feb 14 p18).