CenturyLink was the only one of the top eight ethernet providers nationally that’s subject to dominant carrier and tariffing requirements, wrote Melissa Newman, senior vice president-federal policy and regulatory affairs, to the FCC, according to an ex parte filing posted in docket 14-9 Wednesday. CenturyLink is seeking forbearance from tariffing regulations that are not required of other non-incumbents (see 1412170045). “There is simply no justification for this disparate treatment,” the letter said. The areas where the company is subject to the regulations are no less competitive than areas where other companies, including AT&T, Verizon and Frontier, have been granted the forbearance CenturyLink is seeking, Newman wrote.
The FCC should “stand up for taxpayers in North Carolina and Tennessee” Thursday by rejecting petitions seeking pre-emption of anti-municipal broadband laws in those states, said National Taxpayers Union President Pete Sepp in a statement Wednesday. The agency is expected to approve the petitions from the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga and from Wilson, North Carolina (see 1502020037). There have been “numerous examples of failed municipal broadband networks,” Sepp wrote: “From Oregon to Florida, Utah to Vermont, hard-working" residents "have suffered -- paying higher taxes or bearing the burden of lower debt ratings -- when their local leaders decided to enter the broadband market.” Officials from Highland Springs and Holly Springs, North Carolina, as well as business and nonprofit leaders from North Carolina and Tennessee told Chairman Tom Wheeler aide Gigi Sohn and other agency officials in a phone call Tuesday of their inability to get high-speed broadband, said an ex parte filing posted in dockets 14-115 and 14-116 Wednesday. Matthew Shuler, Highlands town director, said small businesses are frustrated about broadband prices and speed limitations, according to the filing. It said Dukenet had offered faster speeds, but when the company was acquired by Time Warner Cable, "the service offerings went away." Comcast and TWC didn't comment.
The municipal broadband networks run by the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga and Wilson, North Carolina, demonstrate the First Amendment concerns with allowing more such networks, wrote Enrique Armijo, a member of the Free State Foundation's board of academic advisors and an assistant professor at the Elon University School of Law, in a paper released Monday. There is “good reason” to conclude free speech protections “are being sacrificed at the altar of the new," he wrote: That "certainly should give pause to those that want the FCC to preempt state restrictions on these networks and expand municipalities' power in the online communications space.” The FCC is expected to approve petitions from Chattanooga and Wilson Thursday to pre-empt anti-municipal broadband laws in those states (see 1502020037). Chattanooga’s acceptable use policy bars users from using the network to "’transmit, distribute, or store material" that is illegal, ‘obscene, threatening, abusive or hateful,’” Armijo wrote. It also bars users from posting messages on third party blogs that are ‘excessive and/or intended to annoy or harass others’ -- ‘regardless of [the] policies’ of the blogs on which the users post,” he wrote. Wilson has similar restrictions, said Armijo. “One does not need to be a free speech scholar, or even a lawyer, to be troubled by these provisions.” First Amendment "doctrine makes clear that outright government bans on protected speech -- even indecent speech, let alone ‘excessive,’ ‘derogatory,’ ‘harassing,’ ‘abusive,’ or ‘hateful’ speech -- are never narrowly tailored enough to survive strict scrutiny,” said Armijo. Chattanooga and Wilson officials didn't comment.
The FCC should begin reporting Measuring Broadband America performance results for AT&T’s IP-based U-verse broadband subscribers separately from those of the company’s legacy ATMbroadband subscribers, the telco told officials from the agency and SamKnows, said an ex parte letter posted Friday in docket 12-264. AT&T has invested “significantly” in migrating ATM-based Internet customers to “more robust” IP-based U-verse technology, the company said. SamKnows is the FCC contractor on the project to measure wireline and wireless broadband speeds.
A backer of allowing states access to the FCC network outage reporting system said she's hopeful it will be approved by the commission, while an agency official said commissioners haven't focused on whether to approve the draft NORS order. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said at a NARUC conference last week that he and Commissioner Mignon Clyburn voted for the order since he circulated it Dec. 10 (see 1502170051). Commissioners Mike O’Rielly, Ajit Pai and Rosenworcel hadn't voted, said Wheeler. FCC officials didn’t express any concerns during meetings on allowing states access to NORS, said the backer to such access, California Public Utilities Commissioner Catherine Sandoval. Rather, the agency likely hasn’t acted on the order because “of a combination of other business and priorities,” she said in an interview. That gibed with what a commission official told us. Sandoval is hopeful the order will eventually be approved, she said after meeting with FCC officials including Wheeler’s Chief of Staff Ruth Milkman and aide Gigi Sohn, and Clyburn and Rosenworcel (see 1502200026). “I didn’t hear any issues raised against it,” she said. “I think there’s an increasing cognizance of the roles states play” in emergencies after Superstorm Sandy and April's multistate 911 outage, Sandoval told us. The database includes detailed real-time information about outages, which will let states deal with emergencies, and later do assessments to deal with future emergencies, she said. NARUC passed a resolution Feb. 17 urging the agency to give states access to the database (see 1502180058). An FCC spokesman didn't comment.
Prompt and secure access for states to the network outage reporting system (NORS) is “critical” for states’ ability to respond to outages and develop policies to ensure reliable communications, California Public Utilities Commissioner Catherine Sandoval told FCC officials, including Chairman Tom Wheeler’s Chief of Staff Ruth Milkman and aide Gigi Sohn, and Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel, during five meetings Feb. 13, said an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 04-35. Access is important for states to respond to and analyze emergencies and communications failures such as the April 911 outage that affected several states, including California, Sandoval told the officials. Sandoval distributed the resolution NARUC went on to approve Thursday (see 1502180058) calling for states to have access to NORS and noted that Wheeler backed the idea at the association's winter meeting last week (see 1502170051). Sandoval also lobbied on her agency's petition for an FCC waiver to ensure wireless customers getting government-subsidized service are eligible for that Lifeline program (see 1502200027).
CenturyLink has until Feb. 20 to submit special access data being collected by the FCC, the Wireline Bureau said in an order Wednesday granting an extension. CenturyLink had sought an extension to the Jan. 29 deadline, saying that in preparing to submit a database container, the company discovered “‘anomalies’” in billing data comprising nearly 18 million records, according to the order. The telco said additional time was needed to “‘fix as many of these errors as possible,’” the order said.
The Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit correctly said the FCC didn't act “arbitrarily or capriciously" in permitting state regulators to decide not to grant payphone service providers refunds from AT&T and Verizon (see 1406160029), wrote agency attorneys and U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli. They said the Supreme Court should deny a Nov. 10 writ of certiorari filed by the Illinois Public Telecommunications Association. “The court of appeals correctly upheld the FCC’s determination that state authorities were better positioned than the federal agency to decide the applicability of the filed-rate doctrine in individual refund disputes,” said the Feb. 11 brief released Wednesday.
The FCC should do a cost comparison of the bids for the local number portability administrator contract, including transition costs, to “make a fully informed selection,” Neustar representatives told Chief David Simpson and other officials from the Public Safety Bureau, and officials from the Wireline Bureau and the Office of General Counsel, Feb. 11, said an ex parte filing posted Wednesday in docket 09-109. Neustar consultant Cheryl Smith said Telcordia’s competing proposal “presented serious technical deficiencies, unmitigated transition risks, and likely transition delays, even in a best case scenario,” according to the filing. Telcordia’s proposal to write new software “'from scratch'” isn't technically equivalent to the current system and "would not advance the state of the art,” Smith said. An agency committee recommended that Telcordia get the contract, now held by Neustar. Neustar's petition "is another attempt to ensure it can continue to charge carriers nearly $1.5 million per day and delay the decision by the FCC," said Telcordia President Richard Jacowleff in a statement to us. "Price matters -- and consumers ultimately bear the expense of Neustar’s substantially inflated charges and attempts to create further delays in the decision-making process. The transition cost estimates and timeframes it keeps offering are pure speculation and amount to nothing more than simple scare tactics." Representing Neustar were Kellogg Huber counsel Aaron Panner, Perkins Coie’s Michael Sussman, and Michele Farquhar and Thomas McGovern of Hogan Lovells.
Municipal broadband projects have had a history of “costly business failures that have saddled citizens with substantial financial failures,” CenturyLink's Melissa Newman, senior vice president-federal policy and regulatory affairs, told aides to FCC Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel on Feb. 11, said ex parte filings posted Friday in dockets 14-115 and 14-116. Newman cited Greenlight in Wilson, North Carolina, which had a deficit of $1.2 million in June 2013. The Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency “experienced millions of dollars in operating losses every year and has failed to meet projections on customers and revenues, thus requiring it to go back to its member cities for additional financing" (see 1407090034), Newman said. Many state municipal broadband laws were adopted to “protect citizens from projects that could very likely increase their taxes," she said. "Many of the laws adopted were done so to ensure a level playing field for private investment.”