Despite FCC discussions about adding broadband to Lifeline, "there should be adequate controls and deterrents in place before considering a revamp of the program,” Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said in a blog post Friday. There's a “legitimate debate whether the Lifeline program should be abolished or significantly scaled back rather than expanding its mission,” he said. O’Rielly proposed a number of principles in examining the program. Lifeline should have a budget, he said, saying it’s the only USF program without one. If broadband is expanded, the reimbursement rate shouldn’t be increased to pay for it, he wrote. The commission should decide what services should be supported, he said. To prevent “double-dipping,” a household should be able to get a subsidy for a voice plan or a combined plan with voice and broadband, but shouldn't be able to get subsidies for both, he wrote. O’Rielly also proposed tightening eligibility requirements, requiring financial contributions from recipients and making carrier involvement voluntary.
Seven companies will pay a total of $1.2 million in civil penalties to settle an FCC Enforcement Bureau investigation into the companies' “slamming” and “cramming” of customers, the agency said Wednesday. The companies also agreed to adopt “comprehensive, rigorous compliance plans” to prevent them from changing customers’ long-distance carriers without authorization and assessing charges on phone bills without consent, an agency news release said. The companies are: Business Network Long Distance, of Denver; Reno-based Communications Network Billing; Integrated Services, of Northbrook, Illinois; Multiline Long Distance, of Cincinnati; National Access Long Distance, of Henderson, Nevada; Nationwide Long Distance Service, of Southfield, Michigan; and Las Vegas-based Network Service Billing, the release said. Back Office Support Systems, of St. Clair Shores, Michigan, which manages many functions for the companies, is also subject to the compliance plan, the agency said. Saying “slamming” and “cramming” are “persistent problems,” Enforcement Bureau Chief Travis LeBlanc said in the release that the agency “has aggressively responded to hold phone companies accountable when they prey on the public, and these settlements demonstrate that we will continue to do so.” The companies didn't comment Wednesday.
Despite FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s pledge that the draft net neutrality order wouldn't regulate rates, it preserves the agency’s ability to do that by not forbearing from Communications Act Section 201, NCTA President Michael Powell wrote in a blog post Wednesday. “The Commission can convert its promises into reality quite simply by forbearing at least in part from section 201(b)’s authority to regulate charges,” Powell wrote. “If the FCC means what it says and is not intent on regulating rates … they need to take the bullets out of the proverbial gun.” The agency has said mobile has been under Title II and hasn't been subject to rate regulation. While Wheeler is pledging not to require carriers to file proposed rates with the commission for approval, “anyone will be permitted to file complaints about rates and the Commission will decide if those rates are ‘reasonable’ under their section 201 authority,” Powell wrote. “If they believe they are not [reasonable], then they will declare the rate ‘illegal.’ That is regulating rates no matter how you cut it and it is insincere to suggest otherwise.” Forty-three municipal broadband providers meanwhile urged the FCC in a joint letter posted in docket 14-28 Wednesday not to reclassify broadband. As smaller providers, they “do not have an incentive to harm the openness of the Internet, the ISPs said. Customers would switch to competitors if they were to engage in any business practices that interfere with their Internet experience, the filing said. None of the providers has “the market power to compel payments for unblocking, non-discriminatory treatment or paid prioritization services” because they “serve too few Internet subscribers to matter to edge providers such as Netflix, Amazon or Hulu,” the filing said.
Steps Telcordia and parent Ericsson are willing to take to ease FCC concerns about Telcordia's ability to act neutrally as the local number portability administrator “just confirms the seriousness and difficulty Ericsson has meeting the statutory impartiality requirement,” a spokeswoman for rival Neustar said Wednesday. Telcordia and Ericsson had told the agency that they would be willing to consider such steps as instituting a voting trust for a portion of Ericsson’s interest in Telcordia (see 1502100040). Telcordia was recommended by an FCC committee to be the next LNPA. Neustar, the current LNPA, said in a statement to us that a “voting trust doesn't solve” neutrality concerns “because Ericsson and Telcordia remain inextricably intertwined. A voting trust would be wholly inconsistent with the FCC’s Safe Harbor Order, which expressly prohibited Neustar from using voting trusts to satisfy neutrality. It is strange that the FCC would consider weakening the neutrality rules for the telephone network at the same time it is looking to strengthen those rules for broadband networks.”
Telcordia and parent Ericsson would be willing to discuss steps to deal with future issues that could compromise neutrality requirements for the local number portability, Telcordia counsel John Nakahata told FCC officials, including Wireline Bureau Chief Julie Veach and an aide to Chairman Tom Wheeler, said an ex parte filing posted Monday. Rival Neustar has raised questions about Ericsson’s ability to provide LNPA services neutrally given Ericsson’s business relationships (see 1408250042). Telcordia and Ericsson meet neutrality requirements but would be willing to consider such steps as instituting a voting trust for a portion of Ericsson’s interest in Telcordia, with any trustees approved by the FCC, Nakahata said.
Consumers have access “to a range of services designed to aid them in managing annoyances and harms” from unwanted phone calls, USTelecom said at the end of the FCC reply period on a petition by the National Association of Attorneys General seeking guidance on robocalls. NAAG had asked the agency for a formal opinion on whether legal or regulatory prohibitions prevent phone carriers from implementing call-blocking technology. Technologies that use “black lists” may not be able to distinguish between legal and illegal calls, USTelecom said in its reply posted Monday in docket 07-135. Consumer outreach and education can play an important role in preventing unwanted calls, the association said. It said the industry is doing “important work” to deal with robocalls, caller ID spoofing and secure phone number authentication, and the commission “should support these various efforts including by identifying areas where additional research and developments may need to be emphasized.”
The proposed requirement in the IP Transition rulemaking (see 1411210037) that providers supply at least eight hours of backup phone power in the case of power outages isn't enough, said the National Association of State 911 Administrators in comments posted Friday in docket 05-25. The requirement should be at least 24 hours, because “consumers in the midst of a power outage due to a natural disaster or other emergency will likely have urgent communication needs that may take time to accomplish,” NASNA said. When legacy copper landlines are being retired, consumers repeatedly should be made aware of the change before the switch, the group said. To get agency authorization to retire a service, providers should be required to show that a substitute service is available to customers that offers 911 capabilities consistent with the commission’s standards, NASNA said. It said public safety answering points should be given adequate notice of the retirement. If not, legacy PSAPs may be forced “to replace, upgrade or reconfigure their equipment with very little notice and before they are able or ready to do so,” the group said.
Several rules from which the FCC already has granted forbearance for common carriers, plus several references to telegraph services, would be removed from the Code of Federal Regulations, under an NPRM issued by the agency Friday. The commission in 2013 approved two orders granting forbearance from 126 legacy wireline regulations, many of them involving recordkeeping, the NPRM said. The agency’s process reform report also recommended removing regulations made unnecessary by technological or market changes, the NPRM said. Comments are due 30 days after Federal Register publication, replies 45 days after publication.
President Barack Obama’s support for federal pre-emption of states’ municipal broadband restrictions, if enacted at the FCC Feb. 26, “would put [U.S.] broadband policy somewhere to the left of Europe,” said Center for Boundless Innovation in Technology Director Fred Campbell in a blog post Monday. The EU ruled last year that government-owned broadband networks harm competition when deployed alongside private networks, Campbell said. The EU subsequently issued a law that requires that broadband network investments “shall be undertaken primarily by the private sector, supported by a competitive and investment-friendly regulatory framework.” Municipal broadband networks like the one in Cedar Falls, Iowa, that Obama praised in January “would be presumptively illegal under EU law -- just as it would be under many of the state laws the President wants to overrule,” Campbell said.
The FCC “should hold fast” to protecting taxpayers from the misuse of rural broadband experiment funds by denying applications to ease the program’s letter of credit requirement (see 1501070042), filed by several applicants tentatively approved for funding, Free State Foundation’s Senior Fellow Seth Cooper wrote in a blog post Monday. The agency “has a paramount duty to protect consumers,” and “must not squander Universal Service Fund ‘surcharges’ imposed on consumers’ telephone bills,” Cooper wrote. “Like tax dollars, consumer surcharges must be used efficiently and not put at unnecessary risk.”