The FCC’s requirement that formal complaints under Section 208 of the Communications Act and Section 224 pole attachment complaints be filed electronically took effect Monday, an Enforcement Bureau public notice said. The commission’s order in November implemented a 2011 order requiring the docketing and electronic filing of all new Section 208 and Section 224 complaints (see 1410220045).
FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai will give a progress report Jan. 23 on his efforts to improve access to emergency personnel when dialing 911, a news release said. Pai in January sent letters to the CEOs of major hotel chains, after a December 2013 incident in which a child tried to dial 911 when her mother was being strangled by her estranged husband (see 1401210049). The child had not first dialed 9 for an outside line, so the call did not go through, Pai said at the time. Pai’s news conference will be at the Marshall (Texas) Police Department, where the child’s 911 call would have gone, Pai’s release said. It was unclear if the event will be webcast.
States “remain in the best position to oversee and investigate” intrastate inmate calling services rates and service, NARUC said in comments posted in docket 12-375 Monday. State authority “is clear,” NARUC said, and additional federal actions on ICS “are unlikely to survive judicial review and are likely to undermine existing State actions to address this issue.” NARUC supports FCC action to regulate interstate ICS calls, the group said. Fifty-one former state attorneys general urged the agency to regulate “high intrastate” ICS rates, a letter posted Friday said. They wrote that in their former positions, they “came to understand virtually all aspects of state government. Most of us were both criminal prosecutors while at the same time represented state departments of corrections. We fully understand the pressures on state budgets and how government often struggles to come up with enough funding to do even the simplest of things.” But they said they were “fully aware that 95 [percent] of the 2.2 million people held in prison and jails in the United States will one day be returned to society. We know that recidivism rates are high and that we as a society should do all that we can to lower that rate. Studies indicate that prisoners who maintain close connections with their families and children while incarcerated have lower recidivism rates.”
The FCC said it partially granted the Prison Policy Initiative’s request for additional time to comment on the commission’s inmate calling service overhaul Further NPRM. The deadline for filing comments is now Jan. 12, replies Jan. 27, the FCC said Friday in the Federal Register.
Google is right to argue in a Dec. 30 letter to the FCC that net neutrality rules shouldn’t interfere with cable companies’ pole attachment rights, NCTA said in its own letter to the commission Friday. Google, though, was wrong in arguing that the reclassification of broadband to Title II is necessary to preserve those rights. Google said Google Fiber “‘lacks federal access rights pursuant to Section 224 because it offers an Internet Protocol video service that is not traditional cable TV,’” NCTA said. But the “law is clear” that facilities-based providers of Internet Protocol television services “do qualify as cable operators under the Communications Act,” which defines a cable operator as “one who ‘provides cable service over a cable system,’ without any reference to the technology," NCTA said.
Public Knowledge is “disappointed” the FCC denied a petition by the group and the National Consumer Law Center to require AT&T to lay out a specific time line for its IP trials in Florida and Alabama (see 1403030032). AT&T justified “highly confidential treatment of its detailed timeline information,” the Wednesday order said, but the bureau also emphasized that “robust public comment on the grandfather and discontinuance applications will be essential.” The bureau signaled it would be “disinclined to allow information” on Section 214(a) applications AT&T will have to file for discontinuing copper-based service “to be subject to confidential treatment -- absent extraordinary and unanticipated circumstances.” AT&T has said it wouldn’t seek discontinuation until at least the end of the year. If the bureau were to order the release of a detailed time line “at this early stage,” the order said it could harm the commission’s ability to get companies to obtain “similar voluntary disclosures in the future and discourage participation in trials.” The order required AT&T to revise its proposal to the commission within 14 days to include the percentage of living units in Carbon Hill, Alabama, that would receive wireline and/or wireless service in the trial. The company inadvertently released the information to the press and didn't oppose releasing it to the commission, the order said. “Although we are glad the Commission’s confidentiality challenge process brought some new information into the public eye, we are disappointed that, even months after the Commission solicited public comment on AT&T’s proposal, the public still does not know when AT&T’s proposed trials will actually start and stop," Jodie Griffin, Public Knowledge senior staff attorney, said in the statement. “We are also disappointed the Commission took nine months to issue a decision on this procedural point. The Commission’s confidentiality challenge process must provide challengers effective and prompt redress, or companies will only grow more bold in over-claiming confidentiality to keep damaging or embarrassing information secret.” The Public Knowledge and NCLC petition was filed April 8. AT&T didn't comment.
Comments on the FCC’s IP transition NPRM are due Feb. 5, replies March 9, said a proposed rulemaking published in the Federal Register Tuesday. The wide-ranging NPRM deals with a variety of issues, from requirements for discontinuing service to battery backup requirements (see 1411210037). Opposition to USTelecom’s petition for reconsideration of a declaratory ruling, approved with the NPRM, toughening approval requirements for discontinuing service is due Jan. 23, with replies due Jan. 30 (see 1412300038).
TechFreedom will support a legal challenge if FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler “short-circuits” a “legislative compromise” on net neutrality, TechFreedom President Berin Szoka wrote in a blog post Monday. A concern, he said in an email, is that the FCC will adopt reclassification before Congress acts. Wheeler plans to circulate a net neutrality order in February with the aim of a vote at the Feb. 26 commission meeting (see 1501020035). Wheeler could be “bluffing,” Szoka said in the email. Thinking he “held a weak hand legally” with a Title II approach, Wheeler could be advancing the prospect of a February decision to push Congress to come up with a legislative solution, Szoka said. A “legislative compromise” would focus “on real threats to competition while constraining the FCC’s discretion,” the post said. Meanwhile, two recent studies, considered together, “provide theoretical and empirical evidence that Title II regulations would depress broadband investment,” the Free State Foundation said in a blog post Tuesday. The post cited a November study by Kevin Hassett, director-economic policy studies and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and Sonecon Chairman Robert Shapiro, predicting a Title II approach would reduce broadband investment by 12.8 to 20.8 percent. The post also cited a Progressive Policy Institute study that said reclassification would lead to $15 billion more nationally in state and local taxes (see 1412150053). Title II proponents have disputed the PPI study (see 1412190040). The commission shouldn't rule out any legal options, including supplementing Title II with Section 706, the Internet Association wrote in a letter to the agency, posted in docket 14-28 Tuesday. If the commission takes a Title II approach, it would be legally defensible because circumstances have changed since the agency classified broadband as an information service, the letter said. Consumers no longer see broadband as part of a bundle of information services, but as a way of “accessing content of their choosing without impediment or discriminatory treatment.” The commission also has learned it doesn't have sufficient authority under Section 706, the association said.
As part of inmate calling service reforms being considered in a further rulemaking (see 1410230026), the FCC should require correctional institutions to install and provide access to the telecommunications equipment required by deaf and hard of hearing inmates, including TTY, videophone, captioned telephone or an amplified telephone, consumer groups representing the deaf said in comments posted Tuesday in docket 12-375. The facilities also should be required to report data to the commission on phone service available to deaf or hard of hearing inmates, including complaints, technical problems, how much telecommunications access is provided as compared with non-deaf or -hard of hearing inmates, and whether there's access to modern telecommunication equipment, the groups said. The “vast majority” of correctional facilities that provide some telecommunications access for the disabled do so only through slow and antiquated TTYs at nondiscounted calling rates, the groups said. While TTYs are important for some of the deaf, “they are no longer used by most deaf and hard of hearing people. Instead deaf and hard of hearing inmates need access to the more functionally equivalent telecommunications equipment that are used by the majority of deaf and hard of hearing individuals outside of these facilities such as videophones, captioned telephones, and other Internet-based communications.” The groups said they've received "numerous stories about deaf and hard of hearing inmates routinely being denied access to sign language interpreters, closed captioning on televisions, and facing many barriers to telecommunications. The civil rights of deaf and hard of hearing people must not end at the walls of prisons and jails." Jointly submitting the comments were the American Association of the Deaf-Blind, California Coalition of Agencies Serving the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Cerebral Palsy and Deaf Organization, Deaf and Hard of Hearing Consumer Advocacy Network, Deaf Seniors of America, Gallaudet University Technology Access Program, Hearing Loss Association of America, the National Association of the Deaf and Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Inc. The American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho urged the commission to “exercise the full extent of its authority” to regulate interstate and intrastate ICS rates, in comments posted Tuesday. The Further NPRM considers making permanent interstate rate caps and impose intrastate caps. The Idaho Public Utilities Commission can't regulate ICS rates because the state’s legislature in 1998 prevented the PUC from regulating rates except basic local exchange service, which does not include ICS, the group said.
The Allband Communications Cooperative needs a nine-year extension of its FCC waiver from high-cost support caps to be able to “continue operations,” the company said in a petition posted Friday in docket 10-90. A previous three-year waiver from the $3,000-per-line cap is to run out June 30, the petition said. Without a further waiver, the cap’s revenue reductions “would irreparably harm Allband” by providing insufficient revenue to continue to providing voice service “to any of its customers,” pay the principal and interest on its Department of Agriculture Rural Utilities Service loan, and to “continue operations as a telecommunications carrier.” The loan will be repaid in 2026, the petition said.