The FCC should issue a notice seeking comment on “alternate approaches” to collecting special access market data instead of its current data collection effort, USTelecom said in an application for review Friday. USTelecom said the commission had ordered a two-year collection effort, but the Office of Management and Budget only approved a one-year effort. The one-year effort creates an “obvious conflict” with the commission’s “determination that a comprehensive review of the special access marketplace required the collection of data covering two years,” USTelecom said. The filing was not yet posted in docket 05-25.
Under a Title I regime, consumer and business usage of the Internet has tripled over the past five years according to Cisco analysis, USTelecom President Walter McCormick said in a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler (http://bit.ly/1tRynL9). “Given these growth projections and the success the nation has enjoyed under a Title I environment, we urge the Commission to avoid any proscriptive regulatory policy that would threaten future investment and innovation,” McCormick wrote. “Proponents of extreme measures, such as Title II reclassification of broadband, have not provided evidence to indicate that investment and traffic growth would be better under Title II, or that the entire sector -- edge, content, and broadband -- could be any more vibrant under Title II than it has been under the current longstanding Title I regime.”
The FCC, as it examines tw telecom's proposed acquisition by Level 3 (see 1409090067), should require Level 3 to stop withholding payments for telecom services, CenturyLink Vice President-Federal Regulatory Affairs Jeffrey Lanning and Senior Associate General Counsel Craig Brown told Wireline Bureau officials Oct. 21, according to an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1sYFsGj) posted Friday in docket 14-104. The combined firm also should be required to provide access to its entrance conduit to on-net buildings at commercially reasonable rates, terms and conditions, the CenturyLink officials said. The deal increases the urgency for the commission to approve CenturyLink's forbearance petition (see 1410070050), said that telco. CenturyLink said it isn’t asking the FCC to deny tw telecom/Level 3. Level 3 was not immediately available for comment.
There's “no sound reason” to allow LECs receiving Connect America Fund Phase II support to not serve specific locations in unserved areas and instead serve locations in partially served areas, NCTA Vice President-Associate General Counsel Jennifer McKee told FCC Wireline Bureau officials Oct. 17, according to an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1DAN8mL) posted Tuesday in docket 10-90. If the agency allows the flexibility, the burden should be on the LECs to show the specific locations they want to serve in the partially served areas that aren't being served, the American Cable Association said at the same meeting. LECs should also not be excused from serving all areas in an unserved Census block for which they're receiving CAF support, said Ross Lieberman, ACA senior vice president–government affairs, and Kelley Drye’s Thomas Cohen, counsel to ACA. CenturyLink and USTelecom had said they would be willing to support providing faster broadband speeds under CAF if granted the flexibility (see 1409100036).
Dozens of education groups, including local and state boards of educations, urged the FCC to increase E-rate funding, in an Oct. 16 letter (http://bit.ly/1vNh1xX) to commissioners, posted Tuesday in docket 13-184. “A sustainable, well-funded E-rate program is critical to ensuring educational opportunity and success for every student and library patron as we look to bolster the nation’s economic competitiveness,” the letter said. The groups said the “influx of learning devices in classrooms and libraries has increased demands on networks. Yesterday’s connectivity speeds simply do not meet the needs of today’s students and library patrons. Efficient and dynamic classrooms and libraries need high-speed connectivity, and they need additional E-rate support to deliver it. E-rate must possess sufficient resources to ensure that all students and patrons can gain access in schools and libraries to the high speed broadband they need to excel in school and beyond.” The letter was silent on how funding should be increased and whether the agency should expand the USF contribution base.
The “rants and wails of Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T over net neutrality" are like “Chicken Little, Henny Penny, and Ducky Lucky rushing to warn their friends of impending doom," wrote former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, who is special adviser to Common Cause's Media and Democracy Reform Initiative, on the Benton Foundation’s blog (http://bit.ly/1x9Zv5b) on Wednesday. “'The sky is falling, the sky is falling,' they clucked and quacked ... But the sky wasn’t falling; it was just a tiny acorn bouncing harmlessly off Chicken Little’s head,” Copps wrote. The FCC’s decision on whether to base net neutrality rules on Title II “is much less dramatic than ‘The Sky is Falling ISP Threesome’ endlessly contend,” wrote Copps. “It is whether to ensure that the government agency charged since the 1920s with protecting consumers, competition, and innovation in telecom still retains these responsibilities in the advanced telecom world of the broadband era,” he wrote. “Why anyone other than self-interested businesses would ever have argued otherwise has always been beyond me, but three successive chairmen of the FCC bought into the idea out of some bizarre combination of ideology and industry friendliness.” AT&T, Comcast and Verizon had no immediate comment. Those who argue reclassification under Title II would be easy are “at best, naïve,” wrote Center for Boundless Innovation in Technology Executive Director Fred Campbell on his organization’s blog (http://bit.ly/1sQg19M) Wednesday. Campbell wrote that he met with members of the FCC’s General Counsel’s office, arguing among other things that broadband does “not meet the statutory definition of 'telecommunications.'” The meeting was Tuesday, according to an ex parte filing posted Wednesday in docket 14-28 (http://bit.ly/1DBtUgQ).
An FCC order on circulation would modify complaint and pole attachment rules to implement a 2011 order (see 1102080088) to begin making Communications Act sections 208 and 224 complaints available on the Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS), an agency spokesman told us. No more details were available on the proposed rule changes, but several industry attorneys told us at first glance the item does not seem significant. The 2011 order required the docketing and electronic filing of all new Section 208 formal complaints against a common carrier and new Section 224 pole attachment complaints. The Enforcement Bureau at the time said it was delaying implementing the order because the commission’s “formal complaint rules and pole attachment rules must be modified in certain respects to facilitate the docketing and electronic filing changes,” a public notice about the order said (http://bit.ly/1nzihmw). Making complaints available on ECFS would allow complaints to be examined without going to the agency, the spokesman said. “By moving things to the electronic docket, more folks can review, and perhaps learn more as to the status of pole attachment agreements and disputes,” said Best Best attorney Gerard Lederer, who represents municipalities.
Neustar is continuing to protest the North American Numbering Council’s (NANC) recommendation that Telcordia be selected as the next local number portability administrator. The latest complaint came in a letter to the FCC and in meetings with agency officials Oct. 14 and 15, said ex parte filings posted Tuesday in docket 95-116. Neustar has been providing LNPA services “flawlessly” and NANC “fails to provide a sufficient factual basis” for the recommendation, Neustar officials including President Lisa Hook told Wireline Bureau Chief Julie Veach and other commission officials (http://bit.ly/1FDjZcL). Hook, Neustar Senior Vice President-General Counsel Leonard Kennedy, Deputy General Counsel Scott Deutchman, Vice President-Product Development Bill Reidway, Wiley Rein’s Thomas Navin and Kellogg Huber’s Aaron Panner made the same arguments in a separate meeting with Chairman Tom Wheeler’s aide, Daniel Alvarez, the filing said. The commission should issue an NPRM, Neustar officials said at both meetings, because it does not have before it a record that “adequately addresses the many significant technical, policy, and national-security issues that have been raised,” said the filing. Telcordia’s bid does not address several services Neustar now delivers, including the continued orchestration of large porting requests, access by law enforcement and auto-dialer users, said Neustar, which also continued to question Telcordia and parent company Ericsson’s neutrality. In an Oct. 17 letter (http://bit.ly/1ylbu10) to the commission, Neustar said Ericsson is “uniquely dependent on the success of a few major U.S. wireless providers. Ericsson is thus aligned with and subject to undue influence from the U.S. wireless industry,” the letter said. Telcordia has previously denied all of Neustar’s allegations (see 1408220053). Telcordia is “taking substantial steps to protect the security” of the Number Portability Administration Center database it is building, despite questions raised in the past by Neustar about Ericsson’s foreign ownership, said Telcordia President Richard Jacowleff and several others representing Telcordia, including former Public Safety Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett, now with Venable. They met Oct. 15 with Public Safety Bureau Chief David Simpson, Deputy Chief Ken Moran and Wireline Bureau Deputy Chief Lisa Gelb and other agency officials, said an ex parte filing also posted Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1oul2Xe). Telcordia is not reusing foreign code but writing its own, Telcordia said. The selection process envisioned working out specifics about security issues during contract negotiation and Telcordia intends to work with law enforcement on a testing process as part of the transition, the filing said.
The FCC is making the nearly 2.5 million net neutrality reply comments it received available in a zipped XML file, Gigi Sohn, Chairman Tom Wheeler’s special counsel for external affairs, wrote in a blog post Wednesday (http://fcc.us/1zkXRmz). The proceeding’s initial comments are also being released in a zipped XML file, she said. Noting that researchers, journalists and others like Quid, Sunlight Foundation and TechCrunch have analyzed the agency's data “so that the public and the FCC itself could discuss and learn from the comments,” Sohn wrote that the agency encourages “those with the requisite technical skills to analyze the raw data and build visualizations or other tools and to share them with the public. This will help the FCC and the public have a more fully formed understanding of the content and source of the reply comments.” In sum, the FCC received 3.9 million comments in the initial and reply rounds.
Tuesday’s net neutrality forum in College Park, Texas, allowed the FCC to hear voices that weren’t heard during the agency's series of workshops on the issue, including those of smaller ISPs, Commissioner Ajit Pai told us after the event (see 1410210049). Representatives of ISPs had said during the panel that they could not handle Communications Act Title II's administrative burdens if the agency takes that path, and that dealing with high demands require network management. Members of the public, unlike during the workshops held at FCC headquarters, were able to speak at the forum at Texas A&M University, added Pai, who sponsored the event. Many who testified complained about a lack of choice in ISPs and the quality of service. Pai did not explicitly oppose a Title II approach when talking to us, but reiterated his past statements that FCC actions on net neutrality should not undermine “the business case” for deploying more broadband. Pai was the only commissioner at the forum. An aide to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel noted the commissioner had attended a Sept. 4 net neutrality forum convened by Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., in Sacramento (see 1409250037).