The Illinois Public Telecommunications Association petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for a rehearing en banc of the court’s June 13 decision (http://1.usa.gov/1ltd6Bf) (docket 13-1059) in Illinois Public Telecommunications Association v. FCC on Monday. The court upheld an FCC decision not to grant payphone service providers refunds from AT&T and Verizon (CD June 16 p9). The D.C. Circuit said it was not unreasonable or arbitrary for the FCC to permit refunds of charges that exceeded the cost-based rates mandated under Telecom Act Section 276. By permitting individual states to bar refunds, the court split with previous federal circuit courts that agreed the filed rate doctrine did not bar refunds of charges that exceeded the cost-based rate requirement of Section 276, said IPTA attorney Michael Ward. The D.C. Circuit also ignored the time requirements for implementing the Section 276 requirements set in the statute, five FCC orders and previous decisions of the D.C. Circuit, he said. The panel also failed to rule on the Independent Payphone Association of New York argument that the FCC did not require the New York State Public Service Commission to follow its new services test orders delineating the requirements for cost-based rates that the FCC has consistently required in all states, Ward said. The New York association and the Payphone Association of Ohio joined in Monday’s petition.
The FCC should grant Guadalupe Valley Telephone Cooperative’s emergency request for an expedited waiver of Section 51.917(c) of the commission’s rules, NTCA said in comments (http://bit.ly/1mYYFkW) posted Tuesday to docket 10-90. The Texas company relies on USF support and intercarrier compensation revenue, the filing said. The company is requesting it be able to include as company base period revenue of $278,317.62 owed to it by Halo, which has been forced into Chapter 7 bankruptcy, ceased operations and liquidated all of its assets, the filing said. Quoting GVTC’s petition, NTCA said the inability to include the Halo money “would have ‘a significant adverse impact on GVTC’s recovery mechanism funding,’ and would ‘limit[] the company’s ability to invest in and improve its network.'” TDS Telecommunications should be granted a waiver from the March 31, 2012, deadline for defining its eligibility recovery baseline as set forth in footnote 1745 of the USF-for-broadband order, the company’s outside attorney Yaron Dori told FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s legal adviser, Daniel Alvarez, on Monday, said an ex parte notice (http://bit.ly/1mZ9L9E) posted in docket 13-39 Tuesday. Halo’s bankruptcy made it “legally impossible” to obtain a court or regulatory decision order to force Halo to pay amounts ordered to TDS for inclusion in the baseline, the filing said.
The FCC should “take concrete steps to bring intermediate providers out of the shadows and into full light,” while the Office of Management and Budget completes its Paperwork Reduction Act review and approves the information collection and record-keeping requirements in the commission’s rural call completion order, representatives from NTCA and the National Exchange Carriers Association told agency staff July 24, said an ex parte notice (http://bit.ly/1uDB1Eq) posted in docket 13-39 Tuesday. The rural representatives met with staff including Daniel Alvarez, wireline aide to Chairman Tom Wheeler, and Terry Cavanaugh, chief of the Enforcement Bureau Investigations and Hearings Division. Calls continue to fail to reach rural areas at an alarming rate, NTCA and NECA told the FCC. As proposed in the Further NPRM, the FCC should require every provider in control of call routing to register with the agency “and certify that it does not engage in the blocking or restricting of calls to rural areas or that it strips or modifies call detail information,” the groups said in the notice. The providers would also certify that they have in place processes to monitor performance and that they route calls only to other certified intermediate providers or directly to terminating local exchange carriers, the groups said. The commission should also “create a carrier contact list so that other carriers experiencing call completion problems know whom to contact at the originating carrier for resolution,” the notice said.
Waivers on Safe Harbor record-keeping and reporting requirements under the FCC’s rural call completion order should be granted to CenturyLink, the company said in comments (http://bit.ly/1oG2SPH) posted in docket 13-39 Tuesday. Implementing the Safe Harbor requires complex changes to call routing and switch programming, revisions to intercarrier contracts, updates to routing tables, and necessary quality assurance testing, the company said in seeking waivers for calls that use multi-frequency signaling and intraLATA toll calls handed directly from the originating provider to the terminating provider. “Both of these limited requests for waiver involve historical technology that is not designed for such reporting but still serves customers well,” the filing said.
Executives from Alaskan telco Adak Eagle Enterprises and its Windy City Cellular subsidiary urged FCC staff last week to provide a “permanent solution” to the funding issues they have sought to alleviate by seeking a waiver of a monthly $250 per line cap on high-cost universal service support, the companies said in an ex parte filing posted Monday in docket 10-90(http://bit.ly/1pmMl2l). Adak Eagle and Windy City have been seeking FCC reconsideration of their waiver petition, which the Wireless and Wireline bureaus denied last year (CD Aug 16 p5). Neither company can survive “absent a waiver,” they said, saying Windy City was the only cellular service available in June to Adak Island residents who had evacuated to the island’s Bering Hill while awaiting a possible tsunami. The companies also reminded the FCC that the interim funding the FCC granted them in late February -- $33,276 to Adak Eagle and $40,104 to Windy City -- would run out Thursday.
The FCC’s International, Wireless and Wireline bureaus jointly Friday approved Frontier Communications’ bid to buy AT&T’s wireline, broadband and video assets in Connecticut (http://bit.ly/1t5sYPb). Frontier said it has also received approval from the Department of Justice and is awaiting approval from the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority. Pending that approval, Frontier said,it will close the deal in Q4. Frontier will pay $2 billion for AT&T’s wireline business, its statewide fiber network, its U-verse video business in the state and some satellite-TV customers. The deal was originally announced in December (CD Dec 18 p9). Frontier has said it plans to expand 10 Mbps broadband service to an additional 100,000 homes AT&T’s network currently doesn’t serve at that speed and has “committed to improving wireline service in the state,” the FCC said. Frontier has addressed concerns from the Communications Workers of America, committing to guaranteeing all existing jobs connected with the AT&T services included in the deal and pledging it will add 85 CWA-represented jobs in the state, the FCC said.
USTelecom Senior Vice President-Law and Policy Jonathan Banks expressed concern about the speed metric used in the FCC’s 2014 Measuring Broadband America Report on Fixed Broadband during a July 16 meeting that broadband providers, public interest groups and others had with commission staff, according to an ex parte report (http://bit.ly/1o0m8lW) posted Friday. Banks questioned using the metric of whether users experienced the advertised speed 80 percent of the time, the report said. The FCC felt comfortable with the measure but it could be discussed further at the next meeting of the group, said Walter Johnson, chief of the FCC’s Electromagnetic Compatibility Division, according to the filing. The FCC is putting in place a policy to release raw broadband speed data to the public every six months, to ensure that the release of data was not linked to the schedule for the report, Johnson said, according to the filing. The commission is also broadening its scope to include performance of video services, the filing quoted Johnson as saying.
Comments are being sought on five petitions seeking a declaratory ruling and/or a waiver concerning section 64.1200(a)(4)(iv) of FCC rules, said a public notice from the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau Friday (http://fcc.us/1pha4Rr). The rule requires fax ads sent to a consumer who has provided prior express invitation or permission to include an opt-out notice. The petitioners are seeking a declaratory ruling clarifying that the section does not apply to faxes sent with the “prior express invitation or permission” of the recipient because they contend the commission lacks authority to regulate “solicited” faxes. Comments are due Aug. 8, replies Aug. 15 in docket 02-178.
The number of homes connected with fiber in North America grew from 9.7 million in May 2013 to 10.4 million this year, said a survey by RVA for the Fiber to the Home (FTTH) Council released Wednesday. Users reported spending five hours a day at home online, using 5.5 Internet-ready devices in the home, a council news release said. Broadband users under 35 report getting just more than half of their video content from online sources, said the release. The importance of broadband to consumers “increases with each passing year,” said RVA President Michael Render in the release. End-to-end fiber networks “are becoming more and more differentiated from other types of broadband in terms of performance, use, and perception,” he said. Speed testing during the survey found that FTTH residences have five times faster download speeds and 23 times faster upload speeds, the release said. FTTH users spend 49 fewer hours annually waiting for applications to load than do users with the slowest type of broadband.
The FCC should ban pay-to-play arrangements through a combination of Section 706 and, if necessary, Title II, AOL Chief Counsel for Global Public Policy Leigh Freund, Pantelis Michalopoulos of Steptoe & Johnson, and Andrew Guhr, counsel to AOL, told officials from FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s office, the Wireline Bureau, and the legislative affairs and media relations offices July 17, an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1nRY84x) posted Tuesday said. The agency should “adopt firmer and simpler rules,” including bans on pay-to-play when a broadband access provider is affiliated with an upstream edge provider, when the provider has market power, or is in the business of charging end-users, the filing said. All other pay-to-play arrangements would be subject to prior approval by the commission, AOL said. The rules would be sufficiently different from common carrier rules to pass muster, AOL said. Title II should be a last resort if Section 706 rules prove insufficient, the filing said.