The FCC should declare that remote delivery services are telecom services subject to Title II of the Communications Act, Mozilla proposed in a petition posted Wednesday to docket 09-191 (http://bit.ly/RsjahV). Communications within a last-mile terminating access network between a remote endpoint and an ISP’s local subscribers constitute a “delivery service,” Mozilla said. Classifying them as Title II will “help preserve the future of technology innovation online, particularly for online video communications and smartphone applications and services,” Mozilla said, calling that reclassification a “minimal, yet necessary, action to realize the statutory goals of the Communications Act in the modern era of network management and market operations.” Such an action would create space for “experimentation with pricing and other features of consumer-facing Internet access services, while at the same time separating information-only services further from the core of Commission jurisdiction,” Mozilla said. The rule wouldn’t apply to interconnection or peering functions, which involve “a distinct physical portion of the network infrastructure,” it said. “Our petition asks the FCC to use Title II, but it isn’t reclassification, because it wouldn’t reverse existing precedents,” said Mozilla senior policy engineer Chris Riley in a blog post Tuesday (http://mzl.la/RskzVB). “Our petition would not impose obligations on technology companies, but instead would safeguard them by clearly delineating services.” AT&T Vice President Hank Hultquist tweeted to Riley Wednesday: “Kudos for bringing some fresh thought to an increasingly stale debate” (http://bit.ly/RskMYN). But Columbia University computer science professor Vishal Misra doesn’t think the Mozilla proposal would achieve much. “The ISPs are not ’slowing’ any specific traffic down,” so “they are in the clear per the Mozilla proposed regulations,” Misra told us by email. “The last-mile ISPs will continue to exploit their monopoly positions and will simply find a way to offer a ‘fast lane’ to the netflixes of the world under the umbrella of paid peering. Sometimes I feel that my colleague here at Columbia (Tim Wu) did a disservice to the public by introducing this term ‘network neutrality’ that cannot be even defined properly by anyone.”
The FCC plans to fine Central Telecom Long Distance $3.9 million for deceptively switching customers’ services and for illegal billing practices, the agency said in a news release Monday. The FCC found that telemarketers for the Colorado telco allegedly tricked consumers into believing that the telemarketers were calling on behalf of the consumers’ existing telephone companies, then changed the consumers’ preferred carriers without their authorization, the FCC said. Central Telecom did not comment.
FCC attempts to preempt state authority on municipal broadband would be yet “more overreach of FCC authority,” said NetCompetition.org Chairman Scott Cleland in a blog post Monday (http://bit.ly/1g3oiiu). “The big legal miscalculation here is a heroic FCC legal assumption that this would be another broadband industry versus FCC legal challenge just like the Verizon v. FCC decision, where the Court already has decided the issue of the FCC’s authority largely in the FCC’s favor.” That’s wrong, he said. “This would be less a legal challenge to the FCC’s statutory authority, but more of a Constitutional challenge of the FCC’s perceived supremacy over fundamental state sovereign functions.” Count on more than 20 state attorneys general to challenge the constitutionality of any FCC “frontal assault on their core sovereign state functions of determining economic and fiscal policy,” Cleland said. “The FCC ultimately would lose that case because there is no Chevron deference or [Communications Act] Section 706 authority empowering the FCC with an effective wholesale override of States’ constitutional rights."
The FCC plans to fine Purple Communications $11.9 million for improperly billing the Telecom Relay Service Fund, the agency said in a news release Friday. The company “sought and received millions in reimbursements from the TRS fund for customers with names that were so clearly false that they could not have been the actual names of eligible users, including names like ’sdfsdf cicwcicw,’ ‘Myname Yourname,’ and ‘Lot$a Money,'” the FCC said. “Purple’s actions have threatened the integrity of a fund that is designed to help persons with hearing and speech disabilities make phone calls,” said Enforcement Bureau acting Chief Travis LeBlanc. “We have zero tolerance for this type of abuse.” Purple billed the TRS Fund for calls by more than 40,000 registrants with names composed of “random keystrokes” and “vulgarities” such as “F*** Y**,” the bureau said in a notice of apparent liability (http://bit.ly/1iSESX5). “Purple is required to use a reasonable process to verify the names and addresses of users.” Purple did not comment.
The FCC Wireline Bureau waived the requirement that price-cap eligible telecom carriers (ETCs) receiving frozen or incremental support file new five-year build-out plans by July 1 (http://bit.ly/1kodFIi). “Because the Bureau just finalized the Connect America Cost Model, and price cap carriers have not yet had the opportunity to make a state-level commitment for Connect America Phase II, we find that it is not in the public interest to require price cap ETCs to file new five-year plans in 2014 for the same reason as last year: they do not yet know which areas they will be serving in the future,” the Thursday order said. Price cap ETCs got a similar waiver in 2013.
The National Exchange Carrier Association requested permission to withdraw a waiver petition Wednesday, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/1kypfDF). NECA had sought an expedited waiver of Section 51.909(a)(4) of the commission’s rules, which required NECA to adjust its interstate pool switched access rate caps to reflect changes when carriers enter or exit NECA’s Traffic Sensitive Pool. “Upon further evaluation, NECA pool election changes increase rates by a higher percentage than what was in the original waiver request, an increase the Commission does not consider to be de minimis,” NECA Vice President-Government Relations Jeff Dupree emailed us.
Telcordia criticized a Neustar assertion that the FCC is legally required to hold a third round of notice and comment before selecting the next Local Number Portability Administrator. In a letter posted Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1kiOyXa), the Ericsson subsidiary, which has expressed interest in the LNPA job, called Neustar’s claims “meritless” and mostly an attempt to “derail and delay the process.” Neustar’s true motivation is clear, Telcordia said, pointing to its first quarter earnings call (CD April 17 p4): Neustar collects nearly $500 million per year from its LNPA contract. “Neustar’s arguments are wrong and mere repetition does not create law where none exists,” Telcordia said. “It is now up to the Commission to perform a classic adjudicative function akin to the approval of a license or authorization -- to apply the rules and the procurement documents to determine which entity or entities will be authorized to enter into a contract with North American Portability Management LLC ... to provide LNPA services."
The “911 exception” to the FCC’s IP Relay Service rules has been eliminated, said the FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau in an order Tuesday (http://bit.ly/S75J80). The FCC had required IP relay providers to let unverified users of its service place calls to 911 operators. 911 centers began seeing a growing trend of “spoofing 911 calls via IP Relay,” the bureau said. Sprint told the bureau last month that IP relay has been used to “trick Public Safety Answering Points” into “dispatching emergency services based on false reports of emergency situations,” the order said. Because these calls at times have required the dispatch of police special weapons and tactical teams, “this mischief has been referred to as ’swatting.'” Because those actions “have the potential to cause alarm and even danger for the targeted residents and emergency service personnel, in addition to wasting the limited resources of emergency responders,” the bureau granted a one-year waiver of the requirement that IP relay providers enable unverified IP relay registrants to place calls to 911 during a “guest period.” Allowing such use of the service for 911 calls “endangers the safety the public,” said the bureau. It said the agency will proceed with a rulemaking on this and other issues addressing the provision of IP Relay services.
Part of the FCC rural call completion order may need clarification, said the Wireline Bureau in a public notice Monday seeking comment on the need to “clarify Appendix C” (http://fcc.us/1jxp1KN). That appendix describes criteria for categorizing different types of call attempts. It’s possible that “the relevant criteria in Appendix C were inadvertently drafted in a way that fails to reflect the Commission’s clear intent” regarding the “answered” and “ring no answer” categories of call attempts, the bureau said. Level 3 and Verizon have met with commission staff recently to explain that one of the codes identified in the appendix to denote an answered call is also used to indicate that the calling party has hung up before the called party answered, the bureau said. “Level 3 contends that including calling-party hangups as answered calls would result in a ‘much higher’ reported call-completion rate than a provider would report if it excluded them,” the notice said. Verizon expressed concern about using call signaling data to identify “ring no answer” calls. Comments in docket 13-39 will be due seven days after publication in the Federal Register.
The FCC said it plans to give the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) information that E-rate applicants submitted in FCC Form 471 Item 21, along with funding request number (FRN)-level data from the Universal Service Administrative Co.’s (USAC) Program Integrity Assurance (PIA) review classifications, in response to an IMLS request. Form 471 Item 21 provides “a narrative description of products and services for which discounts are sought, as well as line item detail and the cost associated with the products and services,” the FCC said in a Friday public notice. USAC’s PIA reviewers determine each FRN based on the predominant service or requested product involved, such as voice services, the FCC said. The commission said it “recognizes that this disaggregated, filer-specific data” should generally be exempt from public disclosure, but said it can disclose such information to IMLS because it’s a federal agency. IMLS said in its request that it’s using the data for policy research, to identify national library and museums’ needs and to measure how federal programs affect both institutions. IMLS said it would maintain the data’s confidentiality by restricting access to a minimal number of staff members, and plans to refer any Freedom of Information Acts requests to the FCC. Affected parties have until April 28 to protest IMLS’s request. The FCC said if it does not receive any oppositions by that time, it will disclose the data to IMLS (http://bit.ly/RvIaoX).