AT&T executives met with advisers to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and commissioners Ajit Pai, Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel last week to discuss two universal service-related draft orders, its ex parte filing said (http://xrl.us/bnkkzj). AT&T stated its understanding that the commission is considering a draft order upholding a 2004 Wireline Bureau order that established an asymmetrical deadline for filing revisions to a 499-A form. The commission should adopt the Internal Revenue Service’s three year deadline for all 499-A revisions, AT&T said. Regarding the pending draft order acting on a 2010 petition for clarification filed by AT&T and several other wholesale providers of interstate telecom services, the commission should pursue the reseller directly for amounts owed to the USF, AT&T said. AT&T is also concerned about “both the scope and the substance” of the guidance offered in the tribal engagement public notice released in July, the execs said. “The alleged ‘guidance’ provided little real world guidance and the concrete examples that were included in the notice are not realistic,” the filing said.

The FCC Wireline Bureau sought comment on a June 21 petition by UTPhone seeking a waiver of FCC rules limiting Link Up support on tribal lands to eligible telecommunications carriers (ETCs) receiving USF high-cost support. “UTPhone argues that it is entitled to receive Tribal Link Up support because it is building telecommunications infrastructure on Tribal lands,” the bureau said (http://xrl.us/bnjxqw). Comments are due Sept. 7, replies Sept. 24. “As a small Low Income ETC serving consumers predominantly on Tribal lands in Oklahoma, UTPhone is a local company that has fulfilled the statutory and public interest objectives of the Commission’s Low Income program by filling a valuable niche in offering competitive, high-quality, locally oriented wireline telecommunications services focused specifically on the particular needs and demographics of low income Oklahomans residing on Tribal lands,” the company said in its waiver request (http://xrl.us/bnjxrc). “With its new and growing broadband network infrastructure, UTPhone is now poised to add a high speed broadband service component to its bundle of offerings to these low income consumers who are struggling to move into the Internet age."

Authors are leaving money on the table by suing Google over alleged copyright infringement in its display of book “snippets” through Google Book Search, groups said in a friend-of-the-court brief filed in U.S. District Court in New York. Though they all “had different views on whether this Court should have approved” the proposed settlement among authors, publishers and Google, which the court last year shot down on competition and other grounds (WID March 23 p1), the Electronic Frontier Foundation, American Library Association (ALA), Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and Association of Research Libraries now support the company’s motion for summary judgment, they said. A world without Google Book Search is a much more difficult world in which to do research, and thus librarians don’t know what books they should be purchasing for their collections, the brief said (http://bit.ly/QjBaa1). A “researcher at a small, chronically underfunded university researching indigenous astronomy” in 2004 would have little help from his librarian in finding potential relevant sources because they “may be out of print, and/or buried in other libraries [sic] collections that may or may not be well-indexed,” the brief said. Google’s book project in 2005 finally helped librarians “identify and efficiently sift through possible research sources,” gives “amateur historians ... access to a wealth of previously obscure material” and lets “everyday readers and researchers ... find books that were once buried in research library archives,” the groups said: “There is a great deal more at stake in this case than any company or author’s bottom line.” A win for the Authors Guild won’t give any author “a penny of additional revenue,” they said. The brief points to precedents from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which the New York court isn’t bound to follow, that found thumbnail images created by a search engine don’t infringe the full-image owner’s copyright, and Google Book Search serves a similar purpose: Its display of snippets “added a further purpose” or had a “different character” than the underlying books from which those snippets came, the groups said. The groups attached declarations drawn from informal surveys by the ALA and ACRL that found Google Book Search “has become an indispensable research tool, particularly for students and faculty at small and remote educational institutions.” They included a statement from Melissa Pond, director of library services at Leech Lake Tribal College in Minnesota, that the Google service “led us to several titles that my faculty have gladly and gratefully ordered for their private research collections and helped me to identify the best uses of our very, very limited collection development resources."

The gambling industry is vital to American Indian communities across the U.S., and they're vital to the gambling industry, Senate Indian Affairs Committee Chairman Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, said at hearing Thursday. As Congress moves forward with potential online gaming legislation, committee members and witnesses said the unique characteristics of the tribal communities must be considered.

I-wireless supported a request by TracFone that the FCC require eligible telecom carriers to retain a copy of the underlying documentation needed to determine program-based Lifeline eligibility. The agency should clarify that the length of document retention “should be consistent with overall Lifeline-related record retention requirements,” i-wireless said in comments. I-wireless said direction from the FCC is superior to guidance from the Universal Service Administrative Co. “If i-wireless is only able to fall back upon USAC’s guidance at any given period and not upon Commission regulations, then the Company is left with a somewhat subjective or evolving idea of what is acceptable, rather than an objective reality,” it said (http://xrl.us/bnh6st). “I-wireless submits that being able to retain proof documentation both protects the Company in the event of an audit and also streamlines USAC’s evaluation of proof during an audit.” Sprint Nextel also supported the TracFone petition. “Sprint believes that the proposed document retention requirement will help to ensure that Lifeline ETCs obtain and properly review the documentation needed to determine whether an end user is in fact eligible to receive the federal Lifeline benefit,” the carrier said (http://xrl.us/bnh6s7). “Sprint has no direct knowledge of any ETC that is falsely claiming to have obtained and reviewed program documentation while signing up Lifeline customers. However, as the number of Lifeline-designated ETCs increases, so too does the probability of bad action by a rogue carrier or its agents.” The Gila River Indian Community and Gila River Telecommunications opposed the TracFone request. “The document retention requirement advocated by TracFone would do nothing to increase telephone penetration rates, especially on tribal lands. This proposal will, however, increase administrative costs at a time when ETCs already are facing dramatically higher administrative costs associated with recently adopted Lifeline rules,” they said (http://xrl.us/bnh6tm).

Bandwidth in rural areas is “important,” said Jonathan Adelstein, RUS administrator. Businesses are using the Internet in new and innovative ways to expand and grow, he said Thursday at a Minority Media and Telecom Council event in Washington. The private sector plays an important role in helping RUS and the FCC to meet the demand for bandwidth, he added. In terms of broadband, RUS has made a “major outreach push for diversity in both businesses that we fund as well as in the areas that are served by our awards,” he said. The agency awards about $8 billion a year in loans and grants, he said. “We provide affordable financing for capital-intensive projects … and engineering standards, careful scrutiny and oversight to make sure those funds go where they belong.” About 25 of the awards granted through the Recovery Act went to minority and tribal organizations, he said. NTIA is preparing to roll out the First Responder Network Authority, or FirstNet, said Anna Gomez, NTIA deputy administrator. She said she expects opportunities to arrive for network security and maintenance professionals, software developers and other professionals when the system is fully operational, she said. Applications development is going to be very exciting in the public safety field, she said. For FirstNet, NTIA will establish a 15-member board that consists of the Department of Homeland Security secretary, the director of the Office of Management and Budget and 12 members appointed by the Commerce Department secretary, and it will ensure geographical, regional, rural and urban representation on the board, she said: A public safety advisory committee will meet with tribal, regional, state and local jurisdictions to discuss provisions like the placement of towers and the assignment of priority to local users, she added.

The FCC approved a fourth order on reconsideration on rules for the USF Mobility Fund, which said “if a petition for reconsideration simply repeats arguments that were previously considered and rejected in the proceeding, it will not likely warrant reconsideration.” The order (http://xrl.us/bnhfr8) affirmed the FCC’s earlier adoption of a reverse auction mechanism. But the commission turned down several requests for changes, including requests that the FCC: restrict or prohibit Tier I carriers from receiving Mobility Fund Phase I support; hold applications for eligible telecom carrier status in abeyance pending completion of the auction and then automatically qualify any winning bidder as an ETC; and deem a carrier to be a Lifeline-only ETC to be eligible to participate in the Mobility Fund without first obtaining general ETC status. The FCC also rejected “for purposes of the auction of Mobility Fund Phase I support, arguments that the Commission provide for bidding preferences to small or rural entities and extend eligibility for the Tribal lands bidding credit to entities that are not Tribally-owned or controlled.”

Syringa Wireless received conditional approval as an eligible telecommunications carrier (ETC), the Idaho Public Utilities Commission ruled in an order Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bngrgf). “Granting Syringa Wireless conditional ETC status in those select areas in order to facilitate the deployment of broadband and voice services in heretofore unserved areas in Idaho is in the public interest,” the commission said. The condition of the ETC approval is, as in other recent state decisions, based on “submitting a successful bid in the FCC’s upcoming Mobility Fund Phase I auction,” the commission said. The auction required ETC status by its submission deadline of Wednesday. The South Carolina Public Service Commission conditionally approved a carrier July 6 (CD July 9 p11) and the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission conditionally approved T-Mobile West as an ETC in an order issued July 10 for the same reason. T-Mobile West’s ETC application “completely ignores and disrespects the tribal sovereignty of the Mescalero Apache Tribe,” said Mescalero Apache Telecom, Inc. in June 25 comments filed with the commission, which requested the commission “deny T-Mobile ETC designation within the Mescalero Apache Reservation or require T-Mobile to provide service within the entire service area.” In response, the New Mexico commission granted conditional approval “based upon all of the New Mexico census blocks that will be included in the [Mobility Fund] auction, except for census blocks in the Mescalero Apache Reservation,” the commission said in its order.

The Oglala Sioux Tribe (OST) asked for a time extension, from Tuesday to Aug. 9, to file documents seeking eligible telecom carrier status. “The OST has had ongoing issues with its current wireless carrier, AT&T,” the tribe said (http://xrl.us/bnf9yh). “The OST has made it clear to AT&T that it does not intend to extend any agreement beyond three (3) years as it has wanted to form its own tribally owned carrier and seek to become an Eligible Telecommunications Carrier on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation."

President Barack Obama Friday established a new National Security and Emergency Preparedness (NS/EP) Executive Committee as a “forum” on communications issues of importance to national security. The new committee will have a high-profile membership and is to make recommendations directly to the president.