The wireline orders approved Friday by FCC commissioners eliminating the rural telco rate floor and granting part of USTelecom's forbearance petition (see 1904120058) are now posted in dockets 10-90 and 18-141, the FCC said Monday (see here and here).
Ian Cohen
Ian Cohen, Deputy Managing Editor, is a reporter with Export Compliance Daily and its sister publications International Trade Today and Trade Law Daily, where he covers export controls, sanctions and international trade issues. He previously worked as a local government reporter in South Florida. Ian graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Florida in 2017 and lives in Washington, D.C. He joined the staff of Warren Communications News in 2019.
Rules requiring intermediate providers to register with the FCC before offering to transmit covered voice communications under a rural call completion order are effective May 15, says a notice set for Monday’s Federal Register. It says OMB OK'd Jan. 28 for three years related information collection.
The Rural Utilities Service is amending a funding opportunity announcement and solicitation of applications issued in December for the broadband loan and grant pilot program ReConnect (see 1812130064). The amendments revise the definition of broadband loan and change data used in the protected broadband borrower service areas mapping layer and criteria for applicants to challenge service area eligibility, says a notice for Friday’s Federal Register. The changes take effect with FR publication.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit clarified it didn't reject all of an FCC tribal Lifeline order in February when it sent the 2017 limits on such government subsidies back to the agency (see 1902010051). Wednesday's one-page per curiam order (in Pacer) amended the earlier ruling to say that "because the Commission's adoption of the Tribal Facilities Requirement and Tribal Rural Limitation was arbitrary and capricious, the court grants the petitions and vacates the 2017 Lifeline Order as challenged in the petitions, and remands the matter to the Commission for a new notice-and-comment rulemaking proceeding." Industry lawyers and others watching the proceeding noted it's a somewhat procedural matter, rather than a new ruling on the merits. The FCC is "pleased that the DC Circuit granted our unopposed motion and amended its opinion to make clear the Court vacated only the challenged portion of one section of the five-section item,” emailed an agency spokesperson.
Sprint got some support for a waiver request to recover costs for providing IP relay (see 1903280018). Organizations representing the deaf and blind agreed the company should be able to recover costs to expand its outreach to “the entire universe of IP Relay users and potential users” and be reimbursed with overhead costs for providing IP relay, said a filing posted Tuesday in dockets including 03-123. Sprint is entitled to reimbursement for R&D to “ensure that IP Relay keeps up with technological advancements,” said Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, the National Association of the Deaf, Association of Late-Deafened Adults, Hearing Loss Association of America, Cerebral Palsy and Deaf Organization, American Association of the DeafBlind. Exclusion of certain IP captioned telephone service “providers from Database cost recovery, based on their supposed ability to 'afford it,' conflicts with the agency’s 'obligation to ensure that rates fall within the zone of reasonableness,'” said Hamilton Relay. It petitioned for reconsideration of a related order.
Smart glasses maker Vuzix teamed with VSee Lab on telehealth technology for its M300XL and Blade smart glasses, it said Tuesday. VSee CEO Milton Chen called telemedicine video conferencing through smart glasses a “natural progression from tablets and computers” for its customers, and it plans to begin offering smart glasses for applications including remote training on imaging technology for CT scans and ultrasounds, telesurgery and augmented-reality-enhanced video visits. VSee’s video conferencing, used by more than 1,000 companies worldwide, is used on the International Space Station. Medicare is adding more telehealth benefits (see 1904080031).
The FCC should adopt only Prong 1 in its NPRM on access stimulation, AT&T filed Tuesday in docket 01-92. While 1 would address some underlying causes of access stimulation and “benefit consumers, ensure reasonable rates, and serve the public interest,” Prong 2 would be ineffective and “would exacerbate the ‘whack-a-mole’ problem that has allowed these schemes to fester for more than a decade,” the telco said. "Act promptly to either complete its stated goal in the 2011 Transformation Order of finishing the transition of switched access traffic to bill and keep, or, in the context of access stimulation traffic," adopt only Prong 1 on the NPRM, it asked. "Prong 2 would allow these schemes to continue to flourish, because access stimulators would simply chose to operate in even more remote areas where direct connections would be either prohibitively expensive or infeasible."
Video relay service providers got another year to implement an interoperability mandate on a technical standard for an interface with some VRS devices. The deadline was April 29. In 2018, the FCC also delayed for a year the deadline for VRS providers to comply with the interoperability profile for relay user equipment (RUE profile) standard (see 1804270020). The RUE profile was “substantially revised over the last year, and the revised version has been submitted for review under the auspices of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF),” said Tuesday's Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau order. “We allow additional time for IETF review, for the Bureau to make a decision on adoption of the revised standard, and for VRS providers to prepare for compliance.” The rules, approved in 2013, “are intended to enable VRS users to make and receive VRS calls and point-to-point video calls irrespective of the VRS providers serving the calling and called parties, and to switch to a different default VRS provider, without changing their VRS devices or software,” CGB said.
CenturyLink won the first task order under the General Services Administration’s $50 billion Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions program to provide secure connectivity to the NASA. It's to provide “core backbone network services with speeds of up to 100 Gbps” over nine and a half years, the company said Monday.
After Windstream filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, telecom services rival Charter Communications sent Windstream's subscribers letters that appeared to come from Windstream, implied it was going to liquidate due to bankruptcy and urged customers to switch to Charter, said a Windstream complaint Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, New York (in Pacer, docket 19-08246). It alleged Charter intentionally disconnected service to some Windstream customers. The telco is asking the court to enjoin Charter from any claims that the bankruptcy will affect Windstream's ability to serve customers, as well as unspecified trebled damages. Charter didn't comment Monday.