The IEEE Standards Association approved Panasonic’s broadband over powerline communication technology for the IoT as the IEEE 1901a standard, said the company Monday. Panasonic proposed the technology, said to meet various demands for IoT-related services, in June. It’s based on its HD-PLC Wavelet orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing technology.
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.
USTelecom proposed creating a "Broadband Serviceable Location Fabric" (BSLF) as a "uniform foundation for dramatically more accurate FCC Form 477 reporting" to pinpoint unserved areas, said a filing in docket 11-10 on the mapping initiative it announced with partners Thursday (see 1903210041). "Multiple data sources, scoring routines, and managed visual review are required," including "parcel boundaries, parcel attributes (e.g., land use, assessed value, number of units, etc.)." With CostQuest, USTelecom plans a pilot in Virginia and Missouri lasting four to six months using "open source" and commercial data. Because some data is scarce or conflicting, CostQuest "will use a managed crowdsourcing visual review process to, for example, inspect satellite imagery to align building data with visible structures or to validate an incomplete attribute record," said USTelecom, projecting up to 75,000 such reviews per state. Carriers will provide confidential data on addresses they serve or have served with fixed service, and will be able to compare their lists with the final BSLF, helping them with Form 477 filings, it said. If the FCC agrees results show the methodology is applicable, it could take one to two more years to finish a nationwide fabric costing $10 million to develop and $2.5 million annually to update, the association said. NCTA highlighted its proposal "that can be implemented nationwide very quickly, without any need for a pilot, and would result in the granular data needed to more accurately identify areas ... not served by" fixed broadband. Providers would submit "shapefiles" -- electronic maps showing actual service contours -- that the FCC would compile into a national map, augmented by crowdsourcing.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai visited Georgia Power's storm center at its Atlanta headquarters Monday. Representatives "explained how its storm center works and how Georgia Power prepares for and responds to disasters," said a filing posted Thursday in docket 11-60. A 22-page slide deck noted Hurricane Irma caused outages affecting 1.63 million customers (67 percent of its 2.5 million customer base) while Michael in 2018 and Matthew affected 422,000 and 371,600, respectively. It said the hurricanes resulted in 4,625 broken poles.
GCI said rate guidance in a February FCC Wireline Bureau public notice on a rural healthcare telecom program doesn't "reflect sound or consistent economic principles, and is therefore counterproductive and could both increase costs to [USF] and decrease participation," in a meeting with Office of Economics and Analytics staff including acting Chief Giulia McHenry. The letter was attached to one posted Thursday in docket 17-310 on meetings with Commissioners Mike O'Rielly and Jessica Rosenworcel, where the same points were discussed. GCI petitioned the bureau Monday to reconsider the PN's guidance (see 1903190019).
Advocates for the deaf endorsed an IP captioned telephone service provider proposal to maintain a $1.75 per minute compensation rate for another year, rather than cutting it again, to $1.58 as planned July 1. "Reimburse IP CTS providers at a rate sufficient to ensure a robust and competitive marketplace" and "high level of service quality," filed Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, the Hearing Loss Association of America, National Association for the Deaf and California Coalition of Agencies Serving the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, posted Wednesday in docket 13-24. Hamilton Relay, Sprint, CaptionCall and Mezmo (InnoCaption) urged the commission to nix the 10 percent cut (see 1903010005); a 10 percent cut took effect last July 1.
The FCC is closing access Friday to a secure data enclave with highly confidential data on price-cap carrier business data service, unless an interested party shows continued access is necessary to meaningfully participate in the proceeding, said a Wireline Bureau public notice in Thursday's Daily Digest and docket 16-143. Parties' data and work product stored in the enclave will be saved and archived, pending judicial or administrative review. The University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center hosts the enclave.
In an effort to stop fraudulent robocalls, AT&T and Comcast said Wednesday they will offer call authentication between their voice networks. The companies said they completed what they believe is the first exchange of authenticated calls in the U.S. between two separate voice networks. “Customers could soon start to see verified calls not only from callers using the same provider, but more importantly, from other participating providers,” the companies said. The test used phones available to consumers, “not in a lab or restricted to special equipment,” they said: The call was conducted March 5, between AT&T’s digital home service and Comcast’s Xfinity Voice home service. The FCC targeted caller ID rules to help curb spoofed robocalls (see 1902140039) and some members want carriers to offer call authentication.
CLECs and others backed CenturyLink direct interconnection and VoIP symmetry proposals at the FCC. "Adopt a rule confirming that all carriers have the duty to either (a) permit any requesting carrier to obtain direct network interconnection for the termination of access traffic or (b) bear responsibility for the costs of receiving traffic via indirect interconnection, if the carrier receiving a request for direct interconnection prefers to receive traffic indirectly," filed Allstream, ANI Networks, Consolidated Communications, First Communications, Impact Telecom, Magna5, Masergy, Midwest Association of Competitive Communications, NuAccess, Peerless Network, Teliax and Wholesale Carrier Services, Tuesday in docket 18-155. They urged approval of CenturyLink's May 11 declaratory ruling petition that "end office local switching access reciprocal compensation charges apply to traffic that originates from or terminates to an 'over-the-top' VoIP end-user." That "will ensure carriers that have already invested in deploying IP-based services are not penalized vis-à-vis those that have not, such as Verizon and AT&T in many locations," said the filing. "A contrary finding would undermine the significant investments made into IP-based services since adoption of the VoIP Symmetry Rule in 2011." The investments are "important to many long-standing policy objectives" and "critical to addressing the Commission’s top priorities for 'this year' -- such as implementation of the [Secure Handling of Asserted information Using Tokens/Secure Telephony Identity Revisited] framework to eliminate unlawful spoofed robocalling" (see 1903200066). The FCC, AT&T and Verizon didn't comment Wednesday.
A New Jersey appeals court reversed and remanded a Securus challenge to a state cap on inmate call services. The inmate calling services provider alleged limiting the rate charged to inmates to 11 cents per minute violated the takings clause of both federal and state law and didn’t account for the company not being able to recoup its infrastructure improvements. The Superior Court accepted the state argument that Securus lacked standing because one contract had expired and the rate contract law didn’t affect another. The appellate court disagreed, ruling Monday that Securus has standing. The state Office of the Attorney General had no comment.
Commenters backed an FCC proposal to eliminate an E-rate amortization rule it already waived for the duration of a rulemaking (see 1901310061), with rural telcos suggesting steps to prevent overbuilding of subsidized broadband networks. The Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition endorsed earlier State E-rate Coordinators' Alliance support for scrapping the requirement that schools and libraries amortize over three years upfront, nonrecurring charges of $500,000 or more, including for "special construction" projects. "Requiring service providers to recover their costs over several years could discourage broadband providers from submitting bids for E-rate services," SHLB filed. Comments were posted through Tuesday in docket 19-2. The American Library Association (here), Illinois Department of Innovation and Technology, New Mexico's Public Schools Facilities Authority (here), NTCA and three Texas rural telcos also backed the proposal. The IDIT cited "low" risk that large "Category One" special construction projects providing connectivity to schools and libraries would leave insufficient E-rate funding for "Category Two" internal-connection requests. If the FCC is concerned, the Illinois department suggested a "cap on individual funding commitments for Category One non-recurring, one-time upfront special construction charges in the range of $30 million of the total project cost." NTCA said the FCC should promote better coordination between USF programs and ensure that existing rural broadband investments backed by high-cost subsidies "are not put at risk via duplicative overbuilding." Similarly, Central Texas Telephone Cooperative, Peoples Telephone Cooperative and Totelcom Communications urged new competitive bidding safeguards to "discourage overbuilding of existing federally supported fiber networks."