The FCC eased Telapex and Venture Communications Cooperative plans to each combine its own wholly owned subsidiaries with separate rate-of-return study areas. "The merging subsidiaries of each company currently charge one or more different switched access rates," said a Wireline Bureau order in Wednesday's Daily Digest and docket 10-90. "To facilitate the mergers, we waive our rules to the extent necessary to allow the merged entities to charge uniform adjusted switched access rates and to combine the Base Period Revenue amounts of the merging entities." The bureau said the waivers were unopposed and the decision was consistent with precedent.
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.
FCC simplification of Part 36 rules on telco jurisdictional separations takes effect Jan. 1, says a rule for Tuesday's Federal Register. It noted an order harmonized the Part 36 rules with changes the commission adopted in 2017 to Part 32 telco accounting rules. The Oct. 17 order lets all telecom carriers use simpler processes previously reserved for smaller carriers (see 1810170074). A pending draft order would extend for 15 years the freeze on federal-state jurisdictional separations of telcos costs and revenue; NARUC believes such a decision would be illegal absent a joint board recommended decision (see 1811140033).
Verizon said some 10,400 of its 152,300 employees were accepted in a voluntary program to leave, following realignment of the company for 5G. “This is a moment in time, given our financial and operational strength, to begin to better serve customers with more agility, speed and flexibility,” said CEO Hans Vestberg Monday. Workers get up to 60 weeks of salary, bonus and benefits.
Local United Way organizations are pushing for the UW-run 211 community information and referral service centers having a proposed national suicide hotline (see 1808140037), said nearly identical docket 18-336 postings Thursday by those from Philadelphia and southern New Jersey; Laredo, Texas; and Ventura County, California (see here, here and here). "Another three-digit code may erode the simplicity of a single point of access for community help," multiple UWs said.
Adopting the model state code “would result in costly regulation and litigation at the state level without any assurance of actually spurring broadband deployment,” the real estate industry warned ahead of the FCC Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee’s Thursday to Friday meeting. In a letter posted Wednesday in docket 17-83, the Building Owners and Managers Association, National Apartment Association and five other real estate groups objected to Article 8, which grants communications providers right to access and install facilities in commercial and multifamily residential buildings, and requires broadband construction in new and renovated buildings at the property owner’s expense. It’s “essentially a proposal for nationwide mandatory access to private property, which to date the Commission has declined to adopt despite periodic pressure from the communications industry,” the real estate groups said.
Windstream asked to be dismissed from an Iowa Utilities Board probe of call completion and least-cost routing issues involving Mahaska Communication. Windstream doesn’t provide long-distance services to Mahaska and was unable “to recreate any of the calling or voice issues” that company described, the carrier said Monday in docket INU-2018-0003. “Windstream will cooperate fully,” it pledged, but “does not provide long-distance service to these customers and therefore has little, if anything, to offer in this investigation.”
The FCC and DOJ disputed a court challenge to a 2017 wireline streamlining order intended to speed transition from copper networks to fiber and other systems, arguing it should be dismissed without merits consideration. Consumer group "petitioners fail to carry their burden to demonstrate" legal standing, the government responded Friday to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Greenlining Institute v. FCC, No. 17-73283. "Claim of 'associational' standing -- supported by only a single, unsubstantiated sentence in their brief -- is insufficient. They also fail to identify any individual member who could show the required elements of standing." Even if standing is established, petitioner "claims uniformly fail," said the agencies, citing commission decisions as "procedurally proper" and "reasonable," including repeal of a de facto copper retirement rule. Intervenor USTelecom backed rollback of "regulations that both were unlawful and unjustifiably slowed the evolution" of communications networks. The commission "fully notified the public of its concerns," triggering "extensive comments, including from Petitioners" and "eliminated rules the agency found had become 'unnecessary impediments to modern transformations in network hardware and technology," argued (in Pacer) the group, also disputing petitioners' standing. Greenlining and other consumer groups argued the FCC arbitrarily and abruptly scrapped telco consumer safeguards (see 1809270036).
The Q1 USF contribution factor will edge down to 20.0 percent from Q4's 20.1 percent of carriers' U.S. interstate and international telecom end-user revenue, emailed industry consultant Billy Jack Gregg Sunday. Universal Service Administrative Co. projected USF-applicable telecom revenue for Q1 to be $12.29 billion, $117.5 million lower than in Q4, continuing a long-term downward trend, he said, though Q1 USF demand was also down, producing the slight decline in the factor (see 1811050026). USF revenue for the four quarters ending in Q1 will be $2.17 billion lower than for the four quarters ending in Q1 2018, a 4.1% decline, he added.
ATN International told FCC leadership the best way to help the U.S. Virgin Islands through stage 2 fixed-service USF support for hurricane recovery is through its subsidiary Viya (see 1811080024), the sole ILEC "charged with serving the USVI in its entirety as the last resort and the sole operator of a Territory-wide wireline broadband network." USF support must be "sufficient and stable" in the "USVI where the costs of providing service are high and the economic conditions are challenging," ATN wrote of CEO Michael Prior and others' meetings with Chairman Ajit Pai, Commissioner Brendan Carr and aides to all four commissioners, posted Friday in docket 18-143.
The FCC will probe the ILEC benchmark rate used by South Dakota Network in tariff revisions to its interstate switched access service filed Sept. 17. "We designate for investigation whether SDN is using the correct competing incumbent LEC(s) in calculating its benchmark rate, and whether SDN’s calculated benchmark rate is based on the rate(s) for the appropriate service(s) of the competing incumbent LEC(s)," said a Wireline Bureau order Thursday in docket 18-100. "In the Aureon Tariff Investigation Order, the Commission found that CenturyLink was the competing incumbent LEC Aureon should benchmark to, and not the [National Exchange Cooperative Association]. In its Direct Case, SDN must justify its use of both CenturyLink and NECA as the carriers to which it should benchmark."