The FCC Wireline Bureau reminded parties of a Sept. 4 deadline to file Form 477 data on local phone competition and broadband service as of June 30, said a public notice in docket 11-10 and Thursday's Daily Digest.
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.
Rural broadband requires "significant upfront investment," with subsidies "essential for network providers to meet deployment challenges in high-cost areas," said an NTCA/USTelecom release on a study they commissioned by CostQuest Associates with Parsons Applied Economics. "Like other networks, broadband communications networks exhibit economies of linear density, which create an economic barrier to deployment across vast regions," the release said. It's "commercially unviable to deploy network infrastructure at affordable consumer rates in a rural environment without some form of subsidy,” said CostQuest CEO James Stegeman. “If building broadband in rural communities was easy, we would not have a digital divide,” said NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield. “Broadband providers are among the leading investors in American infrastructure, with over $1.6 trillion invested since 1996,” said USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter. “Connecting the hardest-to-reach communities will also require a dedicated federal investment so every American, in urban and rural communities, can benefit.”
An FCC school and library USF draft order would address a school district request to waive a deadline for appealing Universal Service Administrative Co. denial of its E-rate application, a commission spokesman told us Tuesday. The draft circulated June 29, according to an agency list.
AT&T's buying privately held cybersecurity firm AlienVault will combine AlienVault’s “expertise in threat intelligence” with AT&T’s “cybersecurity solutions portfolio,” said the acquiring company Tuesday. After closing in Q3, AT&T business customers “will be able to access our unified security management platform that helps make organizations more effective at threat detection and response, by giving them access to a broad set of enterprise-grade security capabilities,” said the telco. Terms of the acquisition weren't disclosed.
An FCC order on wireline discontinuance takes effect Aug. 8, says a Federal Register notice to be published Monday. Commissioners June 7 approved 3-1 the order to further relax telecom service discontinuance duties and related regulatory processes in an effort to remove barriers and encourage the industry shift from legacy wireline to next-generation, IP-based offerings (see 1806070021).
Parties continued to dispute the merits of CenturyLink's petition asking the FCC to allow local carriers and VoIP partners to collect higher end-office switching charges in certain cases even if the VoIP providers don't control last-mile facilities. A court reversed a previous VoIP symmetry order. AT&T (here) and Verizon (here) remained opposed, while CenturyLink (here), Teliax (here), and O1 Communications and Peerless Network (here) argued again for granting the petition. Replies were posted Tuesday and Thursday in docket 01-92, responding to initial comments (see 1806190029). Bandwidth weighed in this time, saying the FCC "should accept the Court’s invitation to explain why the call control functions performed by [LEC] together with its [VoIP] partner are specific to end office switches and affirm its 2015 Declaratory Ruling. Because the Court’s Remand questions whether an [IP] switch also should make physical connections between trunks and loops to meet the functional equivalence test, and the [ILECs] suggest reversing the 2015 Declaratory Ruling on that basis alone, the Commission should reiterate the differences between interconnection in TDM and IP networks and explain why it was not and is not necessary to adopt a distinct functional equivalence criterion for 'interconnection.'"
Possible FCC steps to ease nationwide number portability (NNP) got some support from WTA and full support from Incompas, with a draft order on the agenda for commissioners' July 12 meeting. WTA backs giving CLEC forbearance relief "from all remaining equal access and dialing parity requirements, but opposes elimination or modification of the current N-1 query requirement," which it said was working well, the RLEC group said in filings posted on meetings with aides to Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioners Mike O'Rielly and Brendan Carr (here, here, here), posted Thursday in docket 17-244. "The contemplated revision of the current N-1 query requirement to allow alternative voluntary arrangements is vastly preferable to outright elimination of it, but is still likely to disrupt the current established system by increasing the possibility of confusion, disputes, and dropped calls." The group's main interest remains that the FCC hold off on wireline NNP until it addresses wireless NNP and a transition to VoIP technology is further along. Incompas backed the draft, saying both actions "represent a necessary modernization of the regulatory regime and lay important groundwork for [NNP]." It "believes that the Commission’s 'middle course' for the N-1 requirement will give competitive providers the flexibility to eliminate routing inefficiencies inherent in this practice while preserving the standardization and uniformity that has contributed to successful number portability at the local level and with nationwide carriers."
ZVRS and Purple Communications asked the FCC to clarify that video relay service providers participating voluntarily in a call-handling pilot program using at-home sign-language interpreters don't have to provide 30-day notice of changes in call-center location. Alternatively, they asked to waive the rule and require three days' notice. "Nimbleness is needed in deployment of qualified at-home interpreters in order to quickly ramp up the availability of Communications Assistants ('CAs') in response to user demand," said their request posted Tuesday in docket 10-51. "There is no good policy justification for strict application."
ITTA and members voiced their views to FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr and an aide, who spoke at a membership meeting that included executives of Blackfoot Communications, CenturyLink, Cincinnati Bell, Comporium Communications, Consolidated Communications, Consolidated Companies of Nebraska, Great Plains Communications, Hargray Communications, Ritter Communications and TDS Telecom. "Attendees expressed positions consistent with ITTA’s prior advocacy related to the universal service high-cost program budget for rate-of-return carriers; the need for reforms of the universal service contribution methodology; support for stay of the rural call completion rules adopted in April 2018; proposed Commission action related to 8YY originating access charges; and a proposed Commission rule to withhold federal [USF] disbursements to any USF recipient purchasing equipment or services from any communications equipment or service providers identified as posing a national security risk to communications networks or the communications supply chain," said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 10-90.
The FCC gave AT&T and Aureon more time for commission-mediated talks to settle their intercarrier compensation dispute. The Enforcement Bureau granted the companies' unopposed motion to extend until July 27 a stay of a review related to an Aureon petition to reconsider an order partially granting an AT&T complaint, said a letter dated Monday in proceeding 17-56. The stay was due to expire Friday (see 1806060042).