State public utility commissions made preparations for Tuesday’s East Coast winter storm. The New York Department of Public Service was in contact with utility senior executives and monitoring the situation, said a Monday news release: Verizon, other telecom providers and energy utilities “are prepared to bring on additional manpower to minimize service disruptions, if they occur.” Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) declared a state of emergency across New York ahead of the storm, triggering conditions in the Public Service Commission's Altice/Cablevision order last year (see 1606150056). In a state of emergency, Altice, which bought Cablevision, must provide free Wi-Fi access to subscribers and nonsubscribers, must make the News12.com site available to noncustomers and share outage information with utilities at no cost, a commission spokesman emailed. Altice is in compliance with the merger conditions on states of emergency, a company spokeswoman said. The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission hasn’t heard of any telecom issues yet, a PUC spokesman said Tuesday. “We've been getting regular updates from utilities -- first about their storm prep, and now regarding outages and responses.” The PUC was closed Tuesday but its emergency management team was working in coordination with the governor’s office and Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, he said. The Maryland Public Service Commission also was closed but had engineering staff doing emergency response coordination and monitoring with the Maryland Emergency Management Agency’s state emergency operations center, a PSC spokeswoman said. No telecom outages had occurred, she said. Verizon provided a storm preparation briefing Monday to the District of Columbia Public Service Commission, which opened Tuesday after a two-hour delay, an agency spokeswoman said. There were no reports of telco outages in New Jersey, but some utility wires went down that might affect cable service, said a New Jersey Board of Public Utilities spokeswoman. New Jersey declared a state of emergency, so the board closed for the day, she said. Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, CenturyLink, Frontier and Windstream representatives reported no significant network outages due to the storm as of our deadline. T-Mobile said its "crews are addressing any issues that come up as quickly and as safely as possible."
Free State Foundation postponed its communications policy conference set for Tuesday due to expected inclement weather. No new date was announced.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday to overhaul aspects of the executive branch. It’s “a major step toward making the federal government efficient, effective and accountable to the people,” Trump said during the signing ceremony. “Today, we’re beginning the process of a long overdue reorganization of our federal departments and agencies.” Cabinet secretaries should be empowered to make their agencies as effective and “lean” as possible, Trump said. The order demands “a thorough examination of every executive department and agency to see where money is being wasted, how service can be improved and whether programs are truly serving American citizens,” Trump said. Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney will oversee this process, Trump said. Expect “a detailed plan” to make the government work better based on this process, he said. Trump will work with Congress to implement the resulting recommendations, he said. Text of the order wasn't immediately released.
AT&T suffered more wireless network problems Saturday after a major 911 outage earlier in the week spurred an FCC investigation (see 1703090017). “Service has been restored for customers affected by a hardware issue which caused some calls not to connect during a brief period Saturday morning,” an AT&T spokeswoman said Monday. The company didn’t say which regions were affected, but just before 1 p.m. in the District, Alert DC reported “a nationwide outage that is impacting customers intermittently.” At about 2:30 p.m., Alert DC said the issue was resolved. “There was a failure of some systems relative to the wireless carrier AT&T,” a D.C. Office of Unified Communications spokesman emailed Monday. “I’m told the issue was sporadic and did not result in any 911 failure. Our center did test AT&T 911, and it seemed to work here.”
The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a Freedom of Information request with the FCC seeking copies of any records about the March 6 meeting between Chairman Ajit Pai and President Donald Trump (see 1703060055), including memos, briefing papers, emails and talking points, EPIC said Thursday. It requested expedited processing of the FOIA request, saying there's urgency due to Trump describing the media as "enemies of the people" and some media outlets have business before the FCC. EPIC pointed to Congress' considering using the Congressional Review Act to overturn the agency's privacy rules and the agency's stay of parts of the privacy order (see 1703010069). The FCC didn't comment Monday.
Oracle said the FCC should repudiate its prior policy of "favoring" one tech subsector over others and "establish a more level playing field," starting with actions on broadband privacy, broadband classification and cable set-top boxes. Under previous Chairman Tom Wheeler, the commission "routinely picked winners and losers in the complex and converging network ecosystem," said Senior Vice President Kenneth Glueck, Office of CEO, in a letter Monday in docket 14-28. "The prior Commission orchestrated a shift of network control from those that invest in the network to those that do not, and a shift in welfare from those that were regulated to those that were not. We urge you to return the FCC to technology- and competitor-neutral policymaking." The commission should reconsider broadband privacy rules "to ensure a consistent and fair approach," Oracle said, calling a recent FCC stay of a new ISP-specific data security rule a "laudable first step" (see 1703010069). The tech firm urged the agency to reclassify broadband internet access from a Communications Act Title II telecom service to a Title I information service "to eliminate burdens on, and competitive imbalances for, ISPs while still preserving the free and open Internet." The set-top box proceeding should be closed "to put to bed the FCC’s ill-advised interventionist instinct and instead rely on the intense innovation and competition in the marketplace," the software maker said. The FCC should work closely with the FTC, the company said.
FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn urged USF reform, in a speech Monday to the WTA in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Last year, the FCC adopted reforms aimed at stabilizing the high-cost program, Clyburn said, according to written remarks. “Like with any significant reform, there are choppy waters ahead that need careful navigation.” Clyburn stressed the importance of partnerships, which “have the capability to help your bottom line, and provide a benefit for your communities.” The FCC needs to tweak some of its rules for rate-of-return carriers, she said. “I hear you when you talk about affordability, and the need to have flexibility to price your services as you see fit in the market,” she said. “I am concerned, about the affordability of rates in both rural and urban areas. It is a shame that deregulation has often meant higher rates in both urban and rural areas. But I believe rural areas should not be penalized, simply because of poor legislative or regulatory judgment. That is why I would support hitting the ‘pause’ button on rate floor increases, while we figure out a path forward that does not unduly impact rural consumers or the universal service fund.” Clyburn noted, as a Democrat, she's now in the minority at the FCC. She said she got used to that when she was a South Carolina regulator. “The difference in my role and status are readily apparent,” she said. “I was in the minority as a commissioner here in South Carolina for many years. ... I always start at the 50-yard line when it comes to formulating policy with anyone who may see the world differently than I do. … I will never entertain compromising my principles.” Among those principles, “removing consumer protections and harming competition are always going to be non-starters for me,” she said. “I will continue to sit at the table, even when we are discussing issues that have practical impacts that may make me uncomfortable.”
An FCC jurisdictional separations item and referral to a federal-state joint board is before commissioners, according to the agency's circulation list, which was updated Friday. The Further NPRM seeks comment on a freeze on jurisdictional separations for rate-of-return incumbent telcos, which expires June 30, said an agency spokesman. Commissioner and Joint Board Chairman Mike O'Rielly has said the referral is "narrow" but he wants to seek "comprehensive reform" (see 1702230051). Rural telco representatives discussed the Part 36 separations freeze -- which they said was intended to last only five years but has been in effect more than 15 years -- and its impact "on the allocation of costs and the development of rates for rate-of-return carriers that chose to freeze their category relationships in 2001," said a Moss-Adams filing in docket 80-286 on a meeting it and Panhandle Telephone Cooperative had with Wireline Bureau staffers. They discussed the potential impact that disparate consumer broadband-only rates could have on Connect America Fund broadband loop support, and answered agency questions on "how to potentially alleviate the disparate allocation of costs and rate development for carriers with frozen category relationships."
The National Digital Inclusion Alliance alleged that AT&T has been "digital redlining" in Cleveland by "systematically" discriminating over the past decade against lower-income neighborhoods where it deploys internet and video systems. There's "clear evidence that AT&T has withheld fiber-enhanced broadband improvements from most Cleveland neighborhoods with high poverty rates," said an NDIA release Thursday, citing mapping analysis it and Connect Your Community did of mid-2016 broadband data collected by the FCC on Form 477 industry submissions. NDIA said many Cleveland residents have been declared ineligible for AT&T discounts because they lack access to 3 Mbps download capacity as required. The telco hasn't extended "Fiber to the Node" very-high-bit-rate DSL facilities to most Cleveland census blocks, including the vast majority of those with high poverty rates, even though it's "now the standard" in surrounding suburbs and other urban AT&T markets, the group said. "Those neighborhoods have been relegated to an older, slower" asymmetric DSL technology, it said. These practices are "classic redlining" contrary to universal service principles, said Public Knowledge Senior Policy Counsel Phillip Berenbroick in a release. The company believes internet access is essential, "which is why we've continuously invested in expanding service and enhancing speeds," emailed a representative. “The report does not accurately reflect the investment we've made in bringing faster internet to urban and rural areas across the U.S. While we are investing in broadband, we’re also investing in technologies that will mitigate some of the infrastructure limitations.” AT&T invested $135 billion in its wireless and wired networks from 2012 to 2016 (including wireless spectrum/asset buys), "more in the U.S. than any other public company," the telco rep said, noting various technology trials it's conducting to increase speeds and efficiencies over copper and fiber networks.
A prominent regulator and Telcordia raised concerns about Neustar's planned privatization and sought FCC conditions. North American Portability Management (NAPM) said it wouldn't object, subject to two conditions. Neustar, which administers various numbering and pooling mechanisms, asked the FCC to approve its planned sale to Aerial Investors, a group formed by Golden Gate Private Equity (see 1702010033). Betty Ann Kane, chairman of the D.C. Public Service Commission and the North American Numbering Council, offered no view on Neustar arguments for FCC approval based on the company's statement it will continue to be neutral in its administrator duties. "However, I am concerned that Neustar has not provided any evidence in its Ownership Request to substantiate its claim that the new ownership should be approved 'because the nature of Neustar’s business and its day-to-day management will not change,'" said Kane in comments posted Friday in FCC docket 92-237, saying she was speaking solely for herself. She said the new ownership apparently could benefit financially if the transition from Neustar to Telcordia/iconectiv as local number portability administrator (LNPA) isn't completed by a May 25, 2018, target. She asked the FCC to condition approval on Neustar (1) formally committing to complete the transition by then, subject to penalty, and (2) within 30 days of approval retaining an independent auditor to file monthly reports regarding company compliance with iconectiv and NAPM requests on implementation steps. Telcordia commented that Neustar failed to provide sufficient detail to enable the FCC to assess neutrality and national security implications, particularly since the government of Singapore, through Hux Investment, will be an indirect owner of up to 37.5 percent of Neustar. Also noting concerns about the new ownership's financial incentives, Telcordia urged the FCC to ensure Neustar "will be committed to completing, and cooperating with, the ongoing LNPA transition, according to the schedule established by the Transition Oversight Manager," PwC. NAPM commented it has no objections, if "Neustar remains fully subject to its contractual obligations with the NAPM" and the commission "ensures that Neustar remains subject to all of its current regulatory obligations, including all of the FCC’s current neutrality requirements." A Neustar spokesman emailed that the company "agrees with the NAPM which only makes one request of Neustar to fulfill its neutrality and regulatory obligations" and looks forward to addressing further specific issues "in our reply comments to the FCC in two weeks.”