The Directorate of Defense Trade Controls external systems EFS, TRS, ELLIE, and MARY, as well as DTAS Online, will be unavailable for industry users from Oct. 6 at 6 p.m. to Oct. 7 at 6 a.m., DDTC said in an Oct. 3 announcement. The systems will go off-line for "system upgrades in support of an upcoming Federal Register Notice."

The website for the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) will undergo maintenance from Sept. 26 at 3:00 p.m. to the evening of Sept. 28 EDT. The DTrade system will be unavailable to accept submissions during that time, DDTC said. The external systems EFS, TRS, ELLIE, and MARY will also be offline.

Comments are due Sept. 30, replies Oct. 10, in docket 05-196 on Sprint’s petition for a limited waiver of the FCC rule regarding access to the Internet-based telecom relay service (TRS) numbering directory, said a notice (http://1.usa.gov/1y6Jzp6) in Monday’s Federal Register. It said Sprint seeks access, as the provider of federal relay services, to load phone numbers for its federal video relay service, including “front door” toll-free phone numbers and 10-digit numbers, into the TRS directory.

The FCC seeks comment on a Sprint petition for a limited waiver of a commission rule restricting access to the Internet-based telecom relay services numbering directory to only the TRS Numbering Administrator and Internet-based TRS providers, a public notice (http://bit.ly/1opN8fi) said Wednesday. Sprint wants the waiver to let it, as a provider of federal relay services, populate its federal video relay service (VRS) toll-free “front door” phone numbers and 10-digit numbers into the iTRS Numbering Directory, the PN said. Sprint asserts that federal employees who are deaf or hard of hearing and have been assigned a Federal VRS number are unable to make point-to-point video calls, it said. Comments are due in docket 05-196 15 days after Federal Register publication, replies 25 days after publication.

Waivers of minimum standards for telecommunications relay services (TRS) have been extended until the FCC completes a pending rulemaking into whether the rules are still needed, a Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau and Wireline Bureau order said (http://bit.ly/1m34dP8). The waivers were set to expire July 1, said the order posted Friday in docket 03-123. Waivers were also extended until July 1, 2015, of certain TRS mandatory minimum standards for certain video relay service and IP Relay providers.

The State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) will undergo maintenance on June 27 from 6:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m. EDT. DTrade system will be unavailable to accept submissions during that time, DDTC said. The pmddtc.state.gov website, as well as EFS, TRS, ELLIE, and MARY external systems will also be offline.

The FCC violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it “hurriedly promulgated rules” -- without seeking comment -- that banned companies from giving away IP Captioned Telephone Service phones with the captioning feature turned on. That’s the unanimous holding of three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which found that an agency is not entitled to deference when it invokes “good cause” as a reason for bypassing the APA. The court vacated the agency’s “interim” order and parts of the final order, while leaving the remainder intact. The case is Sorenson Communications v. FCC (http://1.usa.gov/1psR2Z4).

The FCC rejected a request by the Diogenes Telecommunications Project (DTP) that it reopen an investigation of AT&T for alleged misconduct in providing Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS). The project lacks standing, the FCC said in a Wednesday order (http://fcc.us/S9ho5h). In May 2013, AT&T agreed to pay $18.25 million to settle an FCC investigation into improper billing to the TRS fund and to adopt compliance measures (http://bit.ly/109q7Fk). The application for review by DTP “does not allege any direct or personal injury to DTP as an organization or to any of its members,” the FCC said. “It offers only a generalized and purely hypothetical injury.” DTP only “speculates that there might possibly be some injury to one of its members,” the FCC said.

The FCC violated the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Administrative Procedure Act when it created rules last year meant to curb misuse of the Internet Protocol Captioned Telephone Service (IP CTS), Sorenson and subsidiary CaptionCall said, urging a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Tuesday to strike down the rules. The agency contends it acted within the bounds of ADA and APA, though at least two of the three judges said they had concerns.

The FCC plans to fine Purple Communications $11.9 million for improperly billing the Telecom Relay Service Fund, the agency said in a news release Friday. The company “sought and received millions in reimbursements from the TRS fund for customers with names that were so clearly false that they could not have been the actual names of eligible users, including names like ’sdfsdf cicwcicw,’ ‘Myname Yourname,’ and ‘Lot$a Money,'” the FCC said. “Purple’s actions have threatened the integrity of a fund that is designed to help persons with hearing and speech disabilities make phone calls,” said Enforcement Bureau acting Chief Travis LeBlanc. “We have zero tolerance for this type of abuse.” Purple billed the TRS Fund for calls by more than 40,000 registrants with names composed of “random keystrokes” and “vulgarities” such as “F*** Y**,” the bureau said in a notice of apparent liability (http://bit.ly/1iSESX5). “Purple is required to use a reasonable process to verify the names and addresses of users.” Purple did not comment.