Fiber networking provider Integra agreed to buy fiber connectivity company opticAccess, Integra said in a news release Tuesday. The 3,500-mile opticAccess network is along the West Coast and primarily serves the San Francisco and Los Angeles metropolitan areas, Integra said. The company said the acquisition will increase its near-net demand by nearly 40 percent and will provide an enhanced low-latency, long-haul fiber route between Seattle and Los Angeles. The transaction is expected to close in Q4 pending regulatory approval, Integra said.

The FCC gave Dominion Virginia Power until Oct. 19 to respond to Verizon's complaint against the utility's pole attachment rates, which the telco believes are excessive (see 1508040029), said an Enforcement Bureau letter posted Tuesday in docket 15-190. Noting its response was due in early September, Dominion (also known as Virginia Electric and Power Co.) had asked for a 60-day extension until Nov. 2 to respond to Verizon's 700-page complaint (see 1508130033). The bureau letter said Verizon would have until Nov. 9 to reply to Dominion's response unless commission staff rules otherwise.

The parties to litigation over the FCC's interim inmate calling service (ICS) rules, which regulated interstate rates, briefly updated the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on the commission's current rulemaking to adopt permanent ICS rules. In a joint status report filed Tuesday in the case of Securus v. FCC, No. 13-1280, the Department of Justice, FCC, Securus Technologies and other petitioners said the commission received "voluminous" comments and was now considering those submissions and holding ex parte meetings with interested parties on final rules. The parties said the court in January partially stayed the FCC's 2013 interim interstate ICS rules while leaving other parts intact (included rate caps). They also noted the commission in October issued an NPRM aimed at overhauling its ICS rules and then asked the D.C. Circuit to hold in abeyance its review of the interim interstate rules on the merits, a request which the court granted last December. The court asked the parties to file status reports every 60 days; Tuesday's report was the fourth such report. FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, who as acting chairwoman oversaw the 2013 order, recently vowed to cut calling costs for inmate families (see 1507300067), and CenturyLink this week suggested capping all ICS rates "at or very near" interstate levels (see 1508170054). Some parties have told us the commission could issue an order this fall.

CenturyLink plans to cut its workforce by about 1,000, the company confirmed Friday in an emailed statement. "After careful consideration, CenturyLink has made the difficult decision to reduce its workforce," the statement said. "This includes current positions as well as not backfilling open positions." Affected employees will receive severance packages and assistance to find new jobs, including within the company. "Additional steps will include minimizing the number of contractors we work with, reducing travel expenditures and further reductions of non-employee-related expenses." CEO Glen Post said on an Aug. 5 analyst call that CenturyLink was planning a "reduction in the number of employees" to cut costs, according to a transcript of the call. On that call, Chief Financial Officer Stewart Ewing said CenturyLink estimates it will take at least $300 million of the $514 million in annual USF support it's eligible for under the FCC's Connect America Fund Phase II. CenturyLink is continuing to evaluate whether to take more than that and expects to notify the FCC of its final decision on or before an Aug. 27 deadline for price-cap telcos, the company said in a separate emailed statement. Ewing said the $300 million would go to about two dozen states where CenturyLink serves high-cost areas and it's studying whether to take the CAF II subsidies in another 11 states. If the telco doesn't accept the CAF II support there, Ewing said the company could continue to receive about $100 million in USF "frozen support." He said the FCC is unlikely to write rules before late 2016 or maybe 2017 for a reverse auction in areas where price-cap carriers don't accept CAF II money.

Dominion Virginia Power asked the FCC for more time to respond to Verizon's 700-page pole-attachment complaint filed Aug. 3. Saying parties have 30 days to respond to such complaints, Dominion (also known as Virginia Electric and Power Co.) asked for a 60-day extension to Nov. 2. Dominion said the request was "reasonable in consideration of the enormous volume of materials to which Dominion must respond, and the substantial damages that Verizon claims it has suffered" under joint-use agreements of the power company's poles. The utility said Verizon wants to be refunded up to $16.8 million for pole attachments made since 2011. Verizon agreed to a 30-day extension, but Dominion said it needs more time prepare its response, particularly since under the rules it will be the company's "one chance to defend itself" against the claims. The telco asked the FCC to block Dominion efforts to collect "excessive and increasing" charges, ensure the telco pays the same rate as comparable providers under 2011 rules and refund the amounts it had overpaid (see 1508040029).

Windstream is partnering with Infinera to extend 100 Gbps "Wave transport service" across the country, the companies said in a news release Wednesday. Deploying Infinera's Intelligent Transport Network, Windstream this year has brought 100 Gbps service to 12 new markets -- including Buffalo, Denver, Houston, San Antonio, Oklahoma City and Tulsa -- and has added Infinera's 500 Gbps "super-channel technology" to 3,900 miles of fiber, they said. Windstream plans to expand 100 Gbps service to another seven markets by year-end, including Minneapolis and Louisville in September. In total, Windstream plans by year-end to have 1 Gbps-100 Gbps service on 121,000 miles of fiber with 100 Gbps service in 44 markets.

Sorenson Communications and CaptionCall urged the FCC to deny IDT Telecom's request for review of a Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau order setting the telecom relay service (TRS) fund's 2015-16 budget and industry contribution factor. IDT, which pays into the fund, petitioned the full commission to review the bureau order because it partially funded intrastate and other domestic IP-based relay services from the interstate and international jurisdictions, which the company said violated the Communications Act (see 1507290024). In a Tuesday filing in docket 10-51, Sorenson and CaptionCall called IDT's arguments "meritless." As an initial matter, they said, IDT's request was outside the scope of a bureau-level proceeding, challenging a rate methodology set by the full commission; if IDT wanted to change the rules, they said it should have filed a petition for rulemaking. They said IDT was also wrong on the policy merits: "The Communications Act gives the Commission wide discretion over the funding of the TRS program, and the Commission has reasonably exercised that discretion."

Rural telco groups presented FCC officials with a bevy of potential "technical assumptions" for implementing an overhaul of rate-of-return carrier USF support mechanisms. Representatives of the Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance, NTCA, USTelecom and WTA said that none of their associations were ready to endorse the assumptions they outlined to the FCC in a document, but they were submitting them to help in the identification and discussion of issues that may need further examination and resolution. "This approach has not been fully defined or modeled, and thus does not represent a fully-formed proposal that has been vetted by or is necessarily supported by industry representatives; some of the associations also have continuing questions and some concerns about issues that may arise in connection with such an approach," the groups said in a USTelecom filing posted Tuesday in docket 10-90. Derrick Owens, WTA vice president of government affairs, told us that the assumptions incorporated feedback from FCC officials, and are to be used to generate projections for rural telco funding under proposed USF changes. "The idea is to see what the effects are for the companies and the fund in general, and to see what other issues will pop up that need to be addressed," he said. The groups in May proposed a two-track overhaul of rate-of-return USF that would create a voluntary model-based approach and revise existing USF mechanisms to support stand-alone broadband, but many details remain in play (see 1506030052 and 1506040028).

Verizon successfully tested a technology offering businesses and consumers 10 Gbps speeds for uploads and downloads over its fiber-to-the-premises network, with the potential for 40-80 Gbps, the company said Tuesday in a news release. Network upgrades will begin when commercial equipment is available to support business/ethernet services, and could also target FiOS customers as the market demands and technology matures, Verizon said. The new technology, known as next-generation passive optical network, was first tested at a Verizon lab, then to a FiOS customer's home from a central office three miles away and also from that office to a business near the home. “The advantage of our FiOS network is that it can be upgraded easily by adding electronics onto the fiber network that is already in place," said Lee Hicks, Verizon vice president-network technology.

The FCC released an order to help ensure the continuity of 911 communications as telcos move from traditional line-powered copper networks to fiber-based systems without independent power -- an item that was unanimously adopted by commissioners Thursday (see 1508060044). The 62-page text requires facilities-based providers of wireline phone service to notify consumers of the electrical power limitations of any new systems they install and offer them backup power options. Providers must give new customers options to buy and have installed at least eight hours of standby backup power capability, with the mandate taking effect for large companies 120 days after the order appears in the Federal Register. Providers with fewer than 100,000 domestic retail subscriber lines will have an additional 180 days to comply. Within three years of the effective date, all the providers will have to offer customers at least 24 hours of backup power, the order said. The FCC said its focus was to help ensure 911 calls can still be made during power outages, but it provided a general voice backup power mandate because there was no practical way to provide power just for 911 calls. There's no obligation for providers to retrofit existing systems with backup power, but they must annually notify consumers of their power limitations and options for installing backup power. The order released Friday clarified that the eight-hour (and eventually, 24-hour) duty covered the amount of time a backup solution had to be “in standby mode, i.e., able to provide a dial tone and to initiate and receive voice calls, but not necessarily continuously.” The FCC recognized the actual backup power duration would vary with calling uses, but it said it wasn’t practical to have a variable-usage rule. The requirements will sunset on Sept. 1, 2025.