Google is right to argue in a Dec. 30 letter to the FCC that net neutrality rules shouldn’t interfere with cable companies’ pole attachment rights, NCTA said in its own letter to the commission Friday. Google, though, was wrong in arguing that the reclassification of broadband to Title II is necessary to preserve those rights. Google said Google Fiber “‘lacks federal access rights pursuant to Section 224 because it offers an Internet Protocol video service that is not traditional cable TV,’” NCTA said. But the “law is clear” that facilities-based providers of Internet Protocol television services “do qualify as cable operators under the Communications Act,” which defines a cable operator as “one who ‘provides cable service over a cable system,’ without any reference to the technology," NCTA said.

Public Knowledge is “disappointed” the FCC denied a petition by the group and the National Consumer Law Center to require AT&T to lay out a specific time line for its IP trials in Florida and Alabama (see 1403030032). AT&T justified “highly confidential treatment of its detailed timeline information,” the Wednesday order said, but the bureau also emphasized that “robust public comment on the grandfather and discontinuance applications will be essential.” The bureau signaled it would be “disinclined to allow information” on Section 214(a) applications AT&T will have to file for discontinuing copper-based service “to be subject to confidential treatment -- absent extraordinary and unanticipated circumstances.” AT&T has said it wouldn’t seek discontinuation until at least the end of the year. If the bureau were to order the release of a detailed time line “at this early stage,” the order said it could harm the commission’s ability to get companies to obtain “similar voluntary disclosures in the future and discourage participation in trials.” The order required AT&T to revise its proposal to the commission within 14 days to include the percentage of living units in Carbon Hill, Alabama, that would receive wireline and/or wireless service in the trial. The company inadvertently released the information to the press and didn't oppose releasing it to the commission, the order said. “Although we are glad the Commission’s confidentiality challenge process brought some new information into the public eye, we are disappointed that, even months after the Commission solicited public comment on AT&T’s proposal, the public still does not know when AT&T’s proposed trials will actually start and stop," Jodie Griffin, Public Knowledge senior staff attorney, said in the statement. “We are also disappointed the Commission took nine months to issue a decision on this procedural point. The Commission’s confidentiality challenge process must provide challengers effective and prompt redress, or companies will only grow more bold in over-claiming confidentiality to keep damaging or embarrassing information secret.” The Public Knowledge and NCLC petition was filed April 8. AT&T didn't comment.

Comments on the FCC’s IP transition NPRM are due Feb. 5, replies March 9, said a proposed rulemaking published in the Federal Register Tuesday. The wide-ranging NPRM deals with a variety of issues, from requirements for discontinuing service to battery backup requirements (see 1411210037). Opposition to USTelecom’s petition for reconsideration of a declaratory ruling, approved with the NPRM, toughening approval requirements for discontinuing service is due Jan. 23, with replies due Jan. 30 (see 1412300038).

As part of inmate calling service reforms being considered in a further rulemaking (see 1410230026), the FCC should require correctional institutions to install and provide access to the telecommunications equipment required by deaf and hard of hearing inmates, including TTY, videophone, captioned telephone or an amplified telephone, consumer groups representing the deaf said in comments posted Tuesday in docket 12-375. The facilities also should be required to report data to the commission on phone service available to deaf or hard of hearing inmates, including complaints, technical problems, how much telecommunications access is provided as compared with non-deaf or -hard of hearing inmates, and whether there's access to modern telecommunication equipment, the groups said. The “vast majority” of correctional facilities that provide some telecommunications access for the disabled do so only through slow and antiquated TTYs at nondiscounted calling rates, the groups said. While TTYs are important for some of the deaf, “they are no longer used by most deaf and hard of hearing people. Instead deaf and hard of hearing inmates need access to the more functionally equivalent telecommunications equipment that are used by the majority of deaf and hard of hearing individuals outside of these facilities such as videophones, captioned telephones, and other Internet-based communications.” The groups said they've received "numerous stories about deaf and hard of hearing inmates routinely being denied access to sign language interpreters, closed captioning on televisions, and facing many barriers to telecommunications. The civil rights of deaf and hard of hearing people must not end at the walls of prisons and jails." Jointly submitting the comments were the American Association of the Deaf-Blind, California Coalition of Agencies Serving the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Cerebral Palsy and Deaf Organization, Deaf and Hard of Hearing Consumer Advocacy Network, Deaf Seniors of America, Gallaudet University Technology Access Program, Hearing Loss Association of America, the National Association of the Deaf and Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Inc. The American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho urged the commission to “exercise the full extent of its authority” to regulate interstate and intrastate ICS rates, in comments posted Tuesday. The Further NPRM considers making permanent interstate rate caps and impose intrastate caps. The Idaho Public Utilities Commission can't regulate ICS rates because the state’s legislature in 1998 prevented the PUC from regulating rates except basic local exchange service, which does not include ICS, the group said.

TechFreedom will support a legal challenge if FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler “short-circuits” a “legislative compromise” on net neutrality, TechFreedom President Berin Szoka wrote in a blog post Monday. A concern, he said in an email, is that the FCC will adopt reclassification before Congress acts. Wheeler plans to circulate a net neutrality order in February with the aim of a vote at the Feb. 26 commission meeting (see 1501020035). Wheeler could be “bluffing,” Szoka said in the email. Thinking he “held a weak hand legally” with a Title II approach, Wheeler could be advancing the prospect of a February decision to push Congress to come up with a legislative solution, Szoka said. A “legislative compromise” would focus “on real threats to competition while constraining the FCC’s discretion,” the post said. Meanwhile, two recent studies, considered together, “provide theoretical and empirical evidence that Title II regulations would depress broadband investment,” the Free State Foundation said in a blog post Tuesday. The post cited a November study by Kevin Hassett, director-economic policy studies and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and Sonecon Chairman Robert Shapiro, predicting a Title II approach would reduce broadband investment by 12.8 to 20.8 percent. The post also cited a Progressive Policy Institute study that said reclassification would lead to $15 billion more nationally in state and local taxes (see 1412150053). Title II proponents have disputed the PPI study (see 1412190040). The commission shouldn't rule out any legal options, including supplementing Title II with Section 706, the Internet Association wrote in a letter to the agency, posted in docket 14-28 Tuesday. If the commission takes a Title II approach, it would be legally defensible because circumstances have changed since the agency classified broadband as an information service, the letter said. Consumers no longer see broadband as part of a bundle of information services, but as a way of “accessing content of their choosing without impediment or discriminatory treatment.” The commission also has learned it doesn't have sufficient authority under Section 706, the association said.

The Allband Communications Cooperative needs a nine-year extension of its FCC waiver from high-cost support caps to be able to “continue operations,” the company said in a petition posted Friday in docket 10-90. A previous three-year waiver from the $3,000-per-line cap is to run out June 30, the petition said. Without a further waiver, the cap’s revenue reductions “would irreparably harm Allband” by providing insufficient revenue to continue to providing voice service “to any of its customers,” pay the principal and interest on its Department of Agriculture Rural Utilities Service loan, and to “continue operations as a telecommunications carrier.” The loan will be repaid in 2026, the petition said.

Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., thanked mobile taxi service Lyft in a news release Monday for clarifying some of its data collection practices, but said “important questions” remain “unresolved.” Lyft said in a Dec. 30 letter to Franken that it has taken “steps towards restricting access to customer trip data,” but some customer data is necessary for Lyft to perform its services adequately. “I was pleased to receive a response from Lyft, and I appreciate the company’s effort to provide thorough answers,” said Franken in the release. “I look forward to further discussing these matters -- for example, how and why Lyft retains customer data and how access to customer records is determined,” he said. Sens. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Bill Nelson, D-Fla., sent letters last month to the CEOs of Uber and Lyft inquiring about the companies’ privacy and data security policies (see 1412230040).

The FCC's inmate calling service overhaul, including capping intrastate ICS rates, being considered in a rulemaking (see 1410230026), would help the families of prisoners, said the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice in comments posted in docket 12-375 Monday. Most inmates made less than $8,000 the year before their incarceration, the group said. Upon their jailing, their families are left without their “primary breadwinner,” a situation made worse by the high cost of inmate calls, the group said. The elimination of commission payments to correctional facilities, as considered in the Further NPRM, would hurt the ability of Montana inmates to get a “head start” in re-entering the community upon their release, wrote April Grady, contracts management bureau chief for the Montana Department of Corrections. Decisions on spending funds from the commissions are discussed with inmate representatives, Grady wrote. Expenditures like recreation equipment, visiting room furnishings, family days, funeral visits and inmate television access would “be left unfunded if commissions are eliminated from ICS contracts,” Grady wrote.

Barring inmate calling service commission payments to correctional facilities, as the FCC is considering in a rulemaking (see 1410230026), would hurt programs that lower recidivism, Kansas Corrections Secretary Ray Roberts wrote in a letter to the agency posted in docket 12-375 on Wednesday. The payments are used to finance “an array of programs,” including sex offender treatment, vocational education, substance abuse treatment and transitional housing, Roberts wrote. The state has a three-year recidivism rate, half the national average, and losing the programs “would result in 302 more admissions to Kansas prisons per year at a cost of over $3.2 million annually,” Roberts wrote. “For a small state whose prison system is already over capacity, 302 more admissions means over 300 more victims, capacity expansion, and increased cost to taxpayers in the form of increased operational costs,” Roberts wrote. Arizona’s Department of Corrections is statutorily required to use ICS proceeds and commissions to pay for inmate education, work programs and substance abuse treatment, state corrections director Charles Ryan wrote the agency in a letter posted Wednesday. The department “remains concerned … about the FCC’s use of its regulatory powers to establish a national public policy, one-size-fits-all approach, to ICS without fully considering the impact on correctional operations,” the letter said. Columbia Legal Services, a Washington state nonprofit that provides legal assistance to inmates, wrote that collect calls to its hotline cost the organization an average of $410 per month, at an average rate of $1.07 per minute. “Capping the cost-per-minute of intrastate calls, prohibiting site commissions, and reducing ancillary fees will go a long way to ensuring that all people, including those in our countries' [sic] jails and prisons, are able to access timely legal assistance to protect and ensure their rights,” wrote Madeline Neighly, an attorney in the organization’s Institutions Project.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler plans to circulate a net neutrality order in February, with the aim of a commission vote at the Feb. 26 meeting, an agency spokeswoman told us Friday. Two agency officials also told us that Wheeler has started to tell commissioners to expect a February vote. The spokeswoman did not say what the order will say. No further comments will be sought, an FCC official said. "Many additional written comments have been filed and ex parte meetings have continued to take place over the past couple of months. Staff decided formally requesting further comment was unnecessary and would cause unnecessary delay in the proceeding," the official emailed.