Securus’ objection to rival Pay-Tel’s request for Securus’ unredacted cost study documents on inmate calling services was rejected by the FCC Wireline Bureau, in an Oct. 1 order posted Tuesday in docket 11-10. Securus had said the “confidential information in the documents is competitively sensitive, and the company will suffer “substantial and irreparable harm” if Pay Tel’s outside counsel receives them, the order said. Pay-Tel responded with sworn declarations from its president that the counsel is not involved in competitive decisionmaking, the order said. Securus had to provide Pay-Tel with the data by Oct. 6, the order said.

The deadline for public comments on the current and potential availability of communications services in the Arctic region was extended to Dec. 3, the NTIA said in a notice in the Federal Register on Tuesday. Comments had been due by Nov. 3.

Customers of the largest U.S. consumer-facing Internet service providers “experienced dramatically poor performance” when connecting to core Internet transit infrastructure, according to a report by the Measurement Lab Consortium. The performance was often “well below" the FCC’s four-year-old "definition of 'broadband,'” said a New America Foundation Open Technology Institute news release about the report Tuesday. “The careful work done by M-Lab researchers exposes patterns of severe Internet performance degradation across the US, and suggests that ISP business relationships are a source of these problems,” said Vint Cerf, M-Lab steering committee member, in the release. “This is the first work of its kind, using open data and reproducible methods to expose complex performance issues at scale.

FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly’s comments Monday that a Communications Act Title II approach could deter broadband investment are “evidence-free fears” that “have been refuted several times over,” said Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood in a statement to us. “Imagine how much less fearful he could be simply by examining the facts instead of ISP talking points!” O’Rielly spoke at an NTCA event (see 1410270035).

As the FCC takes up net neutrality, it should not ban user-directed prioritization, Bob Quinn, senior vice president-federal regulatory, and other AT&T officials told FCC General Counsel Jonathan Sallet and Associate General Counsel Stephanie Weiner on Oct. 22, according to an ex parte filing the company made available to us Monday. To AT&T’s knowledge, no ISP offers or plans to offer paid prioritization for mass-market Internet services, but user-directed service could “offer significant consumer benefits,” such as allowing consumers to choose to prioritize health-monitoring or home alarm devices, the filing said. Communications Act Section 706 offers “ample authority” to deal with any problems posed by non-user-directed paid prioritization, the AT&T officials said.

CenturyLink won't file a petition for reconsideration on the FCC Wireline Bureau’s decision to approve the proposed Level 3/tw telecom deal, a CenturyLink spokeswoman said Monday. CenturyLink had not pushed the FCC to deny the merger, but did urge the agency to impose conditions on the approval, including a requirement Level 3 give CenturyLink and other incumbent local exchange carriers access to the entrance conduit at Level 3’s on-net buildings (see 1410240028). The commission has previously ruled that LECs don't have a reciprocal right to gain access to the facilities of a competitive LEC under the Telecommunications Act’s Section 251(b)(4), the bureau said in an order Friday. Revisiting the determination of reciprocity is better done under a separate proceeding, the bureau said. Level 3 and tw telecom had argued the deal would improve competition because Level 3’s global footprint and tw telecom’s more extensive operations in metropolitan areas would allow it to more effectively compete for customers. “On balance, we find that any potential loss of competition that may occur as a result of the transaction is outweighed by the public interest benefits that will likely result from this increased competition,” the bureau said. The companies' shareholders still need to approve the deal Tuesday, a Level 3 spokeswoman told us. The FCC approval "does not come as a surprise. There is very little overlap between the two networks ... so the deal wasn't expected to raise anti-trust concerns," said Equity Research Senior Analyst Jennifer Fritzsche in a note to investors Monday.

The FCC, as it examines tw telecom's proposed acquisition by Level 3 (see 1409090067), should require Level 3 to stop withholding payments for telecom services, CenturyLink Vice President-Federal Regulatory Affairs Jeffrey Lanning and Senior Associate General Counsel Craig Brown told Wireline Bureau officials Oct. 21, according to an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1sYFsGj) posted Friday in docket 14-104. The combined firm also should be required to provide access to its entrance conduit to on-net buildings at commercially reasonable rates, terms and conditions, the CenturyLink officials said. The deal increases the urgency for the commission to approve CenturyLink's forbearance petition (see 1410070050), said that telco. CenturyLink said it isn’t asking the FCC to deny tw telecom/Level 3. Level 3 was not immediately available for comment.

The FCC should issue a notice seeking comment on “alternate approaches” to collecting special access market data instead of its current data collection effort, USTelecom said in an application for review Friday. USTelecom said the commission had ordered a two-year collection effort, but the Office of Management and Budget only approved a one-year effort. The one-year effort creates an “obvious conflict” with the commission’s “determination that a comprehensive review of the special access marketplace required the collection of data covering two years,” USTelecom said. The filing was not yet posted in docket 05-25.

Under a Title I regime, consumer and business usage of the Internet has tripled over the past five years according to Cisco analysis, USTelecom President Walter McCormick said in a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler (http://bit.ly/1tRynL9). “Given these growth projections and the success the nation has enjoyed under a Title I environment, we urge the Commission to avoid any proscriptive regulatory policy that would threaten future investment and innovation,” McCormick wrote. “Proponents of extreme measures, such as Title II reclassification of broadband, have not provided evidence to indicate that investment and traffic growth would be better under Title II, or that the entire sector -- edge, content, and broadband -- could be any more vibrant under Title II than it has been under the current longstanding Title I regime.”

Neustar is continuing to protest the North American Numbering Council’s (NANC) recommendation that Telcordia be selected as the next local number portability administrator. The latest complaint came in a letter to the FCC and in meetings with agency officials Oct. 14 and 15, said ex parte filings posted Tuesday in docket 95-116. Neustar has been providing LNPA services “flawlessly” and NANC “fails to provide a sufficient factual basis” for the recommendation, Neustar officials including President Lisa Hook told Wireline Bureau Chief Julie Veach and other commission officials (http://bit.ly/1FDjZcL). Hook, Neustar Senior Vice President-General Counsel Leonard Kennedy, Deputy General Counsel Scott Deutchman, Vice President-Product Development Bill Reidway, Wiley Rein’s Thomas Navin and Kellogg Huber’s Aaron Panner made the same arguments in a separate meeting with Chairman Tom Wheeler’s aide, Daniel Alvarez, the filing said. The commission should issue an NPRM, Neustar officials said at both meetings, because it does not have before it a record that “adequately addresses the many significant technical, policy, and national-security issues that have been raised,” said the filing. Telcordia’s bid does not address several services Neustar now delivers, including the continued orchestration of large porting requests, access by law enforcement and auto-dialer users, said Neustar, which also continued to question Telcordia and parent company Ericsson’s neutrality. In an Oct. 17 letter (http://bit.ly/1ylbu10) to the commission, Neustar said Ericsson is “uniquely dependent on the success of a few major U.S. wireless providers. Ericsson is thus aligned with and subject to undue influence from the U.S. wireless industry,” the letter said. Telcordia has previously denied all of Neustar’s allegations (see 1408220053). Telcordia is “taking substantial steps to protect the security” of the Number Portability Administration Center database it is building, despite questions raised in the past by Neustar about Ericsson’s foreign ownership, said Telcordia President Richard Jacowleff and several others representing Telcordia, including former Public Safety Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett, now with Venable. They met Oct. 15 with Public Safety Bureau Chief David Simpson, Deputy Chief Ken Moran and Wireline Bureau Deputy Chief Lisa Gelb and other agency officials, said an ex parte filing also posted Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1oul2Xe). Telcordia is not reusing foreign code but writing its own, Telcordia said. The selection process envisioned working out specifics about security issues during contract negotiation and Telcordia intends to work with law enforcement on a testing process as part of the transition, the filing said.