Verizon denied it unlawfully delayed pole access to Charter Communications in New York state. Charter complained at the New York Public Service Commission that Verizon, plus Frontier and an electric company, kept it from meeting the broadband deployment commitment it made to the New York Public Service Commission when the agency approved the cable provider's buy of Time Warner Cable (see 1707170051). “Verizon has been working cooperatively with Charter to address its pole access needs, and will continue to,” Verizon responded Tuesday in Case 15-M-0388. “Unfortunately, Verizon’s efforts to facilitate access to Verizon’s facilities for Charter were ... consistently met with slow or no action by Charter. It is Charter, not Verizon, who is responsible for its failure to meet its first-year benchmark, and the Commission should dismiss Charter’s complaint and reject Charter’s transparent attempt to deflect the blame for its own failures onto Verizon.”

Charter Communications protested New York's “unrealistic demands” in discovery in the state attorney general's lawsuit alleging the company deliberately misled customers about internet speeds. The AG told the New York Supreme Court last week that Charter wasn’t cooperating with discovery and was late to file objections (see 1707270025). In a Friday response, Charter said it filed objections several weeks ahead of an Aug. 10 deadline. Also, the company urged the court to keep a June 1 date to close discovery and reject the AG’s request to move up the deadline to Sept. 27 this year. "Plaintiff’s unrealistic demands reflect a failure to appreciate the burden of its own document requests and the reality of document production in cases involving large amounts of" electronically stored information (ESI), Charter wrote. “Plaintiff has served two sets of document requests including 27 separate requests (many with multiple subparts), nearly all of which demand the production of an extremely broad category of documents and records and some of which require data collection across millions of customers. There are literally terabytes of ESI … that are potentially responsive to the document requests, spread across more than 70 custodians in a broad range of distinct business units, spanning a timeframe of more than five years, from two separate companies that recently merged.”

Charter Communications isn’t cooperating with discovery in the New York attorney general’s lawsuit alleging the company deliberately misled customers about internet speeds (see 1705110025), the AG office (OAG) said in a Wednesday letter to New York Supreme Court Justice Peter Sherwood. Charter hasn't "produced a single responsive document" since OAG served its first request May 17, said OAG Senior Adviser Simon Brandler. Under Civil Practice Law Rules, the company had to file objections to the request within 20 days, but didn’t do so until June 30, he said. "In effect, Defendants have imposed a unilateral stay of discovery, in violation of the [CPLR], the rules of the Commercial Division, and the specific order of this Court.” Charter declined comment.

FreedomWorks Foundation urged the FCC to act on a pending NPRM to reserve at least one blank TV channel in every market for white spaces devices and wireless mics after the incentive auction and repacking. The NPRM was released a year ago under former Chairman Tom Wheeler (see 1506160043) with dissents by current Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Mike O’Rielly. “White space provides wireless Internet connection to anything with connection capability,” the foundation said in a filing in docket 15-146. “Most importantly, white space coverage is nearly universal, blanketing a much larger area than broadband.”

New York’s broadband-speeds lawsuit against Charter is “a paradigm exercise of the State’s police power to protect its citizens from deceptive and fraudulent practices,” New York said in opposition Monday to Charter’s motion to dismiss at the New York Supreme Court. The company asked for dismissal after a U.S. District Court returned the case to state court in April (see 1705110025). FCC transparency rules don't pre-empt state consumer protection laws, New York said. The state disagreed with the company's argument that advertising maximum speeds isn’t deceptive. Those speeds are "impossible to attain because of … deficient network management practices and obsolete in-home equipment,” New York said. "Telling customers that their plans could go 'up to' specified Internet speeds when in fact they cannot is straightforward deception." New York disagreed the court should stay the case until the FCC rules on an NCTA/USTelecom request for broadband speed disclosure rules (see 1706190050): “Not only does this argument fail to appreciate the Court’s competence and authority to adjudicate state consumer protection claims, it is a transparent effort to delay this Court’s resolution while lobbying the FCC to support Spectrum-TWC’s legal arguments here.”

Hughes Network Systems is seeking FCC International Bureau approval to launch its Ka- and Q/V-band geostationary orbit satellite, HNS 95W. In a bureau application Wednesday, Hughes said it will provide broadband at speeds "significantly in excess" of the FCC's current 25 Mbps download/3 Mbps upload definition and is intended to support such applications as 5G and IoT. It said HNS 95W will replace Spaceway 3 at 95 degrees west. It said the cut-off date has passed for Q/V-band non-geostationary orbit satellite applications (see 1611010060), but the public notice didn't apply to GSO applicants and it requests waiver of any applicable cut-off deadline.

Ex-FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said tech leaders at a presidential meeting this Thursday with "America's technology leadership" should help President Donald Trump see "the importance of keeping the internet fast, fair, and open." "We are on the cusp of another internet reinvention called Web 3.0, and its opening act, the internet of things," Wheeler said in a Brookings Institution blog post Tuesday. "Whether the promise of Web 3.0 is fully realized, however, will depend on the policy decisions we make today -- specifically, the kinds of policy decisions that will hopefully be discussed with the president. The promise of Web 3.0 is finished without open networks to connect it. Precisely, the kind of openness the Trump FCC is trying to remove by undoing the existing Open Internet Rules." Wheeler said Web 3.0 is different from 1.0, which made the internet available through browsers and search engines, and 2.0 which "democratized" the internet with user-generated content. "Today, the web is a platform for requesting and displaying existing information. In contrast, Web 3.0 is the orchestration of raw intelligence to produce something new. Embedded and connected microchips in everything from cars to coffeepots flood the network with a tsunami of intelligence that Web 3.0 channels to create new products and services," he wrote. McKinsey estimates 3.0's "transformation in business practices and models" could have an $11 trillion impact on the global economy, but the "benefits require being free of interference from those who run the networks that take us to the internet," he wrote. His comments echoed a speech he gave at a Silicon Flatirons event in February (see 1702130035).

Cisco’s global IP traffic forecast shows the wisdom of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s bid to increase the agency’s use of data and economic analyses, American Enterprise Institute Center for Internet, Communications and Technology Policy Visiting Scholar Daniel Lyons blogged Monday. Pai proposed in April to launch an FCC Office of Economics and Data (see 1701310062 and 1704050047). Cisco forecast rising use of content delivery networks, smartphones and video streaming as drivers of IP traffic (see 1706080021), which shows “network congestion, which has largely disappeared from the public debate with the 4G revolution, may reemerge as a policy issue,” Lyons said. Pai is “correct to seek more data-driven policy recommendations" within the FCC, and the agency “should seek similar input from the engineers who actually run the networks and understand these trends in real time,” he said.

High-quality broadband, satellite communications and various devices play roles in e-health, early replies in FCC docket 16-46 showed Thursday. Comments were due later that day. "Reliable, secure, high-speed, high-bandwidth, low-latency broadband access is critical to enabling access to care and modern healthcare technologies," said Baxter. "As healthcare organizations transition from wired to wireless, and as data moves from within an organization’s private network to the broadband network, the cybersecurity, privacy, legal, and other risks grow. ... Guidance, tools, and policies" can help, it said: "Broadband-enabled services are used in all healthcare settings." Initial comments show such solutions "always depend upon a reliable and secure broadband connection of sufficient speed and capacity," wrote the Satellite Industry Association. SIA touted satellite broadband as a telehealth solution. Nokia said medical research shows health "benefits of self-monitoring in the areas of activity, weight and blood pressure and sleep." Initial comments on a public notice urged the FCC to hike rural healthcare funding; the USF healthcare connect fund has $400 million yearly (see 1705250035).

Global annual IP traffic will total 3.3 zettabytes by 2021, up from 1.2 in 2016, Cisco reported. Monthly global traffic in 2021 is expected to reach 278 exabytes, up from 96 exabytes per month last year. That will parallel an expected rise in the total number of internet users to 4.6 billion people, from 3.3 billion in 2016. Increased adoption of personal devices and machine-to-machine connections and increased video streaming are among primary drivers of the global IP traffic increase, Cisco said. “As global digital transformation continues to impact billions of consumers and businesses, the network and security will be essential to support the future of the Internet,” said General Manager-Service Provider Business Yvette Kanouff in a news release.