The FCC Friday formally denied two petitions asking the agency to stay the February net neutrality order. They were filed by AT&T, CenturyLink, CTIA, USTelecom and the Wireless ISP Association, and also by NCTA and the American Cable Association. That development was expected (see 1505010059). The order was signed by the chiefs of the Wireline and Wireless bureaus. “Petitioners have failed to demonstrate that they are likely to succeed on the merits,” one of the things the FCC looks at in deciding whether to grant a stay, the agency said. The FCC also denied an argument that industry faces “irreparable harm” if a stay is not granted. “Petitioners’ broad arguments regarding an environment of uncertainty ignore that they already were subject to a case-by-case standard governing their conduct,” the order states. “For over two years while the 2010 Open Internet rules were in effect, all fixed broadband providers were subject to a prohibition on ‘unreasonable discrimination.' Moreover, all [broadband Internet access service] providers are subject to general legal standards under other federal and state laws and regulations that govern their conduct with respect to protecting consumers and competition.”
The FCC seeks comment by July 7 on its process for carrying out rural broadband experiments as part of its tech transitions and rural broadband experiments orders. Comments on the necessity of the information collection is required under the Paperwork Reduction Act, said the commission in a Friday Federal Register notice.
Verizon countered NTCH arguments that responses filed under seal by Verizon in response to FCC interrogatories in a dispute between the companies over roaming rates should be available for viewing by staff for the smaller carrier. NTCH said the documents should be labeled “confidential,” rather than “highly confidential,” so its employees can see the responses. “The designation was appropriate,” Verizon countered. “This is competitive data that includes rates and traffic volumes Verizon receives from and pays to dozens of other carriers -- some of which (including Verizon) compete directly with NTCH. The Commission has consistently treated such data as highly confidential. Allowing NTCH business personnel access to this data would give NTCH a significant competitive advantage over other carriers and would impair Verizon’s business.” NTCH said it had attempted to “resolve this dispute without the need for FCC intervention but was unable to do so.” The filings were made in docket 14-212.
The Chicago Board of Education urged the FCC to act on Blackboard’s petition seeking clarification of Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) rules on calls to wireless phones (see 1503230070). Blackboard, which provides a mass notification platform for schools, argues that its clients should be able to send texts on emergency weather closures, threat situations, event scheduling or “other important education-related information” without worrying about violating the TCPA. “As the initial comments demonstrate, the TCPA does not apply to the mass notifications [Chicago Public Schools] and other educational institutions send to the school community to provide education-related information,” the board of education said. “These messages directly affect the health and safety of America's school children, as well as their parents and guardians.” The comments were posted in docket 02-278.
Austin, Buffalo, Chattanooga, Los Angeles, Oakland and others including Qualcomm expressed interest in a Department of Housing and Urban Development broadband initiative to help low-income students and their families narrow the digital divide. The department plans to select about 20 HUD-assisted communities to participate in “digital opportunity demonstrations” aimed at improving tenants’ educational performance and economic outcomes through better Internet access. HUD hasn’t specified a project budget or timetable, but is seeking to stimulate public-private collaboration to boost broadband adoption and use, and at some point is expected to formally invite applications. In comments that were due Friday and posted this week, various localities and others voiced general enthusiasm for the initiative, with a few concerns sprinkled in. Chattanooga and related institutions filed the most extensive comments, noting their broadband efforts, including the 9,000-mile fiber network built out by EPB, the municipal electric power distributor. As of April, the city said, over 5,000 homes were using EPB’s $70/month gigabit offering, and “tens of thousands” were subscribed to its $58/month Mbps offering, with a new $27/month 100 Mbps offering just announced for families with students qualifying for free or discounted school lunches. Qualcomm was the only industry party to comment, saying it wanted to participate in the program to help close a growing “Homework Gap” between students with good Internet access at home and those without it (see 1505070013). “We hear too many stories of students sitting on their school steps late at night in order to complete and submit homework assignments as well as stories of parents having to drive to a local fast food restaurant late at night so their child can access the Internet,” Qualcomm said. It urged HUD to look to provide low-income students with mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets) with embedded connectivity to give them 24/7 access. Some commenters voiced concerns the HUD section criteria were too restrictive, including that communities already be participating in two or more federal “place-based” initiatives. Oakland said it wouldn’t be able to participate in the digital demonstration unless changes are made. The National Housing Conference said the initiative should do more to focus on rural areas to “avoid an unintended bias toward urban communities.”
AT&T countered Netflix's allegations that AT&T's proposed purchase of DirecTV would invite discrimination against online video distributors (OVDs), and urged the FCC to reject any related conditions. In a filing responding to Netflix's allegations (see 1505050028) posted Thursday to docket 14-90, AT&T tweaked Netflix for opposing the AT&T/DirecTV deal after previously saying it would be a "plus for Netflix." AT&T disputed the contention that Netflix would be harmed unless AT&T is barred from charging content providers seeking to connect to its networks. The FCC "should reject any such condition, especially when imposed on only one company in a hotly-contested broadband marketplace dominated by incumbent cable companies," said the telco. It said Netflix overlooked its agreement to gain long-term direct access to AT&T's network "on terms that will allow Netflix to continue to thrive in the marketplace." AT&T said Netflix enjoyed "spectacular" growth since 2013, even when it encountered network congestion, and AT&T cited reports that Netflix commented that recent interconnection deals, such as with AT&T, wouldn't hurt its margins. AT&T included information about its Netflix contract with the specifics redacted. AT&T said Netflix ignored two technological and economic realities: "AT&T could not effectively and persistently degrade any OVD without degrading all OVDs and degrading any single OVD, much less all OVDs, would risk significant loss of broadband and bundle customers while saving few, if any, video customers." It would be self-defeating for it to degrade OVD performance because it could lose broadband profit and "much greater double and triple-play revenues and profits, which include video profits," said the telco. "It makes no economic or business sense for AT&T to pursue the hypothetical OVD degradation strategy put forth by Netflix, either before or after the transaction."
“The vast majority" of VoIP customers of Cablevision and Charter Communications don't buy batteries to back up the service when the power goes out, executives of the cable operators told FCC Public Safety Bureau officials, Charter said in an FCC filing. "Charter and Cablevision make significant efforts to educate their customers about the VoIP services they offer, including that such service will not work during a power outage without a backup battery." The filing was posted Tuesday in dockets including 14-174, which was related to an NPRM asking about "steps the Commission could take to safeguard continuity of communications throughout a power outage, including the possible adoption of new rules."
Katherine Race Brin was named FTC chief privacy officer, succeeding Peter Miller, Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said Wednesday. Brin's job will be "to ensure that the FTC complies with our privacy obligations,” Ramirez said. The CPO “coordinates efforts to implement and review the agency’s policies and procedures for safeguarding all sensitive information, and chairs its Privacy Steering Committee and the Breach Notification Response Team,” the agency said in a news release. Before becoming acting CPO, Brin was senior adviser to the director of the Consumer Protection Bureau, where she worked on legislative and policy matters involving privacy, security and technology, the FTC said. From 2007 to 2014, Brin was a staff attorney in the Division of Privacy and Identity Protection and “played a key role in many of the FTC’s most significant privacy and data security cases,” the agency said.
The FCC Wireline Bureau asked parties to refresh the record on a cable/CLEC 2011 petition to revise a telecom rate formula to better allocate costs among carriers attaching lines to poles, which are most often owned by electric utilities. In a 2011 order, the FCC took steps to drive down the pole-attachment rates paid by telecom carriers to levels comparable to what cable broadband providers paid. Crafting a new telecom formula, the FCC assumed there would generally be five entities attaching to poles in urban areas and three in rural areas, which when combined with other assumptions, yielded a telecom rate equal to the cable rate. But the telecom formula didn't further lower costs -- and, thus, rates -- when more entities attached lines to poles than assumed. Comptel, NCTA and tw telecom (now Level 3) filed a reconsideration petition asking that the telecom rate rules "be clarified or amended by specifying [that] the cost allocator to be applied [will be] based on the number of attaching entities." Cable broadband providers used to be able to claim the lower cable pole-attachment rates but over time were sometimes subjected to the telecom rates, and now appear to be squarely covered by the telecom formula under the FCC reclassification of broadband Internet access as a Communications Act Title II telecom service, an industry official said. Comments are due 21 days after the notice appears in the Federal Register, replies 10 days later, the Wednesday notice said.
The FCC should adopt proposed rules to add 22 MHz to U.S. wireless broadband spectrum inventory and ease the congestion that's diminishing the quality of Wi-Fi service at high-traffic 802.11 hot spots and other locations, Globalstar said in an FCC filing posted Monday in docket 13-213. Globalstar also expressed support for the rules because they would let the company provide low-power terrestrial mobile broadband service in its own licensed and unlicensed spectrum, it said. Globalstar General Counsel Barbee Ponder and others met with officials including International Bureau Chief Mindel De La Torre and Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Julius Knapp. Others have been skeptical that the company's mobile broadband service is ready to be deployed because of concerns over interference (see 1504280038).