Comcast names Ana Salas Siegel, ex-21st Century Fox, general counsel, NBCUniversal’s Hispanic Enterprises and Content, effective June 1 ... National Emergency Number Association hires Christopher Blake Carver, ex-New York City Fire Department, as PSAP (public safety answering point) operations director ... Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy hires Ralph Everett, ex-Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, as senior industry and innovation fellow working on USF, broadband and other technology issues ... F5 Networks hires Kristen Roby Dimlow, ex-Microsoft, to lead global human resources organization as executive vice president ... LogRhythm, cybersecurity company, hires James Carder, ex-Mayo Clinic, as chief information security officer and vice president, LogRhythm Labs ... USTelecom names Robert Hunt, GVTC, board chairman, succeeding CenturyLink Executive Vice President Steve Davis, who retired and is being succeeded on the board by the telco's John Jones, who succeeded Davis at the company (see 1504020030).
Indiana's governor this week signed telecom tax legislation into law that increases the statewide 911 fee for a standard user from 91 cents to $1 per month and the prepaid wireless charge from 50 cents to $1 per transaction, the Indiana General Assembly's website said. The law also says the statewide 911 board may increase the enhanced prepaid wireless charge and the statewide 911 fee only one time after June 30 this year and before July 1, 2020. It establishes a $1 enhanced prepaid wireless charge, a $1 statewide 911 fee, and payment schedules for providers that are designated as eligible telecom carriers for purposes of receiving reimbursement from the USF. The law authorizes the board to audit wireless service providers on an annual basis to determine compliance with statewide 911 laws. Beginning with FY 2016, it requires the 911 board to ensure a distribution of statewide 911 fees to each county in an amount equal to that distributed to the county in FY 2014.
FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly assured the WTA spring meeting Tuesday that he will make finishing “the remaining pieces” of USF reform, especially those related to the Connect America Fund for rate-of-return carriers, a top priority. “Everything else that the Commission may want to do with universal service -- make service more affordable for low-income consumers, wire schools and libraries, and connect rural health care facilities -- depends on having … infrastructure in place,” O’Rielly said in written remarks. “I have been dismayed by the haphazard approach that the Commission has taken to USF reforms, ratcheting up spending and expected broadband speeds while leaving millions of Americans unserved.” The FCC’s two E-rate orders expanded the program but offered little actual reform, O’Rielly said. The first order “just tacked on new spending for Wi-Fi within facilities regardless of whether they need the additional capacity or have adequate bandwidth to the building,” he said: The second “made it easier for entities to build their own fiber networks with no meaningful checks or limits to ensure that the funding will be targeted to truly unserved areas or used cost-effectively.” The FCC increased the E-rate cap by another $1.5 billion per year, he said. “At the time, there were assurances that we would not actually reach the new cap for several years,” he said. “But the window just closed, and I suspect that we may be very close to if not already at the new cap.” WTA members are already paying a price for so-called USF reform, he charged. “Without proper notice, the Commission decided that you will have to bid to provide service at rates to be determined at a later date as part of your Connect America Fund obligations,” he said. “Because that task was delegated to the [Wireline] Bureau, I won’t even get a chance to weigh in on their decisions.”
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler will come to Capitol Hill for his seventh hearing of the year next week, this time before Senate appropriators. The leadership of the Senate Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee told us they plan to bring Wheeler for a hearing May 12, both expecting net neutrality to come up in some form. But Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., is trying to ward off GOP appropriators from tackling the FCC’s net neutrality order through the funding process.
The FCC said it may fine Simple Network $100,000 for "allegedly providing interstate telecommunications services without registering with the FCC through the Universal Service Administrative Company." The company's alleged registration failure allowed it to avoid making payments that support federal programs, including the USF, potentially creating higher fees for others that do register, said an FCC release and an Enforcement Bureau notice of apparent liability Monday.
The Supreme Court said it won't hear appeals of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision a year ago upholding the FCC’s requirement that USF recipients provide broadband. Industry officials said the decision was a big positive for the FCC because if the court agreed to hear the case it would have meant many months of uncertainty for the FCC’s landmark November 2011 order “modernizing” USF and the intercarrier compensation regime. The Monday court order also shifted the fund to support broadband as well as traditional voice service.
Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., is still collecting lawmaker signatures on his draft letter to the FCC pushing stand-alone broadband USF support, an aide to Cramer said Friday. In recent weeks, Cramer, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., have quietly sought support from colleagues for a pair of such bicameral draft letters (see 1504210033). NTCA framed the letters’ goal as a lobbying priority and recently hosted several of its members in Washington to lobby lawmakers. Cramer initially set Friday as a tentative deadline for gathering signatures but he has extended that to May 8, the aide said. Last Congress, a similar House letter snagged several scores of lawmaker signatures.
ISPs likely will follow many net neutrality rules, even if February's FCC order (see 1504100046) is overturned by a court or overridden by Congress, said two lawyers on different sides of the issue. The order's prohibition on blocking or throttling likely will be followed by broadband providers even absent rules, said Center for Democracy & Technology General Counsel Erik Stallman, who supports the order, and Convergence Law Institute Vice President Solveig Singleton, who calls herself skeptical of net neutrality. Speaking Thursday at a Reed College legal network event, they said experimentation with paid prioritization might happen without the order, which bans it unless a waiver allows certain content to receive higher priority. Real-time video could be subject to such experimentation if allowed, Singleton said. ISPs "view the Internet as essentially a two-sided market, and they would like the ability to charge both sides of the market" through paid prioritization, Stallman said.
The FCC could be headed for a vote at its June 18 meeting on a rulemaking reshaping the Lifeline program, including providing support for Internet access, agency and industry officials said. With a light agenda at both the April and May meetings, Chairman Tom Wheeler appears likely to take on a bigger, more controversial issue in June, and Lifeline changes could be ready for a vote, the officials said.
Charles Benton, 84, died at home in Evanston, Illinois, Wednesday of cancer. He chaired the Benton Foundation, which he founded in 1981 with a grant from his father. At the foundation, he advocated for regulation on media and telecom matters such as broadcast ownership and the USF. President Jimmy Carter named Benton chairman of the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science and of the first White House conference on library and information services. President Bill Clinton appointed him to the Presidential Advisory Committee on the Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters. And President Barack Obama named him to the board of the Institute for Museum and Library Services. Benton is survived by his wife, two children, including daughter Adrianne Furniss, who is the Benton Foundation's executive director, a sister and five grandchildren. Funeral and other arrangements are pending.