Court appeals of the FCC net neutrality order by Alamo Broadband and USTelecom (see 1503230066) are premature, the agency wrote the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation Friday. The order doesn't take effect until it's published in the Federal Register, which hasn't happened, said the letter from Deputy Associate General Counsel Richard Welch. The FCC assumes the court that's randomly selected to consolidate both appeals will rule on whether they're premature, the letter said, and the agency plans to file a motion to dismiss both petitions as premature once the court is selected. The FCC’s attempt to justify the reclassification of broadband by pointing to industry investments in mobile voice under Communications Act Title II is “revisionist history” and “simply not borne out by the facts,” CTIA said in a blog post Friday. Wireless carriers’ investment has focused on the “heretofore unregulated market for mobile broadband networks” rather than the regulated voice market, the association said. In the past decade, carriers invested $260 billion in their networks, and another $90 billion purchasing spectrum at auctions, "primarily to handle mobile broadband traffic,” said the group. “Of course, the wireless industry will continue to invest, but the uncertainty generated by the FCC’s action means there will be less investment. And that’s no illusion.” Free Press disputed the argument, in a news release Friday. The group noted, among other things, that the annual growth rate in wireless capital spending between 1993 and 2002, before wireless was classified as a deregulated Title I service in 2007, was more than seven times higher than the annual rate in the following decade. The rate from that decade was seven times higher than the rate from 2003 to 2013, Free Press said.

Release of the FCC net neutrality order brought limited clarity to how the rules and the commission’s accompanying reclassification of broadband as a Communications Act Title II service will affect state telecom regulation, state telecom lawyers and observers said in interviews last week. That lack of clarity largely stems from continued uncertainty about whether the net neutrality rules -- and particularly Title II reclassification -- will survive legal scrutiny, lawyers said. Alamo Broadband and USTelecom filed lawsuits Monday seeking reviews of the net neutrality order at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, respectively (see 1503230066). The order faces continued scrutiny on Capitol Hill (see 1503200048).

In unanimously authorizing the beginning of local number portability administrator contract negotiations with Telcordia, FCC commissioners Thursday highlighted the savings from selecting the company’s bid compared with what the current LNPA, Neustar, has been charging.

The draft order authorizing beginning negotiations with Telcordia to be the next local number portability administrator (see 1503040053) is expected to be approved by the FCC Thursday. Details were being negotiated Wednesday, with one commission official saying there were “moving pieces.” If approved, Neustar, the current LNPA, is expected to challenge the decision in court, said those involved in the discussion.

Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery sued the FCC over the order pre-empting portions of North Carolina and Tennessee state laws that restrict municipalities’ ability to deploy government-owned broadband networks. The FCC voted 3-2 Feb. 26 to issue the order, which specifically pre-empts the state laws for the Electric Power Board (EPB) of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Wilson, North Carolina (see 1502260030). Slatery, a Republican, had been expected to sue the FCC over the order. North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat, is expected to sue the agency. It hadn’t received any challenge from North Carolina, said an agency spokesman Tuesday. The FCC is “confident that our decision to pre-empt laws in two states that prevented community broadband providers from meeting the needs and demands of local consumers will withstand judicial scrutiny,” he said.

Verizon General Counsel Craig Silliman said Congress will have to take on net neutrality. Silliman pointed to FCC struggles in finding a legal basis for the rules. “I’m sympathetic -- the FCC is wrestling around some tough legal issues,” he said at Brookings Institution Tuesday. “The irony of all this is Congress could do all this in a two-page bill.”

Alamo Broadband appealing Monday the FCC net neutrality order in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and USTelecom in the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (see 1503230066) were examples of circuit shopping for a favorable court to hear the cases, said public interest lawyers in interviews. It's "about circuit shopping,” said Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld. “The D.C. Circuit and the 5th Circuit are generally considered to be extremely conservative, anti-regulation, and generally hostile to the FCC.” Litigators won't "forgo any possible advantage, including looking for the forum they think will be most favorable to their appeal,” said Feld.

Alamo Broadband, a wireless ISP in San Antonio, and USTelecom filed what appear to be the first formal appeals in federal court of the FCC Feb. 26 net neutrality order. The challenges were made Monday based on the legal theory that the declaratory ruling portion of the decision became final March 12, so appeals were due Monday. While it's not clear who will lead the industry charge against the order, other challenges are still expected to be filed within 10 days of publication of the order in the Federal Register.

The communications sector and federal agencies plan to begin developing a pilot program over the next month to further develop and test metrics for the FCC Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council’s report on sector cybersecurity risk management, said industry executives and government officials Thursday. The CSRIC report, adopted Wednesday, was meant to adapt the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Cybersecurity Framework for communications sector use (see 1503180056). The report continued to draw praise Thursday, with industry executives and federal officials saying during a USTelecom event that the report represented a turning point for communications sector cybersecurity.

The FCC can increase broadband deployment by tackling the “excessive and increasing costs for video programming,” the American Cable Association said in comments responding to January's Notice of Inquiry into improving deployment (see 1501290043). The commission should update its program access rules to preserve competition in video distribution markets, by taking steps to allow a multichannel video programming distributor buying group like the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC) to bring a complaint against discriminatory rates, terms and conditions by a cable-affiliated programmer, ACA said in the comments posted Monday in docket 14-126. More than 900 small and medium-sized broadband and video providers nationally rely on the NCTC to negotiate the bulk of their programming agreements, ACA said. But because of the commission’s “overly-restrictive” definition of buying group, those that rely on NCTC “are without program access protections” and are “at risk of facing higher rates,” the filing said. The commission also should create a rebuttable presumption against allowing exclusive cable programming contracts, ACA said. The NOI had been issued in conjunction with the agency’s decision to increase the broadband speed benchmark to 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload, and the agency’s finding that deployment is not occurring in a reasonable and timely fashion. CTIA in its comments posted Friday objected to mobile deployment not being factored into the conclusion. To increase mobile broadband deployment, the agency should free additional spectrum for wireless broadband, and continue to facilitate wireless infrastructure deployment, through such steps as developing a programmatic agreement to facilitate the deployment of distributed antenna systems and small cells, CTIA said. The commission also should increase funding for the Mobility Fund, which the association called “relatively paltry” compared with funding for wireline providers. USTelecom and NCTA had also responded to the NOI (see 1503060064).