USTelecom petitioned the FCC to give ILECs a break on various legacy rules so they can concentrate on the buildout of fiber and modern communications networks. The Monday petition has a list of rules for which it seeks commission forbearance.

A petition being submitted to the FCC to update rules acting as barriers to competition and broadband investment will be discussed by USTelecom and CenturyLink officials at a media call Monday, said a news release from the groups Friday. Scheduled to be involved are Steve Davis, USTelecom board chairman and CenturyLink executive vice president-public policy and government affairs, and USTelecom CEO Walter McCormick.

AT&T’s net neutrality proposal to bar prioritization dictated by broadband providers, but allow them if requested by customers, would address concerns about paid prioritization while passing muster in the courts, said Vice President-Federal Regulatory Hank Hultquist, on a USTelecom open Internet panel Friday. The panel included two hybrid proposals recently cited by Wireline Chief Julie Veach as being considered by the FCC in the midst of the Section 706/Title II debate. AT&T officials met with the FCC chief technology officer and Office of Strategic Planning officials on Sept. 29, said an ex parte notice in docket 14-28, about how AT&T business customers can direct prioritization of certain types of traffic.

Industry slapped down the latest net neutrality proposal from House Commerce Committee ranking member Henry Waxman, D-Calif. He urged the FCC to consider a hybrid net neutrality proposal that combines Communications Act Section 706 and Title II authority, as expected (CD Oct 3 p1). Waxman sent FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler a 15-page letter Friday, signed by him alone. He had outlined a different proposal with some similarities in a May letter, then advising Title II as a regulatory backstop to rules crafted under Section 706.

An FCC order on circulation would ease some of the record collection, retention and reporting rules approved in a 2013 rural call completion order (CD Oct 29 p2), said commission and industry officials in interviews Wednesday. The draft order likely will be approved, said an agency official. It would grant The Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance (ITTA) and USTelecom’s petition to reconsider the requirements for some intraLATA calls but reject Comptel’s petition to reconsider another aspect of the order, which tightens the definition of small carriers exempted from the requirements, said the officials.

Executives who are members of Communications Security, Reliability & Interoperability Council (CSRIC) Working Group 4 said they're optimistic about ongoing FCC efforts to improve the communications sector’s cyber-risk management. Public Safety Bureau Chief David Simpson said during an FCBA event Tuesday night that FCC work on cybersecurity via CSRIC and other efforts “won’t be a recipe for perfection,” but he hopes it will improve the resiliency of 911 and other communications networks. “I think we'll see that in the outage reports” and other data, he said. Working Group 4 updated CSRIC Wednesday on its work to adapt the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework for communications sector use. (See separate report in this issue.) Working Group 4 Co-Chairman Robert Mayer had told us before the CSRIC meeting that the group had made “substantial progress” on that work (CD Sept 24 p4).

Communications Security, Reliability & Interoperability Council (CSRIC) Working Group 4 will be able to report at CSRIC’s meeting Wednesday that it has made “substantial progress” on its work to use the National Institute for Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework for communications sector needs, said Working Group 4 Co-Chair Robert Mayer in an interview.

AT&T’s comment in the Communications Act Section 706 notice of inquiry that wholesale obligations could deter it from making broadband investments is an “absurd argument,” Comptel said in a reply filed in docket 14-126 at Friday’s deadline. AT&T argued in Sept. 4 comments (http://bit.ly/1Af6UAO) that legacy regulations, like the wholesale obligations in sections 251 and 271, “may require carriers to maintain legacy TDM-based networks even after their IP networks are in place.” The claim that the obligations deter broadband investment “has never been proven,” Comptel said. The commission found in the IP transitions order that in the 15 years before deregulation in 2001, “the industry experienced ‘a torrent of new investment deployed over 200,000 miles of trenches and approximately 18 million miles of fiber -- enough fiber to circle the equator 750 times,'” Comptel said. AT&T’s claim of being required to maintain two networks “is nonsense,” Comptel said, because “the same physical infrastructure that has supported TDM-based services over the decades supports IP-based services.” The commission failed to provide “adequate support” for its proposal to increase the broadband download speed threshold to 10 Mbps, AT&T said in its reply made available Monday. The proposed increase “is not based on a reasonable analysis of how customers’ actually use broadband services,” said AT&T, which also criticized Public Knowledge and Netflix’s backing of a 25 Mbps benchmark. Public Knowledge’s comments were “based on a hypothetical average household that watches three HD movies simultaneously while using other basic device and online services,” while Netflix’s was “based on streaming super and ultra HD content,” AT&T said. There is no evidence “latency prevents consumers from using the applications listed in section 706, and thus there is no basis for the Commission to include it in evaluating broadband,” AT&T said. Replies filed Friday hadn’t been posted on the FCC Electronic Comment Filing System by our deadline. But major wireline players which filed initial comments -- including Fiber to the Home Council Americas, NCTA, Netflix, NTCA, Public Knowledge, TechFreedom and USTelecom -- told us they did not file replies. Some industry observers said the absence of filings in a proceeding that asked questions on topics such as increasing the broadband speed benchmark (CD Aug 6 p5). There’s a sense that the commission intends to move ahead regardless of the comments, said TechFreedom President Berin Szoka, a view shared by some others. That telecom attorneys are “completely overwhelmed by the absurdly intense series of deadlines the Commission has imposed” played a role, Szoka and others said. Spokespeople and attorneys for some of the groups said a sense the commission plans to move ahead with its proposal, including raising the broadband speed benchmark, was not a factor in why they did not file. They were too busy meeting a spate of deadlines on such other proceedings as on net neutrality and E-rate modernization, and felt their initial comments expressed their viewpoint, the sources said.

USTelecom hires Lynn Follansbee, leaving FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau Policy Division, as vice president-law and policy … Cox Communications moves Senior Vice President-Northeast John Wolfe to that job in southwest region, succeeding Steve Rizley, retiring.

Industry officials urged Congress to reconsider many elements of USF support policy, despite lauding the broad principles that have guided it. House Communications Subcommittee Republicans issued a white paper last month (http://1.usa.gov/1pmX66c) asking several questions about USF, seeking responses by Friday. It was the fifth white paper the subcommittee issued as part of efforts to overhaul the Communications Act, an initiative announced in December. Initial responses, which the committee has not posted online but were shared with us, were on what parties considered necessary changes to the USF contribution mechanism.