USTelecom slammed Free Press in a Friday blog post for its arguments in favor of reclassifying broadband as a Title II service. Reclassification “would create unambiguously negative pressures on broadband provider investment that would not exist absent reclassification,” wrote Patrick Brogan, USTelecom industry analyst (http://bit.ly/1nX9zbp). Imposing common carrier regulation on broadband “seems unnecessarily risky and potentially counterproductive for policy goals dependent on more investment, such as expanding deployment to all parts of the country and enhancing U.S. global competitiveness,” he wrote. “The post is full of mischaracterizations, and it still doesn’t hang together,” Free Press fired back in an email. “Getting the Facts Wrong might be a better title for it.” Free Press isn’t interested just in the “investment choices” of a few telcos, the group said. Internet freedom is good for the entire economy. “Avoiding common carriage principles and giving ISPs the green light to discriminate certainly is not going to promote investment by anyone —- neither the edge companies, nor the network providers who'd be able to profit from artificial scarcity in a world of access tolls,” Free Press said.

Local Choice, a Senate proposal circulated Friday (CD Aug 11 p12) set to overhaul retransmission consent rules, will likely face an uphill battle and may not become attached to the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization process this year, industry observers told us. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and ranking member John Thune, R-S.D., floated the discussion draft, which broadcasters have attacked and other observers questioned, despite praise from retransmission rule overhaul advocates. Some will lobby to ensure Local Choice advances, they said.

Wireless carriers asked the FCC to revise Connect America Fund (CAF) rules to remove any discrimination against wireless. The request came in filings at the FCC, most of which were posted Monday. The FCC sought comment on rules for the CAF II program, which will provide up to $1.8 billion per year in support to providers that offer broadband service in commission-identified eligible areas. The FCC also sought comment on the Mobility Fund Phase II program (MFII).

Tech companies united to tell Congress to ensure broadband Internet providers don’t engage in any “market abuse” of paid peering arrangements. The Internet Association submitted comments Friday in response to the House Communications Subcommittee white paper issued as part of its Communications Act update process, one of many comments from stakeholders such as Comptel, T-Mobile and USTelecom (CD Aug 11 p7).

The FCC should move forward to approve Telcordia as the new Local Number Portability Administrator (LNPA), taking the contract away from Neustar, said USTelecom and CTIA in joint reply comments posted by the FCC Monday. Federal law enforcement didn’t pick sides but filed reply comments asking the commission to move forward with caution.

The FCC should clarify that the elimination of support in areas covered 100 percent by an unsubsidized competitor does not apply to price cap areas, USTelecom said in a petition (http://bit.ly/1oqU2pk) for reconsideration or clarification posted Friday in docket 10-90. If the elimination is intended to apply to price cap carriers, the agency should reconsider the provision, the petition said. Price cap carriers received no notice of the potential application of this rule to them, the petition said. The discussion in the USF/ICC Transformation Order was eliminating support in those situations to rate-of-return carriers, the petition said.

Sprint, T-Mobile and others told Congress that the U.S. needs regulated interconnection, even amid and following the IP transition, said comments submitted to the House Communications Subcommittee. Comments were due Friday and generally not yet released online, addressing a July white paper (http://1.usa.gov/1r0IyeZ) on interconnection that House Republicans released as part of their initiative to overhaul the Communications Act. USTelecom and some others strongly disagreed with Sprint and T-Mobile and slammed the notion of such rules or state involvement.

An FCC order on circulation would generically ask the agency’s Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service to examine changes to USF contribution methodology without recommending how the group should proceed, said agency and industry officials in interviews this week.

The petition for reconsideration filed by the American Cable Association and NCTA about protesting eligibility for Connect America Fund Phase II support should be denied, USTelecom said in comments posted to docket 10-90 Friday. ACA and NCTA had protested the Wireline Bureau’s decision to require that parties present evidence of current or former customers in a census block in order to challenge the determination that the block is unserved (http://bit.ly/WX2Dpu). “The reasonable evidentiary standard adopted by the Bureau will help ensure that residents of rural areas are not denied the opportunity to have broadband available to them based upon the type of thin assertions” made during the challenge process, USTelecom said.

Basing net neutrality rules on Communications Act Title II would mean small- and medium-sized ISPs would be “burdened with the costs required to retain lawyers” and “to administer the reporting and other rules that would no doubt go along with it,” 99 companies wrote Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, hoping to push President Barack Obama’s administration to oppose treating the companies as common carriers. “We want to get the president’s ear,” said Alex Phillips, FCC committee chairman for the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association, of the letter to the cabinet-level agency from WISPA members.