USTelecom Senior Vice President-Law and Policy Jonathan Banks expressed concern about the speed metric used in the FCC’s 2014 Measuring Broadband America Report on Fixed Broadband during a July 16 meeting that broadband providers, public interest groups and others had with commission staff, according to an ex parte report (http://bit.ly/1o0m8lW) posted Friday. Banks questioned using the metric of whether users experienced the advertised speed 80 percent of the time, the report said. The FCC felt comfortable with the measure but it could be discussed further at the next meeting of the group, said Walter Johnson, chief of the FCC’s Electromagnetic Compatibility Division, according to the filing. The FCC is putting in place a policy to release raw broadband speed data to the public every six months, to ensure that the release of data was not linked to the schedule for the report, Johnson said, according to the filing. The commission is also broadening its scope to include performance of video services, the filing quoted Johnson as saying.

Large telcos supported eliminating FCC network non-duplication and exclusivity rules, while broadcasters and large content companies fired back at multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) for including calls for retransmission consent reform in the proceeding focused on exclusivity rules. MVPDs, direct broadcast satellite companies and Time Warner Cable echoed their calls for elimination, in reply comments, due last week, in docket 10-71.

Basing net neutrality regulations on Title II authority would cause “World War III” and years of litigation, predicted Latham Watkins attorney Matthew Brill, who represented NCTA on a panel Wednesday. Brill predicted, though, the FCC will eventually adopt an approach under Section 706, along the lines of its rulemaking notice. Speaking at a National Regulatory Research Institute Web seminar, Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld and Evan Engstrom, policy director for Engine Advocacy, which represents startups, countered that Title II would offer more protections against discrimination by ISPs.

TiVo let loose another volley in its quest to prevent a provision’s attachment to Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization legislation, its battles in the House lost and now focused on the Senate. The House approved a five-year STELA reauthorization bill (HR-4572) Tuesday by voice vote. It included the provision which would kill the set-top box integration ban compelling cable operators use CableCARDs instead of built-in security in set-top boxes. Senate Commerce Committee leaders of both parties told us the provision would possibly be part of their draft in process, slated for consideration in September.

USTelecom Vice President-Law and Policy Kevin Rupy testified before Congress Wednesday about the association’s efforts to tackle phone scams. “Our industry has ramped up a concerted, broad-based, public-private effort focused exclusively on the issue of telephony abuse,” he said in written testimony (http://1.usa.gov/1zJDj4Z) before the Senate Special Committee on Aging. “Our member companies continue to work with government and industry stakeholders to develop more secure forms of caller identification authentication to more effectively address a practice that facilitates fraud, caller-ID spoofing.” The telcos are working to offer services to cut the number of fraudulent calls, he said. Rupy also raised the challenges of robocalls. USTelecom members “will initiate legal actions against robocallers when they can be found,” he said.

Comments on both sides of the net neutrality debate continued to pour in to the FCC Wednesday, before Friday’s deadline, as the number approached 1 million. The tally by noon was 905,692, an FCC spokesman said, meaning more than 200,000 comments were filed since Monday, when the agency reported 677,000 comments. Amid the deluge, the agency Tuesday extended the comment period a few days (CD July 16 p1).

More than 1,000 comments on net neutrality on what was supposed to be the last day to file comments on the polarizing issue crashed the FCC electronic filing system Tuesday, the agency acknowledged, forcing it to extend the deadline for comments until midnight Friday night. “Not surprisingly, we have seen an overwhelming surge in traffic on our website that is making it difficult for many people to file comments through our Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS),” the FCC said in a statement, after hours of problems. Free Press said in a news release the problems led many in the Washington, D.C., area to deliver comments by hand.

The Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act (PITFA) (HR-3086) passed the House by a voice vote Tuesday, said a House Judiciary Committee news release (http://1.usa.gov/1jv4FH5). PITFA bans any taxation on Internet access. “We applaud the passage” of HR-3086 “today in the House,” said a joint statement (http://1.usa.gov/1jv4FH5) from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., House Judiciary Regulatory Reform Subcommittee Chairman Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., and House Judiciary Committee members Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., and Steve Chabot, R-Ohio. “We hope that the Senate promptly acts on this vital legislation before the November 1st deadline.”

USTelecom and CTIA hailed the House’s Friday passage of HR-4718, that would make permanent bonus depreciation. The bonus depreciation provisions had expired in December. “Extending 50% expensing will provide certainty, predictability, and an immediate incentive for businesses to make and plan for additional capital investments well into the future,” USTelecom President Walter McCormick said in a statement. “This Administration’s Treasury Department, as well as prior Administrations, have consistently found that bonus depreciation reduces the cost of capital, encourages businesses to expand, and thereby increases investment, jobs, and wages.” CTIA Vice President-Government Affairs Jot Carpenter hailed the bill as “forward-looking tax policy that promotes the investment and innovation necessary for the United States to maintain its world leadership in the deployment of wireless broadband.” The White House said last week it opposes the bill and that senior officials would recommend a presidential veto (CD July 11 p17).

The FCC should adopt as soon as possible a “carefully constructed” transition from legacy support mechanisms to a new mechanism focused on supporting broadband-capable networks, as it considers updates to the existing high-cost rules for areas served by rural rate-of-return-regulated LECs, NTCA and several other organizations told Wireline Bureau staff Tuesday, according to an ex parte notice (http://bit.ly/1r9iEm3) posted to docket 10-90 Wednesday. Also attending the meeting were representatives from the National Exchange Carrier Association, TDS Telecom, Totah Communications, USTelecom and WTA, as well as Jeff Smith of GVNW and Paul Cooper of Fred Williamson & Associates.