Next-generation 911 will take significant, costly and long investments of time and money before the system can work, National Emergency Number Association (NENA) officials said at a Thursday USTelecom briefing. The future will spell change for regulations and the number and arrangement of 911 centers, the officials said. The U.S. “must address” NG-911 if the public switched telephone network will be sunsetted in the next few years, said NENA CEO Brian Fontes, citing the FCC’s recent push on text-to-911 and this week’s FCC Technological Advisory Council report (CD Dec 11 p2). Fontes asked USTelecom members to engage with NENA.

The expectation by price cap LECs that the Connect America Fund should be responsible for paying pre-CAF expenses is “baseless and arbitrary,” the American Cable Association wrote the FCC Friday (http://xrl.us/bn5b8t). It responded to a Nov. 20 USTelecom filing describing ACA’s approach to the Phase II cost model -- limiting recovery for investments made prior to adoption of the CAF -- as “legally indefensible.” Price cap LECs’ expectation for recovery for prior investments is unreasonable because those investments served locations never supported by the high-cost USF fund, ACA said. Many of those investments in the voice network were likely made years ago, and may be fully depreciated, it said. “There is no economic rationale for providing recovery anew for already depreciated assets.” On USF-supported investments in networks where price cap LECs also deployed broadband capabilities, “the price cap LECs were under no regulatory obligation to use pre-CAF high-cost support for this additional purpose,” and they should have “no expectation of receiving guaranteed government support,” ACA said. “The price cap LECs have failed to demonstrate they are deserving of any capital recovery of legacy copper plant investment under the Phase II regime.” Ross Lieberman, ACA vice president of government affairs, told us the price cap proposal was “not really grounded in reality."

Hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC) lines can deliver the equivalent of ILEC time division multiplex-based dedicated connections, USTelecom told an aide to FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai Monday (http://xrl.us/bn4opv). The association said it was responding to a question asked by Pai’s office about whether HFC can deliver special access or similar services. Cable companies like Charter Communications explicitly market Ethernet over coaxial facilities, USTelecom said. “Therefore, special access and similar services can be provided over HFC lines."

Whether to include data on “best efforts” Internet services in a special access market analysis remains the focus of negotiations between Republican FCC commissioners and their Democratic counterparts. The latest special access draft was distributed to commissioners Friday afternoon, but given the complexity of the subject matter and the number of changes that have been made, it wasn’t feasible to vote on it Friday, FCC officials said. “There’s been movement” from the Democrats’ and Republicans’ original positions, as both sides try to find common ground, one official said.

The November 2011 FCC USF order cost a rural Texas telco more than $500,000 in support, the company said. Hill Country Telephone Cooperative asked the Texas Public Utilities Commission for money from the state’s USF this fall to make up for the loss. “I've been in telecom for 34 years, and I find these days the most challenging of my career,” Hill Country General Manager Delbert Wilson told us. “This whole [FCC] transformation order has filled our industry with chaos and uncertainty."

A proposal by General Communication Inc. for flexibility in “annual recertification” of Lifeline subscribers saw support from USTelecom, AT&T, NTCA and Tracfone Wireless. GCI asked the FCC to clarify that “annual” could mean once per calendar year, rather than 12 months from the last certification (CD Oct 24 p12). Sprint Nextel said it “would not object to allowing some flexibility in timing of the recertification effort,” but suggested a “safe harbor standard” that would give 12 months of leeway from either the subscriber’s anniversary date or the date of the last certification.

Multiple parties in Oregon want the FCC to change its Lifeline rules. The FCC should kill the requirement that state Lifeline administrators send subscribers’ Lifeline certification forms to eligible telecom carriers before the carriers can claim reimbursement, said the Oregon Public Utility Commission staff and the Oregon Telecom Association in an ex parte filing posted Friday (http://xrl.us/bn2itg). Without modification, the FCC’s rules will compel the Oregon PUC to “photocopy and mail an average of 2,500 to 4,000 (and growing) certification forms each month to the consumer’s respective ETC,” they said. They support the position of USTelecom, which raised concerns in April and acquired a waiver through December to this end. The filing suggests that the FCC call for the state administrators to provide the eligible carriers with notice that subscribers qualify for Lifeline and that certification forms have been executed, the filing said. The Oregon stakeholders argue the current FCC requirement “does nothing to enhance the validity of the subscriber’s eligibility” and instead adds “burden and costs” to state Lifeline administrators and carriers. Oregon would execute its program more efficiently if these contested FCC rules are waived, they said.

The FCC should deny attempts to rescind the Tribal Government Engagement Obligation Provisions developed during the agency’s work on USF reform, the National Broadband Plan and the Connect America Fund, the National Congress of American Indians of the U.S. (NCAI) said Tuesday in an ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bnznyn). The filing occurred after the NCAI adopted a resolution Oct. 26 encouraging the FCC to uphold the Tribal Engagement Provisions, which the FCC’s Office of Native Affairs developed in connection with the Wireline and Wireless bureaus (http://xrl.us/bnznyt). The FCC developed the provisions “with the intent of improving the deployment of telecommunications services on tribal lands,” NCAI President Jefferson Keel said in the filing. The NCAI grew concerned after USTelecom filed a petition that requested reconsideration and clarification of the provisions. NCAI, Native Public Media, the Gila River Indian Community and Gila River Telecommunications filed replies in opposition to the USTelecom petition (CD Sept 28 p6). “Any rescission of the Tribal Engagement Provisions would be an unfortunate set-back in the progress needed to bring digital communications to this country’s least connected peoples and lands,” Keel said Tuesday in the NCAI filing.

Lobbying for and against media ownership deregulation continued, docket 09-182 shows (http://xrl.us/bnzhva). FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is expected to circulate an order this week allowing waivers for common ownership of radio or TV stations and a daily newspaper in the same major market, and ending limits on common ownership of a radio and TV station in a market (CD Nov 13 p1). Genachowski hadn’t circulated an order as of Tuesday, agency officials told us. A coalition of 200 groups including AARP, Common Cause, National Council of La Raza and unions (http://xrl.us/bnzhvr) asked the agency to not allow more broadcaster consolidation without the data its letter said the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last summer required “analyzing the impact of media consolidation on communities of color and women.” Any change in ownership rules “should take place only after the Commission collects, releases, and subjects to public comment complete data and analysis of broadcast ownership data,” the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights wrote. The Media Bureau hadn’t planned to release for public comment broadcast ownership Form 323s, though the bureau prepared a report and agency and industry officials said it’s still expected to release it (CD Oct 18 p1). It’s “a grave disservice to the constituencies represented by The Leadership Conference to attempt to push through a change in media ownership rules at the last minute without an opportunity for our members to sift through the data and engage in substantive debate about its import,” the group wrote (http://xrl.us/bnzhu6). A bureau spokeswoman had no comment. Bonneville International, Morris Communications and Scranton Times LP were among those asking the FCC to end limits on common ownership of radio stations and dailies in the same market. Former FCC Chairman Richard Wiley of Wiley Rein and Morris CEO William Morris met with commissioners Robert McDowell, Ajit Pai and Jessica Rosenworcel, with aides to Genachowski and with Chief Bill Lake and others in the bureau. “Absent relief from the newspaper/radio cross-ownership rule, the high level of local news and informational programming offered by existing newspaper/radio combinations” such as Morris owns in Amarillo, Texas, and Topeka, Kan., “would likely be lost,” the company said (http://xrl.us/bnzhwf). Newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rules are a “regulatory relic,” the Newspaper Association of America wrote (http://xrl.us/bnzhww). The cross-ownership ban “suppresses crucial investment in local journalism,” NAA said. The commission has been given “no factual foundation, or even serious legal argument, for keeping the newspaper/radio restriction,” lawyers for Bonneville and Scranton Times told an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn (http://xrl.us/bnzhw8). Multichannel video programming distributors seeking changes to retransmission consent regulations again asked the agency to make it a retrans rule violation when separately owned TV stations coordinate carriage talks. “The Commission should clarify that any agreement, formal or informal and however styled, that directly or indirectly gives a third party the right to negotiate retransmission consent for that station constitutes a ’transfer of control'” needing FCC approval and/or being considered an attributable ownership interest, MVPDs reported telling Pai. American Cable Association, Cablevision, DirecTV, Dish Network, Time Warner Cable and USTelecom executives attended (http://xrl.us/bnzhxt).

BALTIMORE -- The recent series of natural disasters, including superstorm Sandy and the summer derecho, rattled officials and regulators this week at the NARUC meeting in Baltimore. They brainstormed about the best practices to keep communications networks resilient in the face of what may be increasingly volatile weather and discussed potential 911 innovations and strategies.