The telecom and competitive networks industries reached agreement on whether and how much access LECs need to provide to DS0, DS1, DS3 and operation support systems. USTelecom and Incompas said Thursday the agreement covers numerous interested CLECs and ILECs, and that it's a compromise between the sides. In a filing in FCC docket 19-308, they urged a draft order incorporating the compromise and laid out specifics. They said its dual non-impairment/forbearance approach increases the odds that such an order would be affirmed if appealed. They said the compromise is outside some of what they previously advocated, but it's within the FCC discretion and supported by the record. They said the commission has the authority to also craft a transitional period.

DOJ urged a federal court to stop California from enforcing its net neutrality law to “avoid ongoing, irreparable harm to the United States and its interests.” DOJ filed an amended complaint and motion (both in Pacer) for preliminary injunction Wednesday in resumed litigation at the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of California (see 2008030043). The department argued the state law is preempted under the Constitution’s supremacy clause and fails a conflict preemption test. “California has imposed stringent regulation on interstate broadband communications in a way that directly contradicts" the FCC's "validly adopted regulatory scheme" and the Communications Act principle “that the Federal Government -- not individual States -- has exclusive regulatory authority over interstate communications," it said in case 2:18-cv-02660. California is trying to overwrite FCC policy for the nation, the department argued. ISPs “cannot apply two separate and conflicting legal frameworks to Internet communications -- one for California and one for everywhere else. This impossibility means that California’s rules effectively are the only ones that matter.” ISP associations that sued California over the same law filed their own motion and amended complaint (in Pacer) Wednesday. The California law "is preempted under principles of field, express, and conflict preemption," said ACA Connects, CTIA, NCTA and USTelecom, saying their members "would be irreparably harmed if subjected to that unconstitutional law during the pendency of this litigation." A California Justice Department spokesperson said, "We are reviewing the complaint and look forward to defending California’s state net neutrality protections."

The FCC got broad opposition to a proposal for deregulating telephone access charges in an April NPRM (see 2007070025), in comments posted through Wednesday in docket 20-71. The agency cast the TAC NPRM as a bid to “eliminate outdated and unnecessary regulations” and simplify bills for consumers.

USTelecom hires Josh Bercu, departing Wilkinson Barker, for vice president-policy and advocacy, and Kayla Gardner from Wireless Infrastructure Association as director-policy and partnerships, effective Aug. 24 ... Intelsat adds Peter Davidson, ex-George Mason University Law School, as vice president-global government affairs and policy, new post ... Homeland Security and Defense Business Council appoints Rafael Borras from A.T. Kearney as president-CEO; ex-HSDBC President-CEO Marc Pearl retired in March.

California’s net neutrality law could remain unenforced for months despite litigation resuming this week. A federal court set a schedule Thursday that would delay the state law at least until Q4, and it could be much longer if DOJ and industry win preliminary injunction against the state (see 2007300041). Timing remains hazy for enforcing Vermont’s frozen law. Net neutrality advocates say the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Mozilla v. FCC allowed state laws; others disagreed.

USTelecom, NTCA and WTA executives urged leaders of the Senate Commerce Committee not to advance legislation aimed at awarding some Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Phase I funding before the auction’s late October start date. The executives don’t mention the “proposed legislation” by name but decry its bid to eliminate a requirement companies be designated eligible telecom carriers to qualify for RDOF money. A revised version of the Rural Broadband Acceleration Act (HR-7447/S-4201) would do that. “To the extent some believe the ETC designation process may be outdated or in need of recalibration to better reflect a broadband world, this is a policy discussion worth having -- and reasonable minds may disagree,” said NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield, USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter and WTA Executive Vice President Kelly Worthington in a letter to Commerce Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and ranking member Maria Cantwell. “But that discussion should neither alter nor undermine the course of an auction process that is already substantially underway, nor should it do so in a way that benefits only some program participants.” HR-7447/S-4201 has drawn opposition from others, including NARUC President Brandon Presley (see 2007090051).

The FCC won’t give broadband providers 90 more days to file annual 911 reliability certification. The online portal for receiving such filings is open, the Public Safety Bureau announced. The bureau denied waiver to USTelecom, which said COVID-19 is reason to delay the Oct. 15 deadline. The association “fails to state with sufficient particularity who needs relief from the Commission’s rule and why they need such relief,” the bureau said. “If USTelecom seeks an industry-wide or membership-wide waiver, the Waiver Request fails to establish that such broad relief is warranted.” The group didn’t comment Friday, the day the items were posted in the Daily Digest.

Litigation over California’s net neutrality law will resume in early August. Judge John Mendez approved (in Pacer) a proposed schedule submitted by the parties Thursday in U.S. District Court for Eastern California. The state agreed in October 2018 not to enforce SB-822 while the Mozilla appeal of the FCC’s order rescinding the 2015 national rules was pending (see 1810260045). The lawsuits by DOJ and ISPs may move forward now that Mozilla and others let pass a July 6 deadline to appeal to the Supreme Court (see 2007070012). The government and the ISP group would file amended complaints and renewed motions for preliminary injunction by Aug. 5, under the stipulation (in Pacer) jointly agreed to by plaintiffs DOJ and CTIA, NCTA, USTelecom and ACA Connects. The parties know "a number of non-parties" plan to join as amici.

The iconectiv petition asking the FCC to move to a competitive bidding process for selecting a toll-free numbering administrator (TFNA) (see 2006300003) got no clear industry consensus in docket 20-174 postings Thursday. AT&T said the TFNA's tariff use "is an anomaly" compared with competitive bidding and contracts the FCC uses for other numbering administrators. Going to a competitive process for the local number portability administrator resulted in hugely reduced costs, it said. Also backing the petition, USTelecom said FCC use of competitive bidding for numbering services shows market-based approaches lead to more efficiency. Now isn't the time to change TFNAs since the pandemic has been a major disruption to so many businesses already, and such a switch raises the risk of some kind of interruption that could hurt those relying on toll-free numbers, Unisys said. No one has shown that incumbent TFNA Somos hasn't been doing the job adequately, it said. Iconectiv should be commended for pointing out lack of Somos transparency, but its petition is meritless because it says TFN rates have gone up without reason when it's common knowledge Somos has been doing sizable technology upgrades, responsible organization Vanity International said. "This is nothing but a land grab by a 3rd party venture fund," it said. Iconectiv's complaint about use of a tariff-based approach would hold true no matter who is TFNA, and it would be nice to have multiple providers, but that isn't technologically feasible now, said EZ Texting. Somos is an independent, nonprofit TFNA, and someone else selected through competitive bidding might focus on cost control to the exclusion of protecting the public from scammers using toll-free numbers, Duke Energy said. Establishing a competitive bidding process for selecting a TFNA needs to carry guarantees the new TFNA provides the scam protection services Somos does, it said. Make sure new rules don't significantly interfere with or require changes to the way providers interface with the TFNA and don't require costly changes, said ATIS. Somos, in posting on meetings with aides to Commissioners Geoffrey Starks and Jessica Rosenworcel, said any consideration of changing processes to select a TFNA and changing the tariff structure requires issuing an NPRM. It said the current system "is working well." Its comments said similar.

An Incompas grandfathering proposal on dark fiber (see 2002060006) is “a reasonable path forward,” Uniti told the FCC. “The record in this proceeding conclusively shows competitive local exchange carriers continue to be impaired without unbundled network element access to dark fiber interoffice transport,” the company said in a filing posted Wednesday in docket 19-308. “Recent AT&T and USTelecom filings ignore the evidence, which is replete within the Commission’s record, demonstrating the importance of unbundled Dark Fiber Transport to competitive last mile deployment" and a" lack of viable commercial alternatives."