Disney, NetChoice and USTelecom are those posting the highest increases in Q3 lobbying spending over the same period last year, before Monday's night deadline. The Information Technology Industry Council and Wireless Infrastructure Association saw the largest declines. CTIA had the highest overall spending, $2.28 million, up 3.6 percent. Disney spent $880,000, up 16 percent . Cox reported $840,000, up 7.6 percent. Sprint laid out $710,000, little changed. USTelecom spent $510,000, up 8 percent. ITIC reported $400,000 down 11 percent. Twitter spent $320,000, up about 3 percent. WIA reported $210,000, down 13 percent. NetChoice spent $70,000, up 250 percent. The Computer and Communications Industry Association devoted $50,000, level with Q3 2018.

USTelecom sought clarification from the FCC and Universal Service Administrative Co. about how USF compliance might be called into question if participants in the high cost universal broadband portal edit their broadband mapping data as geocoding technologies improve. USTelecom said "a change to the fourth digit of a geocoded decimal (representing a change in accuracy of about 10 meters) would be a workable demarcation point for determining a change that required a deletion." Deleting and resubmitting a location would erase the year a broadband location was originally deployed, it said. "If a carrier 'deleted' a number of locations for a certain year and then those same locations were re-uploaded in the HUBB with a different deployment year, it could retroactively call into question the carrier's compliance." USTelecom with members AT&T, CenturyLink, Consolidated, Frontier and Windstream met with USAC and the FCC Wireline Bureau staff Wednesday, and the association said, posted Monday in docket 10-90, it "understood that if the carrier had previously met a deployment year's milestone, and then, by virtue of 'deleting' and resubmitting locations with better geocodes, fell under the milestone for a particular year," there would be no penalty "as long as the cumulative number of locations submitted to date for the life of the program remained above the current threshold."

Industry groups representing telcos, cable companies and telecom service bundlers endorsed an FCC draft declaratory ruling to ensure 911 regulatory fee parity between VoIP and functionally equivalent traditional phone services, in interviews last week. Commissioners will vote on the draft at Friday's meeting (see 1910040053). The ruling, on docket 19-44, is an attempt to answer a referral from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama on litigation between AT&T's BellSouth and some 911 districts (see 1909110027).

Mark Hurd, 62, Oracle co-CEO, died Friday, according to founder Larry Ellison. He had taken medical leave in September. Survivors include his wife and two daughters. The company declined to disclose further details. "He understood broadband’s power to change lives," said USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter.

USF stakeholders should make more improvements to broadband mapping, especially before the FCC begins awarding some $20 billion over about 10 years in the next version of its USF high-cost fund. That's the consensus in Q&A with us at a Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition panel (see 9:45 a.m.) Thursday and from audience members. Stakeholders targeted telcos, which some said don't always know down to a small-geographic level what areas they serve with internet service, and the FCC. The commission has been improving its mapping, working with others in the federal government including the Rural Utilities Service, said RUS Assistant Administrator-Telecom Programs Chad Parker.

Co-chairs of the Department of Homeland Security Information and Communications Technology Supply Chain Risk Management Task Force urged House Homeland Security Committee members to consider enacting new liability protections and incentives to encourage companies and foreign governments to share information on threats to the supply chain. Committee leaders appeared interested during a Wednesday hearing in further protections. They invoked perceived supply-chain threats posed by Kaspersky Lab and Chinese telecom equipment manufacturers Huawei and ZTE.

CTIA, NCTA and USTelecom officials urged the FCC to adopt a “broad safe harbor that protects voice service providers’ good-faith efforts to combat abusive robocalls,” in a meeting with Consumer and Governmental Affairs and Wireline bureau staff. Commissioners approved a declaratory ruling in June allowing carriers to block unwanted robocalls by default (see 1906060056) and industry groups emphasized the importance of the safe harbor (see 1907250039). “Adopting a broad safe harbor will provide the clarity and certainty needed to meaningfully advance the Commission’s goal of relieving consumers from the onslaught of illegal and unwanted robocalls while protecting legitimate calls,” the groups said in docket 17-59, posted Friday: “The Associations’ member companies include voice service providers that serve every corner of the country, all of whom share the Commission’s top consumer protection priority: to stop illegal and unwanted robocalls. These providers have made significant strides towards combating illegal and unwanted robocalls within the Commission’s current regulatory framework.”

The House Homeland Security Committee plans a Wednesday hearing on public-private partnerships to improve supply chain security. The panel follows House Communications Subcommittee interest last month in telecom sector supply chain security legislation (see 1909270063). Set to testify are: Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency National Risk Management Center Assistant Director Bob Kolasky, Information and Technology Industry Council Vice President-Policy John Miller and USTelecom Senior Vice President-Cybersecurity Robert Mayer, the committee said. The hearing begins at 10 a.m. in 310 Cannon.

A USTelecom executive and a former FCC adviser debated net neutrality and a recent decision from the U.S Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Court on The Communicators scheduled to be televised this weekend on C-SPAN and available online Friday. Patrick Halley, USTelecom senior vice president-advocacy and regulatory, and Gigi Sohn, a former aide to then-Chairman Tom Wheeler, discussed Chevron, Brand X, state vs. federal jurisdiction over broadband, and other details. Halley noted that the court ruled the FCC was within its discretion to regulate broadband as an information service, and while the court said the FCC can't expressly pre-empt state laws on the matter, "it would be an over-reach to say states can write their own laws," especially as much of internet use is interstate, not intrastate. Sohn suggested the FCC has abdicated its authority to regulate the broadband market: "The court was really clear: If an agency lacks authority, it can't then tell a state it can't regulate." Sohn was not suggesting states would have an easy time, but nor will industry, in determining when states can regulate over issues of net neutrality: "It will be case by case. It won't be a slam dunk." With the recent court decision, states will test the boundaries, she said, "and to me that argues for a federal law." Halley "completely" agreed with the need for a federal law, and said the sides likely agree on the concept of net neutrality as well. "The best answer for all of this is a federal, modern national framework that provides the net neutrality protection" that most consumers and businesses want. When it comes to one of the issues that the court remanded to the FCC, on how it will regulate broadband in the USF Lifeline program, the court said only that the agency did not sufficiently address the matter in its arguments, Halley said, not that it lacks such authority. Last week, the court upheld most of a 2017 FCC net neutrality repeal but remanded several matters to the FCC for clarification (see 1910010018).

As the FCC presses on with the Lifeline national verifier rollout, some state officials continue to voice concerns about incomplete access to state databases and other issues. Other state commissioners told us they haven’t heard any complaints, though one said his agency might not get any even amid problems. The NV is midway through a state-by-state launch and is designed to make signup and reverification more automatic. Those on the front lines see growing pains and worry the poor could be incorrectly excluded from the approximately $1 billion annual federal program (see 1907080009).