Pillsbury Winthrop hires Shaalu Mehra, from Gibson Dunn, as partner-leader, global technology policy ... Senate confirms Keith Krach, ex-DocuSign, as undersecretary of state-economics and Privacy Shield spokesperson ... Senate Judiciary Committee OKs Edward Felten for member, Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

The Telecom Act "commands the [FCC] to forbear from regulation that is no longer necessary as a result of competition," said former Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth in a filing Friday in docket 18-141. He wrote about the USTelecom forbearance petition seeking relief from a 2-decades-old regulation of transport services and facilities for ILECs. He said sections 10 and 11 of the 1996 act were designed to force removal of regulation as industry competition advances. The forbearance petition is up for a vote by the agency at commissioners' July 10 meeting. Now president of Furchtgott-Roth Economic Enterprises, he received underwriting from USTelecom for part of his declaration.

House Commerce Committee leaders said they reached agreement on a compromise anti-robocalls bill, as expected (see 1906190071). Chairman Frank Pallone, D-N.J., and ranking member Greg Walden, R-Ore., filed a revised version of the Stopping Bad Robocalls Act, which contains language from an earlier version of the measure (HR-946) and other measures the House Communications Subcommittee examined in April (see 1904300212). Pallone and Walden said there will be a likely markup of the bill “next week,” though lobbyists weren't sure what day. HR-946's language would clarify the definition of a robocall and clarify exemptions to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act; create a national database of reassigned phone numbers; and require FCC-FTC cooperation to reduce abusive robocalls by “at least” 50 percent yearly (see 1902040043). The combined bill would direct the FCC to issue rules requiring carriers to offer opt-out robocall blocking and caller ID services to consumers for free, something previously sought in the Repeated Objectionable Bothering of Consumers on Phones (Robocop) Act (HR-2298/S-1212). The plan would mandate the FCC require most providers to implement the caller ID technology “within six months” of commission adoption of an order in its ongoing proceeding on implementation of the secure handling of asserted information using tokens and secure telephone identity revisited technology framework (see 1906060056) and to “take appropriate steps” to ensure calls originating from an exempted provider “are not wrongly blocked because the calls are not able to be authenticated.” The bill includes language from the Support Tools to Obliterate Pesky (Stop) Robocalls Act (HR-2386), which would require the FCC to issue rules for interconnected VoIP providers to require more call record retention obligations and rules to streamline private entities' sharing of robocall and spoofing information with the agency. It increases to three years -- and in some cases four years -- the statute of limitations for illegal spoofing and would increase FCC ability to impose forfeitures against illegal robocallers. Those were previously included in the Robocall Enforcement Enhancement Act (HR-1575). The bill also calls for the FCC to report to Congress on its implementation of reassigned numbers database. Consumer Reports, the National Consumer Law Center, NCTA and USTelecom were among those hailing the compromise bill's introduction.

The USTelecom-led pilot broadband mapping effort in Missouri and Virginia should be done next month and then scale up to some other states this fall, with a national georeferenced broadband serviceable location fabric complete sometime next year, said CostQuest CEO Jim Stegeman in a webinar update Thursday. The BSLF effort, which involves trying to map all the various homes and other locations where broadband service at least could go and separating them from other locations, started three months ago. The national effort, if started today, would take about 12 months, he said.

The FCC plans to undo "unnecessary regulation" of transport services and facilities for ILECs, according to two draft orders released Wednesday that will come up for a vote at the commissioners' July 10 meeting, as the agency promised a day earlier (see 1906180053). An opinion and order from docket 18-141 would partially grant USTelecom's request for forbearance from DS1 and DS3 transport unbundling obligations for price-cap carriers, where endpoints for competitive fiber is located within a half mile. An order on remand from docket 16-143 would grant price-cap carriers nationwide relief from ex ante price regulation of their lower speed TDM transport business data services.

USTelecom Thursday will update the results of its pilot broadband mapping effort in Missouri and Virginia, it said Tuesday. Vice President-Policy and Advocacy Mike Saperstein and telecom modeling company CostQuest CEO Jim Stegeman will speak during the 2:30 p.m. EDT webinar.

The FCC accepted a USTelecom request to withdraw one aspect of its 2018 forbearance petition, the agency said Tuesday. USTelecom filed a request Monday to narrowly withdraw the "dark fiber transport unbundling requirements" portion of a larger forbearance petition, in docket 18-141, which sought relief from three categories of requirements for competitive LECs (see 1807160058). The Wireline Bureau granted the group's request to withdraw "without prejudice as to further action, including re-filing claims relating to dark fiber." FCC commissioners are expected to vote on an order at the July 10 meeting on the other elements of the USTelecom forbearance petition on making unbundled network elements (such as DS1 and DS2 transport loops) available to CLECs at nonmarket rates (see 1906180053).

Commissioners will consider at the July 10 FCC meeting an NPRM on broadband deployment in multiple tenant environments (MTEs), an order to wrap together and rule on a business data services transport and USTelecom forbearance proceeding, and an NPRM on a connected care telehealth pilot program, Chairman Ajit Pai blogged Tuesday. The NPRM and declaratory ruling on MTEs follows a 2017 notice of inquiry in docket 17-142 (see 1706220036) on "the unique challenges to deploying broadband to apartment, condominium, and office buildings," Pai wrote. The agency wants to decide whether to back or pre-empt a San Francisco code that requires multitenant buildings to allow residents to access competing broadband providers (see 1811140017). The agency will release an order next month that wraps together two related issues, on a business data services transport proceeding (docket 16-143) and a USTelecom petition for unbundled network elements forbearance (docket 18-141), an FCC official said Wednesday. USTelecom and other telco incumbents say they should no longer be required to unbundle and resell access to some of their networks at below-market rates (see 1905140012). Competitive LECs say there's not enough facilities-based competition in all areas to warrant nationwide forbearance (see 1906130005). Pai wrote that the agency plans to "grant relief only where there is actual or potential competition that ensures reasonable prices." Also at the meeting, commissioners will vote on an NPRM on a three-year, $100 million USF telehealth pilot called connected care designed to support eligible healthcare providers to low-income patients outside hospitals and other traditional healthcare facilities. The Wireline Bureau initiated a notice of inquiry (docket 18-213) in August to wide support (see 1809110039). Commissioner Brendan Carr is leading the effort and will offer more details at the July meeting, Pai wrote.

NCTA wants the FCC to address unresolved questions about how new broadband mapping programs would collect data in the real world, said a posting in docket 19-126 Friday. USTelecom has a competing proposal through the Broadband Mapping Consortium, which the cable group said wasn't as good as its plan (see 1904150059). Executives from NCTA and Charter Communications, Cox Communications and Midco met Tuesday with 11 officials from the Wireline Bureau and the Office of Economics and Analytics about NCTA's proposal to retire census block reporting in favor of polygon shapefile data (see 1905030060). The FCC should better define areas deemed served by a provider, NCTA said, such as by whether adding a new customer would entail a standard installation or if the location in question would require a network extension at a customer's expense. The association proposes mapping data incorporate crowdsourcing to supplement Form 477 filings, with consumer-reported data, especially on broadband speeds, being verified. It questions whether the FCC should "devote time and money" to creating its own location fabric but suggested it could use data from other federal agencies and not just provider information, and decide how to verify "accuracy of the roughly 150 million locations" cataloged across the country and how such data will be updated as new houses are built and others lost through natural disasters. NCTA wants the FCC to adopt the shapefile proposal at commissioners' Aug. 2 meeting so the new data collection tools can be used in a September 2020 Form 477 filing cycle.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., led the filing Wednesday of the Broadband Deployment Accuracy and Technological Availability (Data) Act, as expected (see 1906120076). S-1822 would require the FCC to issue rules to collect more “granular” broadband coverage data, including a decision on whether to collect “verified” information from others, including “state, local, and Tribal governmental entities that are primarily responsible for mapping or tracking broadband internet access service coverage” for their respective jurisdictions. The bill would require all data collected from ISPs to include “information regarding the download and upload speeds” made available in a location and that there be certification that a “senior executive has examined the information ... and that, to the best of the executive’s knowledge, information, and belief, all statements of fact contained in the submission are true and correct.” It would require a “user-friendly challenge process” allowing participation by consumers, governments and others. Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., also are S-1822 co-sponsors. Lawmakers criticized the FCC's broadband mapping practices during communications policy hearings (see 1905150061). S-1822 is “an important step to ensure we get the most accurate coverage maps from the FCC and to help close the digital divide between rural and urban areas,“ Wicker said. He previously led filing of the Broadband Interagency Coordination Act (S-1294), which would direct the FCC, NTIA and Agriculture Department to sign a memorandum of understanding to coordinate on broadband funding (see 1905020058). Stakeholders including CenturyLink, the Competitive Carriers Association, ITTA, NCTA, NTCA and USTelecom praised S-1822.