A spokesman for Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, confirmed Monday that Cruz placed a hold on the Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters (DOTCOM) Act (S-1551), saying concerns he raised during the Senate Commerce Committee’s markup of the bill last month haven’t been addressed. Cruz offered an amendment during Senate Commerce’s markup that would have required Congress to vote on ICANN’s plan for the upcoming Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition, saying the DOTCOM Act as written gave Congress no mechanism to block the transition following a proposed 30-day legislative review of ICANN’s plan. Senate Commerce voted 19-5 against Cruz’s amendment (see 1506230066 and 1506250059).

A spokesman for Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, confirmed Monday that Cruz placed a hold on the Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters (DOTCOM) Act (S-1551), saying concerns he raised during the Senate Commerce Committee’s markup of the bill last month haven’t been addressed. Cruz offered an amendment during Senate Commerce’s markup that would have required Congress to vote on ICANN’s plan for the upcoming Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition, saying the DOTCOM Act as written gave Congress no mechanism to block the transition following a proposed 30-day legislative review of ICANN’s plan. Senate Commerce voted 19-5 against Cruz’s amendment (see 1506230066 and 1506250059).

Windstream fired back at AT&T’s opposition to possible FCC IP transition interim rules that Windstream believes are needed to protect competition and prevent business market price hikes. “AT&T’s arguments are unmoored from reality and the law,” Windstream said in an ex parte filing in FCC docket 13-5. Windstream, which is both a CLEC and an ILEC, said that AT&T was ignoring the market downside if CLECs lose affordable wholesale access to ILEC last-mile networks and the FCC’s past reliance on wholesale competition to give ILECs previous regulatory relief. AT&T didn't comment. The FCC announced Friday tentative plans to vote Aug. 6 on two draft orders intended to protect wholesale competition and consumers during the IP technology transition (see 1507160046).

FCC proposals to revise network outage reporting rules drew mixed responses in comments on a March NPRM that were posted Thursday and Friday in docket 15-80. Wireline and wireless carriers welcomed some FCC proposals and opposed others that they said would impose undue reporting burdens on carriers without providing necessary or even useful information. Verizon said the FCC should simplify outage reporting thresholds, apply duties consistently across networks in a competitively neutral and technically feasible way, and focus only on significant network outage events. APCO welcomed an FCC proposal to require reporting of partial 911 outages, but the telcos voiced concern. State regulators generally supported the FCC proposal to share database outage information with states.

A federal court took a short timeout from its briefing schedule so it can consider an FCC motion to suspend substantive judicial review of an AT&T challenge to a commission order on price-cap telco USF duties, pending regulatory action on related issues in other proceedings. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Thursday granted an FCC request to file the motion to hold the case in abeyance and the court suspended its current briefing schedule. The court didn't rule on the FCC motion to hold the case in abeyance, which already has been submitted. In its motion, the FCC noted that AT&T and others in August had asked the FCC to relieve price-cap carriers of eligible telecom carrier (ETC) obligations to serve rural areas where they would no longer be subsidized if they elected to receive USF support under the agency’s Connect America Fund Phase II overhaul of the high-cost program. AT&T and others also had urged the FCC to permit, but no longer require, high-cost ETCs to participate in the Lifeline USF program subsidizing low-income telecom consumers. Separately, in October, USTelecom petitioned the FCC to forbear from applying related high-cost and Lifeline rules. The FCC in December partially granted USTelecom’s petition, relieving price-cap carriers of their ETC duty to offer voice service in census blocks determined to be “low-cost,” served by an unsubsidized competitor, or where a competing ETC is receiving USF support to deploy fixed broadband/voice networks. AT&T then challenged the FCC order in the D.C. Circuit, arguing it didn't provide enough relief and was arbitrary and capricious (AT&T v. FCC, No. 15-1038). But the commission motion said that the agency made clear in December it wasn’t addressing all the issues raised in USTelecom’s petition or by commenters in the high-cost and Lifeline proceedings -- all three of which remain open. The FCC thus asked the court to hold the case in abeyance until (a) the agency finalizes its USTelecom forbearance review -- which must occur by Jan. 4 -- or earlier if it acts on the high-cost and Lifeline issues AT&T is targeting; and (b) AT&T petitions for review of the resulting orders, assuming it does so. The FCC said its prospective actions in the open proceedings could moot or alter AT&T’s current challenge, and even if they don’t, it made more sense for the court to consider all the issues at one time, rather than piecemeal. AT&T Tuesday opposed the FCC motion. “There is no reason for delay,” the telco said. “At bottom the FCC promulgated a rule it knows it cannot defend,” AT&T said. “That the FCC might, in a future order, grant AT&T relief from [unlawful] obligations is no reason to hold the case in abeyance.”

Both the head and a former head of the Congressional Black Caucus slammed what they see as shortcomings in telecom and tech industry outreach. Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., the current caucus chairman, also pressed for a telecom rewrite, emphasizing the many changes to technology, competition and demand. They spoke Thursday during a panel discussion hosted by the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council.

Both the head and a former head of the Congressional Black Caucus slammed what they see as shortcomings in telecom and tech industry outreach. Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., the current caucus chairman, also pressed for a telecom rewrite, emphasizing the many changes to technology, competition and demand. They spoke Thursday during a panel discussion hosted by the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council.

Collaborative governance involving all Internet stakeholders is the best way to maintain Internet openness and move away from the current “narrative of apprehension” about the Internet, Internet Society CEO Kathryn Brown said during a Hudson Institute event Wednesday. That openness has been threatened by receding trust in the Internet amid a rising tide of data breaches like the recent Office of Personnel Management breach and the government surveillance concerns raised by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s leaks about controversial NSA programs, Brown said.

Former FCC chairmen battled over net neutrality and broadband reclassification along partisan lines on a panel Wednesday at the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council's Access to Capital and Telecom Policy Conference. Democrat Reed Hundt said the FCC should be focused on addressing income inequality, and while some of the ways to do that involved selling spectrum in blocks that are affordable and imposing spectrum caps, another was through net neutrality because it protected Internet entrepreneurs seeking to reach customers over broadband Internet systems. Net neutrality created a level playing field “because this platform called the Internet should be shared by everybody,” said Hundt, who is founder and CEO of Coalition for Green Capital.

Collaborative governance involving all Internet stakeholders is the best way to maintain Internet openness and move away from the current “narrative of apprehension” about the Internet, Internet Society CEO Kathryn Brown said during a Hudson Institute event Wednesday. That openness has been threatened by receding trust in the Internet amid a rising tide of data breaches like the recent Office of Personnel Management breach and the government surveillance concerns raised by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s leaks about controversial NSA programs, Brown said.