The Supreme Court won't consider an appeal by Dish Network designated entities SNR Wireless and Northstar Wireless about FCC handling of the AWS-3 auction bidding credits, the court said Monday. The DEs' petition for writ of certiorari was distributed last week. The cert petition was seen facing steep odds (see 1801290033). Dish and the DEs have made several changes to Dish's control of the them after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit last year upheld the FCC withholding the DEs' AWS-3 auction bidding credits due to their too-close connections to Dish (see 1806080063). Dish and the FCC didn't comment Monday.

The FCC said 220 applicants qualified for the Connect America Fund Phase II reverse auction of subsidies for fixed broadband and voice services, scheduled to begin July 24. Short-form applications of 57 parties were rejected, said a public notice Monday in docket 17-182. Auction 903 is making available up to $1.98 billion -- in aggregate over 10 years -- in high-cost areas traditionally served by large ILECs that denied initial CAF II offers. Among qualified bidders: Allband, Altice USA, Cincinnati Bell, Consolidated Telephone, Cox Communications, Docomo Pacific, Frontier Communications, Hawaiian Telcom, Hughes Network Systems, Lumos Telephone, Midcontinent Communications, New Cingular Wireless (AT&T), U.S. Cellular, Verizon, Viasat and Windstream. Companies sometimes submit applications under other names. CenturyLink and T-Mobile told us they didn't apply. Charter Communications, Comcast and Sprint didn't comment. Qualified bidders are eligible to bid in at least one of the states for at least one of the broadband performance tier and latency combinations they selected, but may not be eligible to bid in every state or performance tier and latency combination they targeted. Among unqualified applicants: Accipiter Communications, Shentel, Skybeam and Sonus Technologies. They remain subject to rules prohibiting certain communications on bids and bidding strategies. Qualified bidders can participate in a July 18-19 mock auction and the actual auction over the internet using a CAF Bidding System. A user guide for that system and other resources are available at the Auction 903 webpage. An online tutorial will be Friday at noon EDT, and a workshop will be July 9 at 2-4 p.m. at commission headquarters.

Jonathan Friedland resigned as Netflix chief communications officer after using “insensitive” remarks in speaking to his staff “about words that offend in comedy,” he tweeted Friday. “Leaders have to be beyond reproach in the example we set and unfortunately I fell short of that standard,” he said. “I feel awful about the distress this lapse caused to people at a company I love and where I want everyone to feel included and appreciated. I feel honored to have built a brilliant and diverse global team and to have been part of our collective adventure.” Netflix didn’t comment.

Verizon met with aides to the four FCC commissioners to press for action on rules reducing barriers to infrastructure deployment. “Rapid growth in wireless usage demands continued investment in fiber facilities and small cells to support users’ needs,” said a docket 17-79 filing last week. Verizon emphasized the importance of addressing state and local zoning rules and said it tries to collaborate with local governments. “While this collaborative approach has been successful in some cases, many municipalities unfortunately continue to demand exorbitant fees for access to rights-of-way and structures within them, including, for example, attachment fees that exceed $4,000 per year,” the carrier said.

A Supreme Court decision saying administrative law judges are subject to the Appointments Clause of the Constitution and can be appointed by only the president, courts or heads of departments is "an additional reason -- among many" the FCC should "dump" the ALJ process, Commissioner Mike O'Rielly tweeted Friday. Lucia v. SEC released Thursday, ruled on the appointment of an SEC ALJ. The FCC said ALJ Richard Sippel was appointed by the commissioners. O'Rielly said the FCC should work with Congress on sunsetting or rolling back ALJ duties (see 1707130046).

The many virtual MVPD introductions last year, including AT&T's DirecTV Now and rival services from Hulu and YouTube, were to blame for an accelerated drop-off in AT&T's video subscriber base, CEO Randall Stephenson said at an investor conference. He said the decline rate should be more typical this year, as pricing is being rationalized between virtual MVPDs and the traditional market. He said between DirecTV and DirecTV Now, AT&T has about the same 25 million subscriber base that the company had when it bought DirecTV, and the introduction last week of its WatchTV skinny bundle streaming service (see 1806210037) could help further increase video subs. Stephenson said AT&T's aim with its Time Warner buy was "a modern media company" that has premium content, high-speed network capabilities, advertising technology and direct-to-consumer relationships. "The days of wholesaling content [via MVPDs] isn't a sustainable business model anymore," he said. AT&T plans within 24 months to build a real-time exchange for premium video ad content that it envisions outside parties also taking part in, he said (summary here). Chief Financial Officer John Stephens said AT&T anticipates getting back to "more normal historical levels" of debt by 2023. The executives said Thursday the move to 5G for AT&T will be akin to a software upgrade and not require extensive capital spending because of investments the company already is making, with the carrier equipping cellsites for 5G as part of the FirstNet rollout. Stephens said its fiber network now reaches about 9 million locations and should reach 14 million by this time next year. The company said its FirstNet buildout should be halfway completed within a year. American Enterprise Institute visiting scholar Mark Jamison blogged Friday that vertical mergers like AT&T/TW are motivated by network operators' huge capital spending in recent years and that they're facing having to do more for 5G. He said with network firms borrowing to finance expansion, while downstream firms generate cash off those networks, vertical mergers let network operators access that cash, leading to better innovation and company finances.

Rural telcos opposed FCC elimination of the two remaining rural call completion duties of providers covered by a 2013 RCC order, a proposal that received much industry support in initial comments (see 1806050043). The data recording and retention rules helped reduce the number of "dropped and otherwise deliberately non-completed calls," replied WTA this week in docket 13-39. "Sunsetting the rules without a suitable alternative monitoring and enforcement mechanism in place will only undercut the previous progress." NTCA (here), the South Dakota Telecommunications Association (here) and Alarm Industry Communications Committee (here) also filed opposition. NTCA urged the FCC to broadly define "intermediate providers" whose RCC performance would be subject to covered provider monitoring and oversight under an April order. NCTA also opposed and ITTA backed a recent USTelecom request that the FCC stay the monitoring rule (see 1806130086). USTelecom (here), Verizon (here) and ATIS (here) backed eliminating the two rules. Verizon and ATIS opposed mandating industry best practices, with Verizon urging flexible intermediate-provider service-quality standards and full implementation of the Improving Rural Call Quality and Reliability Act and all RCC rules before compliance deadlines. USTelecom sought a broad intermediate-provider definition. NCTA said covered providers should have to only "monitor the performance and registration status of intermediate providers with which they have a contractual relationship." The American Cable Association said a covered-provider definition should be retained, particularly a 100,000-subscriber line threshold. Incompas urged a "flexible" approach to implementing the new law and consideration of "the role that access arbitrage" plays. West Telecom Services said the FCC shouldn't "micromanage" intermediate-provider duties and proposed eliminating a safe harbor's "two-hop cap on use of intermediate providers" by covered providers. HD Tandem backed "transparency mechanisms" to allow regulators "to root out illegal cost shifting or other routing behaviors that impair high-quality call completion." Inteliquent endorsed mandating best-practice compliance.

In a tie-in with closing its buy of Time Warner, AT&T Wireless Thursday rolled out a streaming video app, WatchTV, due to launch Tuesday with Unlimited & More and Unlimited & More Premium wireless plans and a $15 per month stand-alone option. WatchTV customers will be able to stream 31 live channels at launch, including A&E, AMC, Animal Planet, Cartoon Network, CNN, Discovery, Food Network, History, IFC, Lifetime, Sundance TV, Turner Classic Movies and TNT, said the carrier. The Premium plan adds one premium entertainment service at no extra cost from a choice of HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, Starz, Amazon Music Unlimited, Pandora Premium or the VRV gaming service, it said. The WatchTV app is compatible on “virtually every” current smartphone, tablet or browser and “certain streaming devices,” it said. AT&T called WatchTV the first of “new offers to come” from the takeover, combining content and connectivity for a “fresh approach to how media and entertainment works for you.” The carrier referenced a “new level of choice, innovation and value” and a more personalized and immersive entertainment experience that includes “experimenting with new forms of content” and offering new ways to access premium content “especially on mobile devices.” Wireless plans start at $80 per month for Unlimited & More and $90 per month for Premium, a chat representative told us. Premium customers will get 15 GB of high-speed Wi-Fi hot spot access and access to HD video; customers of both plans will receive a $15 monthly credit toward DirecTV, DirecTV Now or U-verse TV, said AT&T.

Most net neutrality litigants agreed to a proposed briefing format and schedule running from August through November, said a motion (in Pacer) Wednesday of petitioners and intervenors challenging the FCC broadband reclassification order. Sixteen groups of petitioners and seven supporting intervenors made the proposal, with word limits, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Mozilla v. FCC, No. 18-1051. They said respondents FCC and DOJ consented, but intervenors supporting the FCC plus intervenor Digital Justice Foundation (DJF), which supports neither side, didn't. "The proposed format accommodates the divergent interests of the various parties to this complex appeal," said the motion. "It ensures consolidation among parties wherever the differences in position are possible to bridge." Petitioner briefs would be due Aug. 20; their supporting intervenor and DJF briefs Aug. 27; the FCC/DOJ brief Oct. 11; FCC-supporting intervenor briefs Oct.18; and petitioner and supporting intervenor briefs Nov. 16. The motion noted respondents didn't agree with its "characterization or description of the issues presented by or the procedural history of the case." It also included a statement from ISP intervenors that support the FCC -- the American Cable Association, CTIA, NCTA, USTelecom and Wireless ISP Association -- asking for "sufficient words to respond to all the arguments" of petitioners, akin to what the court provided intervenors in litigation over the FCC 2015 net neutrality order and consistent with an updated rule. The DJF asked (in Pacer) to be allowed to file a reply brief: "No other party (1) supports net neutrality as a policy goal, (2) believes that the 2015 net-neutrality rules had certain statutory defects nonetheless, (3) believes the ... Order's repeal of the conduct rules and reclassification is within [FCC] discretion ..., but (4) believes that the Order's transparency and preemption provisions are unlawful, at least in part."

Commissioner Mike O’Rielly wants the FCC to use the 2018 quadrennial ownership review to define the media market in line with the court decision on AT&T/Time Warner (see 1806200015), he said in a speech at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy Wednesday. “All relevant participants: newspapers, radio stations, broadcast television stations, cable companies, over-the-top providers, Internet sites, social media platforms, streaming music services, and satellite radio must be included in any media market definition,” he said. “The entire foundation of how the government currently views the ‘communications’ market -- be it voice, video, or data -- is outdated and misguided.” A similar “myopic view” causes officials not to consider mobile broadband as a viable alternative to fixed broadband, O’Rielly said. The quadrennial review of broadcast ownership rules and biennial review of telecom rules offer the agency a chance to move away from being stuck in “administrative molasses,” O’Rielly said.