Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said the FCC should release a list of counties that would be deemed competitive in the business data services market and subject to price deregulation under a draft order tentatively slated for an April 20 vote. "The FCC should release this list immediately," she said in a statement. "This is the only way the public can truly evaluate the practical effects of the FCC’s proposed actions. If for some reason, that is unknown to me at this time, we cannot release this list expeditiously, we should delay our vote on the proposed Order until the public can see it ‘well in advance’ of a FCC vote." Incompas CEO Chip Pickering on April 4 urged release of the list of the competitive counties and said the draft order's competitive market test would cause 92 percent all locations using BDS to "see an end to protections against monopoly or duopoly pricing." The FCC's proposed action "will have serious ramifications" for the $45 billion BDS market, Clyburn said. "An integral piece of this proposed Order is a test to determine which counties will be deemed competitive, and thus deregulated. Chairman Pai has been a champion of transparency. It is puzzling, then, why he will release the text of the item, but omit a key appendix listing which counties are deemed competitive, until the Order is released. We have the information. It will become public when the Order is released. So why is it that the FCC has taken the position that it will vote on an Order before the public gets to see exactly what the Order does? Just what are we trying to hide?" A Pai spokesman dismissed Clyburn's call. Her "entire statement is based on a false premise; there is no such ‘appendix’ to the item," he emailed. "Moreover, it has been explained to Commissioner Clyburn’s office that publicly releasing the internal work product she is discussing at this point, which is not part of the Order, would violate the Trade Secrets Act. Finally, it is odd that Commissioner Clyburn had no problem voting on meeting items for over four years when the text of those items had not been made public. But now, she is calling for delay because information that is not part of a meeting item has not been made public.”

Contrary to what many Americans believe, the FCC and Congress don’t wish to harm their internet privacy, Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said in a Friday blog post in National Review. “These untrue accusations have generated borderline hysteria, to the point where, as an FCC commissioner, I was grilled by two friends on the topic at a recent wedding,” O’Rielly wrote. “To counter this misinformation, it’s important to understand how data is currently used in the Internet economy, which federal agencies oversee Internet privacy, and the effect of legislation recently enacted by Congress.” The “simple truth” is that data is critical to the internet economy and that's true for more than ISPs, O’Rielly said. “The heart and soul of today’s Internet economy is the collection of data, mainly for use in targeted advertising,” he said. “From commercial companies to political campaigns, advertising dollars are increasingly being spent on the web, rather than on traditional media. Jeopardize this arrangement and a vast number of free Internet features and functions will evaporate in short order.” Congress and the FCC want to ensure ISPs and companies like Google face the same rules, he said. “The disparate treatment of broadband providers as compared with all other Internet companies is important, and it helps explain the recent legislative activity (but not the attendant uproar).”

The FCC’s current repacking plan and timeline will lead to service disruptions for broadcasters in the repacking and some that aren’t, said NAB President Gordon Smith in a meeting with Chairman Ajit Pai Tuesday, according to an ex parte filing in docket 12-268. “NAB continues to urge the Commission to adopt a flexible, balanced approach to repacking that is fair to all stakeholders, while avoiding disruption to existing broadcast service.” The transition plan has been appealed by NAB with a petition for reconsideration (see 1703170055). The plan “may result in viewers losing service despite the best efforts of broadcasters, vendors and Commission staff” because “broadcasters are required to cease operation on their pre-auction channels after 39 months, without exception,” the group said. “NAB is also concerned that the transition plan does not take into account the potentially significant impact the repack will have on non-repacked broadcasters, including FM radio stations.”

House Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and more than 50 other House Republicans sent a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai Friday urging the agency to protect the privacy of consumers. The letter directs Pai to “continue ensuring that ISPs fulfill their promises to consumers regarding their use of data until the FCC remedies the [Communications Act] Title II reclassification, which incorrectly removed ISP’s from the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission,” said a committee news release. White House Director-Legislative Affairs Marc Short predicted last week the FCC will “take a fresh look” at ISP privacy rules once it has a full contingent of five commissioners (see 1704050027), after President Donald Trump signed a Congressional Review Act resolution repealing the rules (see 1704040059). “Protecting consumer privacy while allowing for innovation has been critical to American innovation,” the letter said. “Maintaining an environment that permits innovation without sacrificing consumer privacy is critical to our nation's future prosperity and the creation of new consumer services.”

Verizon urged the FCC to equalize business data service treatment and give parties time to adjust to potential regulatory changes as the agency considers a draft order eyed for a vote April 20 (see 1704030050). In meetings last week with aides to all three commissioners, Verizon "stressed the importance of a level playing field and the same set of rules for all providers" of BDS, said a filing posted Thursday in docket 05-25. "We also emphasized the need for a suitable transition period to allow companies to adjust to the proposed detariffing actions and for preserving existing contracts." In a filing posted Friday, CenturyLink and Frontier Communications urged the FCC to reject the arguments of Sprint (here) and Windstream (here) opposing the ILECs' proposal for nondominant BDS regulation (see 1703230051 and 1703280050). Sprint and Windstream "largely retread established ground by complaining that demonstrated competition has not yet yielded the below-market prices that they would prefer to pay," said CenturyLink and Frontier. CCMI telecom consultant Andrew Regitsky called the draft order "one of the most deregulatory decisions ever," saying it "would largely detariff and eliminate pricing rules for most ILEC special access services." It's "a major victory for ILECs and cable companies and a major loss for ILEC competitors," he said in a blog post Friday. He expected "outraged" ILEC critics to seek a court stay, pending further judicial review, and believes "a stay is possible, even likely." Regitsky said critics can argue they "had no idea this type of deregulatory decision was coming from" last year's Further NPRM "and had no opportunity to oppose it," in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. They also can attack the FCC’s market test for DS1 and DS3 channel terminations, "which relies on possible rather than actual competition to classify a county as competitive," he wrote. "We have a draft Order that is truly industry transforming, but is likely to face many legal challenges."

An item added to the FCC list of circulating proposed rules Friday appears to be a declaratory ruling on a petition requesting that broadcasters be allowed to satisfy equal employment opportunity requirements with postings only online. An FCC spokesman confirmed the petition for rulemaking "Seeking to Allow the Sole Use of Internet Sources for FCC EEO Recruitment Requirements, Declaratory Ruling,” refers to a petition requesting the rule change that was filed in December by Sun Valley Radio and Canyon Media (see 1612190062). "The daily newspaper, previously cited by the FCC as the presumptive way to reach all groups within a community, now pales in its reach within the community compared to the Internet,” said the petition. Currently, broadcasters must widely disseminate job postings, and can't advertise them only online or on their own airwaves, a broadcast attorney told us. Commissioner Mike O’Rielly repeatedly has endorsed loosening the rules.

State ISP privacy measures are “unnecessary,” a CTIA spokesman emailed Wednesday, joining USTelecom and ISPs slamming state legislatures that are moving to adopt internet privacy protections after President Donald Trump and Congress used the Congressional Review Act to kill FCC broadband privacy rules (see 1704050037). “The wireless industry takes a proactive and serious approach to protecting consumer privacy,” the CTIA spokesman said. “Federal and state laws already on the books and other industry protections safeguarding consumer privacy remain firmly intact today.” Meanwhile, the Washington state House plans a hearing April 12 on a broadband privacy bill (HB-2200) introduced Wednesday with about 75 sponsors from both political parties. It requires broadband internet access service (BIAS) providers to notify customers about privacy policies, obtain opt-out approval from a customer to use, disclose or permit access to nonsensitive customer proprietary data and take reasonable measures to protect customer personal information from unauthorized use, disclosure or access. “There are a couple notably industry-friendlier provisions, including exempting internal use of customer data from disclosure requirements,” said the American Legislative Exchange Council’s Jonathon Hauenschild. And it allows ISPs to charge more for services for those who don’t permit ISPs to share their data, emailed the Communications and Technology Task Force director. On the Minnesota House floor Thursday, lawmakers considered an omnibus jobs bill (SF-1937) including a privacy amendment stating that no telecom or ISP operating in Minnesota may collect personal information from a customer without written consent. The House hadn't voted at our deadline.

Correction: CPB isn't involved in the Protect My Public Media campaign, which is co-managed by America's Public Television Stations and NPR, and includes PBS as a partner (see 1704040079).

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai named 29 members to the commission’s new Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee, to be chaired by Elizabeth Pierce, CEO of Quintillion Subsea Operations. The group will meet for the first time April 21, said a Thursday news release. “I’m excited that the Committee will soon be getting to work on recommendations that will help break down barriers to broadband deployment,” Pai said. “Closing the digital divide across America is my top priority, and the work of this committee will be a crucial step toward meeting that goal.” The FCC received more than 380 applications to sit on the BDAC and another 58 will be designated for its working groups, Pai said. Kelleigh Cole, director of the Utah Broadband Outreach Center in the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Development, will be vice chair. In most FCC advisory groups, the work gets done in the working groups and Pai designated five. Model Code for Municipalities will be chaired by Douglas Dimitroff of the New York State Wireless Association and Sam Liccardo, mayor of San Jose, California, will be vice chairman. Model Code for States to be chaired by Kelly McGriff, Southern Light, and the vice chair will be Karen Charles Peterson, commissioner with the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable. Other working groups are: Competitive Access to Broadband Infrastructure -- Ken Simon, Crown Castle, chairman, Brent Skorup of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, vice chairman; Removing State and Local Regulatory Barriers -- Robert DeBroux, TDS Telecom, chairman, Kim Keenan of the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council, vice chair; Streamlining Federal Siting -- Jonathan Adelstein of the Wireless Infrastructure Association, chairman, Valerie Fast Horse of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, vice chair. The April 21 meeting starts at 10 a.m. in the Commission Meeting Room. A full list of members is here, including members from AT&T Mobile, Comcast, Google Fiber, the LGBT Technology Partnership and Institute, Mimosa Networks, Sprint and Southern Co. The FCC also released a public notice establishing a docket for comments to BDAC or to file documents for its use. The docket is 17-83.

House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Mike Doyle, D-Pa., saw a difference between how some congressional Republicans talked publicly and privately about the Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to kill FCC ISP privacy rules, recently signed into law, he said on an episode of C-SPAN’s The Communicators, set to be televised this weekend and be online. “We talked to many Republicans who agreed privately that this certainly was not a good move for the party,” Doyle said, not naming anyone. A group of 15 Republicans voted against the CRA during its House vote, and no Democrats voted for it. Doyle said he expects a similar fight over the 2015 open internet order if Chairman Ajit Pai seeks to undo the order. “This isn’t something they can do with a CRA or they can rush through,” Doyle said. “I believe they will hear from literally millions of Americans who do not agree with the action the chairman is about to take.” On the matter of privacy, he said the FTC wouldn't be sufficient due to its lack of rulemaking authority. He didn’t see undoing the FCC rules as a matter of bringing parity to the telecom and tech companies on privacy, as some have argued. “You have choice,” he said of online privacy, arguing that a person who doesn’t like Google could use Bing. Many Americans have the choice of only one ISP, he said. Democrats want “strong consumer protections,” he stressed, talking about his interest in competition and what that means for the telecom industry. He isn’t pushing for any particular contender to become FCC commissioner, he said.