Nearly two dozen privacy, civil liberties and transparency groups urged President Barack Obama to light a fire under the White House budget office to comply with the requirement to develop an open government plan. The coalition, which sent a letter Monday, said the Office of Management and Budget failed to release a plan in 2012 and 2014, when every other agency did as mandated by the 2009 presidential memo. "Many of us have repeatedly expressed concern over the failure of OMB to meet this obligation in multiple forums," the coalition's letter said. "The failure is particularly troubling because OMB is an agency with a central oversight role on information policy, it has responsibility for implementation of this plan, and it often serves as the right hand of the President." The coalition said complying with the directive is important because the open government plans "encourage agencies to articulate how openness helps them fulfill their missions, address public concerns, and build openness into the way they operate." OMB, which developed a plan in 2010, hasn't updated it and declined to say when it might be published, said the letter signed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Project on Government Oversight, the Sunlight Foundation and others. "And we believe it is on course to fail again," it said.
Global Tel*Link asked the FCC to stay inmate calling service (ICS) rate caps in a commission order, pending further judicial review of those caps and other aspects of the order (see 1510220059). The stay is warranted because Global Tel*Link is likely to succeed in its legal challenge to the order on its merits, the company would otherwise suffer irreparable harm, and the balance of equities favors a stay, GTL said in a petition filed Tuesday at the commission in docket 12-375. "The reviewing court will likely set aside the rate caps, first of all, because -- as the Commission itself acknowledged -- they do not allow ICS providers to recover the legitimate costs of providing service in correctional institutions," GTL said. "To obtain permission to place their equipment inside prisons and jails, ICS providers must pay state and local authorities location rents or site commissions. The Commission recognized that the rate caps it set do not allow ICS providers to recover those location rents," the company said. The caps thus violate (1) Section 276(b)(1)(A) of the Communications Act requiring the FCC to ensure ICS providers are fairly compensated for all calls from their payphones, (2) Section 201 requiring "just and reasonable" rates, and (3) the U.S. Constitution, which bars "confiscatory rates," GTL said. It said the FCC "expressed its distaste" for site-commission payments to correctional authorities but declined to prohibit them. "The Commission cannot endorse site commissions -- however reluctantly -- yet prevent ICS providers from recovering that real cost of providing service," said GTL. The company said it would suffer irreparable harm without a stay because it wouldn't be able to recover the revenue lost due to the "unlawful, confiscatory rates." The FCC had no comment, a spokeswoman said. Securus Technologies, which had also said it would seek a stay, also had no comment.
The FCC partially granted an incumbent telco request to extend the comment period in the rulemaking on special access business data services. An order issued Monday by the Wireline Bureau in docket 05-25 extended initial and reply comment deadlines to Jan. 22 and Feb. 19, respectively; they had been Jan. 6 and Feb. 5. USTelecom joined by ITTA filed a joint petition asking the deadlines be extended until at least 12 weeks after business market data submitted by industry parties was declared final and all software tools sought by the petitioners to analyze the data were made available (see 1511100068). "Even with the data set subject to refresh, parties have been able to perform significant analysis," the bureau said. "Although we find the Joint Petitioners have not demonstrated the need for a twelve week extension of time, we will extend the comment deadlines by an additional two and a half weeks to account for the upcoming data refresh."
The Universal Service Administrative Co. projects $1.9 billion will be available from past years to carry forward into funding year 2016 for the Schools and Libraries Support Mechanism, which funds E-Rate USF discounts, USAC CEO Chris Henderson told the FCC in a letter Monday filed in docket 02-6. Of that amount, $1.36 billion is from funding years 2013 and before, $355 million is from funding year 2014 and $188 million is from funding year 2015, Henderson said.
Federal judges denied the motion of William Cunningham to file an amicus brief in the FCC net neutrality and broadband reclassification case (USTelecom v. FCC, No. 15-1063). A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a short order Monday denying the motion without further comment. Cunningham had asked Dec. 7 that his amicus brief be allowed months after a deadline because he isn't a lawyer and didn't have access to the court's "ECF System" for making filings.
Two contenders for the GOP presidential nomination blasted net neutrality regulation in videos posted last week by a group called Protect Internet Freedom. The group’s website doesn’t list its funding or details of its formation. “The net neutrality rules promulgated by this administration along with the big businesses that stand to benefit are as good an example of crony capitalism as any,” former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina said in one video. “Net neutrality proponents did a masterful job of marketing all this with the help of late night hosts and political spin, arguing it would level the Internet playing field. The truth, however, is that it will insert Washington bureaucracy and control into the 21st century’s greatest success story.” She argued that only big companies can handle the imposition of such regulations. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., also criticized the FCC’s February order. “Calling it a utility or getting the government involved is exactly the wrong thing to do,” Paul said in another video. “I’m absolutely opposed to having the Internet considered to be a utility. I would undo every bit of it that’s done through executive order and I would try to keep the government’s tentacles and overreach out of the Internet.” Paul also criticized rival candidate Donald Trump for recently saying he's open to shutting down parts of the Internet for national security reasons. “The Internet’s about speech, and I don’t think we ought to be considering any candidate that wants to put impediments to freedom of speech,” Paul said.
The FCC fined Purple Communications $11.94 million for "improperly billing" the Telecommunications Relay Service Fund, which subsidizes services for persons with speech and hearing disabilities. "The Commission found that Purple sought and received millions in reimbursements from the TRS Fund and failed to reasonably verify over 40,000 'users' with obviously false names, including gibberish and profanities," an FCC news release said Friday. "As a result of Purple’s inadequate verification procedures, 'users' could have registered with names like ‘sdfsdf cicwcicw,’ 'Myname Yourname,' or 'Lot$a Money,' for which Purple could be reimbursed," it said. Enforcement Bureau Chief Travis LeBlanc said any improper billing of a federal program is unlawful, "but it is particularly unconscionable when that money is diverted from providing service to consumers with real speech or hearing disabilities who need to be able to make phone calls." The commission found no reason to cancel or reduce a proposed penalty in a notice of apparent liability for forfeiture after reviewing Purple's response, an FCC order said. Commissioner Michael O'Rielly concurred in the action. A Purple representative had no immediate comment.
Supporters of an FCC proposal to set aside vacant TV band channels in every market nationwide for unlicensed use after the TV incentive auction “have repeatedly ignored the dramatic policy shift it would represent and the associated harm it would cause,” NAB said in a letter filed at the FCC, reporting on meetings between NAB officials and aides to the commissioners. “The Commission’s proposal would, for the first time, remove channels within the TV band from TV use in favor of unlicensed use, and constrain broadcasters’ ability to meet a central tenet of the Communications Act: robust and ubiquitous service to the American people,” NAB said. The proposal would also be harmful for viewers across the country, “particularly in rural areas, who rely on [low-power] TV and translator service,” NAB said. In June, the FCC proposed to reserve at least one TV channel in every market in the U.S. for white spaces devices and wireless mics after the incentive auction and repacking (see 1506160043). NAB filed in docket 12-268.
Stations participating in the incentive auction and involved in pending transactions will need to take special steps since FCC registration numbers were frozen as of Dec. 8, the Incentive Auction Task Force announced in a public notice Thursday. Since FRNs are used to access the auction system, broadcasters involved in transactions that want to offer up the spectrum of their newly acquired stations have two options, the PN said. First, the purchaser could “contractually designate” the seller -- under whose FRN the sold stations would still be licensed -- as the purchaser’s bidding agent for the stations affected. Or, the parties could agree that the buyer will use the seller’s FRN in the auction, though this could give both parties access to the bidding data associated with that FRN, the PN said. A new FRN can be generated and assigned to the seller’s remaining stations, the PN said. FCC approval of any pending transactions will be conditioned on the parties’ express agreement to one of these options, the PN said. The agency isn’t liable for any information gained through the use of a shared FRN, and the parties are still subject to the quiet period communications prohibitions, the PN said.
Participants in a real-time text field trial "reported high satisfaction scores on the tested RTT technology," said Gallaudet University's Technology Access Program, Omnitor and the University of Wisconsin's Trace Center, in a report posted Friday in FCC docket 15-178. It covered a 2015 field trial of real-time text and its interoperability performed by the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Telecommunications Access across three different calling environments. The report also notes overviews of current deployment and standards for real-time text. Telecom carriers see RTT technology as an IP-based replacement for text telephony services. Cellular South is the latest carrier seeking a TTY waiver to use RTT (see 1511240009).