FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said he looks forward to "successful and timely" regional cutovers from Neustar to iconectiv as local number portability administrator starting April 8, an agency spokesman confirmed, responding to our query about a description of his comments at a North American Numbering Council meeting Friday. He also congratulated iconectiv on successfully completing the first phase of the transition, for public safety and ancillary services, the spokesman confirmed.

Neustar warned the FCC not to expect a contingency rollback to the company's existing operations as local number portability administrator if a scheduled initial regional cutover to incoming LNPA iconectiv fails. If the FCC allows the Southeast Region cutover April 8, "there will be no contingency rollback (either automated or manual) to Neustar's database and services because the contractual and operational requirements necessary for such service would not exist," said the incumbent's filing Thursday to be posted in docket 09-109. Neustar offered in October 2016 to construct North American Portability Management's "preferred automated, reliable contingency rollback solution," the incumbent said. "Neustar estimated 6-9 months for development and a cost of approximately $1.5 million. The NAPM rejected Neustar's proposal on May 12, 2017. The current predicament--reaching the cutover deadline without the capability for a contingency rollback--was entirely foreseeable and is the result of poor decision making and planning on the part of the NAPM. To suggest otherwise is false." The FCC and NAPM didn't comment. T-Mobile was the latest telco to back the LNPA transition timetable and NAPM's contingency rollback plan. "Given the significant positive testing conducted by T-Mobile, as well as other service providers, we are optimistic that transition to the new LNPA will be successful," it said Wednesday, citing a "low likelihood of a catastrophic failure" requiring a contingency rollback to Neustar's Number Portability Administration Center. Other large carriers have made similar filings; Neustar and smaller providers voiced objections (see 1803140053, 1803130047 and 1803090031).

The FCC ruled vague phone fee descriptions may violate truth-in-billing rules and the Communications Act, with Commissioner Mike O'Rielly partially dissenting. Responding to questions raised by a 2010 order from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, an FCC declaratory ruling Thursday in docket 98-170 stressed "a final determination will require the court to apply our ruling to the facts at issue in the case," Gregory Manasher and Frida Sirota v. NECC Telecom, No. 2:06-cv-10749. Plaintiffs' petition to the agency alleged NECC violated the rules and the act "by billing, charging, and collecting monies" that "were unjustly, unreasonably, and deceptively billed as 'recurring fees' and 'other fees,'" the FCC said. "Plaintiffs also alleged NECC billed plaintiffs 'for amounts in excess of the actual cost for telephone services.'" NECC disputed the allegations. Both parties cited the Supreme Court's Global Crossing v. Metrophones, disagreeing whether the FCC had addressed whether a Section 64.2401 rule violation is unreasonable under the act's Section 201(b). The court referred the legal issue and eight questions on billing details to the FCC. The agency sought comment in 2012, drawing responses from two telco trade groups and consumer advocates. The commission ruling provided answers. O'Rielly said he's concerned the ruling could limit carrier discretion under 1999 truth-in-billing rules intended as "broad, binding principles" rather than detailed rules. "I disagree with the portions of this item that suggest that clarifying information must be contained on the bill itself," he said. He's "troubled" by the FCC action because the "flourishing voice market" is giving consumers various options: "This item should strike a more careful balance. Instead, its effort to explicitly or implicitly constrain billing practices could make compliance more burdensome for providers of legacy services or confuse consumers with more billing detail than helpful." NECC didn't comment.

HEVC Advance’s new royalty structure (see 1803140037) caps rates at 1 percent on the per unit cost of H.265-enabled devices. The patent pool lowered the royalties after getting licensee feedback that royalties above 1 percent were burdensome, it said.

Though Broadcom formally ended its bid to buy Qualcomm Wednesday and complied with President Donald Trump’s order to withdraw its slate of nominees for election to the Qualcomm board (see 1803140057), Broadcom’s “understanding” is that Qualcomm’s own nominees running for the board at the company's March 23 annual meeting "are only garnering between 15 to 16 percent" of the total Qualcomm shares outstanding in a proxy vote “tally” through Thursday, said Broadcom Chief Financial Officer Tom Krause on a Thursday earnings call. That’s “not necessarily something to celebrate down in San Diego,” said Krause in an obvious jab at Qualcomm’s management, which fought for months to beat down Broadcom's hostile takeover bid. Qualcomm representatives didn’t comment. Broadcom doesn’t see “this week’s events putting any constraints on our ability to pursue acquisitions more broadly,” said Krause. He and CEO Hock Tan “are quite familiar with the industry landscape, and sitting here today, we do see potential targets that are consistent with our proven business model,” he said. Qualcomm was “clearly a unique and very large acquisition opportunity,” he said. “Given the maturity of the industry” and the “consolidation it has seen,” any future Broadcom acquisitions “are much more likely to be funded with cash available on our balance sheet,” rather than financed through banks, he said. Broadcom executives refused to take questions on the call about the failed Qualcomm bid.

The FCC is moving quickly to make more spectrum available for 5G, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said Thursday at the Cato Institute. Pai noted he recently committed to an auction of the 28 GHz band in November, followed immediately by a 24 GHz auction (see 1802260047). “We intend to move very quickly on other bands as well,” he said. “Our goal at least is to set the table” for innovation, he said. “The last thing we want is for regulation to stand as bottleneck for consumer welfare.” Pai noted the importance to 5G of changing the infrastructure rules: “The biggest roadblocks that we face now are regulatory.” Barriers to deploying small cells at the levels that will be needed for 5G are “almost insurmountable” Pai said. “There are multiple levels of regulatory review -- federal, state, local, tribal,” he said. Smaller companies in particular are struggling, he said. A small carrier deploying a 5G network in a city like Washington might have to install “several hundred or a thousand small cells,” he said. “I don’t want the FCC’s policies on 5G to stand as an example of what went wrong.” Pai was at Cato to discuss The Political Spectrum, a book by Clemson University economist Thomas Hazlett on the history of spectrum policy. One of the book's takeaways is that too much communications regulation is based on “accepted wisdom -- it is this way because it has always been this way,” Pai said. “There is sometimes a hesitance to look at the facts and to reconsider first principles.” Hazlett said local objections to the deployment of base stations is a major problem in the U.S. “There is a significant role for Congress and the FCC to get involved,” Hazlett said. “Spectrum allocation, it’s a work in progress and there is momentum.” But it wasn’t hard for him to identify in the book “horror stories” on spectrum regulation, he said. Too much spectrum is still in the hands of federal agencies, Hazlett said. Opening bands for commercial use can take decades, he said.

The FCC “owes” Puerto Rico and communities damaged by 2017 hurricanes “basic assessment of the consequences for communications” with “field hearings and reports,” Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said in an address Wednesday at the Hispanic Radio Conference. “While we have a proposal before us to support the recovery of wired and wireless communications, the FCC has not completed a full public study of what went right and what went wrong,” Rosenworcel said. “We should -- before hurricane season is here.” It begins “in a few short weeks,” Rosenworcel said. She criticized policies on media ownership, and of the low rates of Hispanic broadcast ownership. The agency “has been on a tear” to dismantle the commission’s support of diverse ownership, Rosenworcel said. She praised actions by the American Association of Advertising Agencies to end discrimination by ad agencies against minority media outlets (see 1802060049). The FCC didn't comment.

Delivery of the FCC's daily roundup of actions again deviated from its regular email schedule Wednesday and Tuesday, based on the experience of some users, including ours. The Daily Digest was, however, at www.fcc.gov/proceedings-actions/daily-digest, with the current day's version here. A similar problem occurred earlier this month when for a few days none was emailed, due to technical problems (see 1803060035). "In this case, the staffer who normally sends the Digest was out of the office" Wednesday and Tuesday, and the person "filling in made an error in configuring the Daily e-mail on those days, so it did not reach the external subscriber list," a spokesman emailed: "All documents are available as they are released throughout the day" at https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/releasedToday.do, among other locations. Wednesday's issue was emailed to subscribers later in the day, after our query, and FCC spokespeople said the problem has now been fixed.

The FCC extended Lifeline recertification deadlines for the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The Oglala Sioux Tribe asked for an extension to "develop and implement an accurate and reliable recertification procedure" appropriate for Pine Ridge. It said annual recertifications of low-income eligibility are complicated by harsh weather, language barriers and distances subscribers must travel. "The unique, simultaneous combination of these circumstances resulted in a sudden and dramatic decrease in successful recertifications" at Pine Ridge starting in September, said a Wireline Bureau order in docket 11-42 in Wednesday's Daily Digest. It granted a temporary waiver giving Lifeline subscribers on the reservation 210 days (instead of 60) to respond to recertification efforts if their eligibility can't be verified through a database. Separately, Joe RedCloud, a former Oglala tribal utilities commission chairman, disputed FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's contention in a Feb. 7 letter to Rep. Tom O'Halleran, D-Arizona, that many tribal groups support the commission's recent tribal Lifeline (TLL) changes (see 1802210015). "Tribes in general do NOT support the exclusion of wireless resellers from the TLL program and the Tribes referenced" by Pai and an FCC order "are not representative of Tribal interests," said a letter RedCloud emailed Tuesday to an O'Halleran aide. RedCloud said the tribes Pai cited are a small number of 562 federally recognized U.S. tribes, and he raised questions about the cited tribes' support. "In fact, many Tribes have complained about the lack of Tribal consultation." The FCC didn't comment. New York City officials urged the FCC "to reverse course on recent proposed actions to weaken the essential Lifeline low-income consumers' discount program." The FCC proposals, including to cap the program budget and restrict support to individuals, "will cause irreparable harm to the very consumers this program is intended to protect," said a letter from over two dozen city council members Tuesday.

Google Fiber said a cable "one touch, make ready" proposal undercuts recommendations of the FCC Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee for improving the pole-attachment process. "NCTA, Comcast, Charter, and Cox have submitted a totally different proposal that undermines the progress made by the BDAC," Google Fiber said Wednesday in docket 17-84. "This after largely ignoring -- or, in the case of Comcast, even voting in favor of -- the BDAC recommendation." The NCTA-led proposal (see 1803060030) was "extremely late" and "fatally flawed," Google said: "NCTA’s proposed make-ready improvements entirely fail to address the fundamental problems with the existing make-ready rules and procedures -- in particular, the gross inefficiency, unnecessary costs, and risks to safety of multiple truck rolls and trips up a pole, and the ability of existing attachers to thwart the ability of new competitors to enter the market. NCTA's proposal would add more costs and increase risk for new entrants, making expanded broadband deployment less likely." While NCTA’s goal of speeding make-ready work "seems helpful on a first glance, its touted improvements are likely illusory," Google added. NCTA emailed that its "proposal is a balanced approach to resolving these complex issues. In contrast, Google’s approach fails to account for the legitimate interest that cable operators have in managing and protecting their networks.” Verizon and the American Cable Association also made recent filings (here and here).