A three-hour FCC oversight hearing before the House Communications Subcommittee Tuesday became tangled in questions of FCC process and how commissioners can discuss items pending at the commission. Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., helped trigger what became a fierce debate with his questioning. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., raised the same issues in the last week (see 1603210052).

Industry groups sought to correct the record as they saw it after FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s Tuesday testimony before House appropriators (see 1603150066), slamming how Wheeler characterized his set-top box proposal and the broadcaster repacking process. “It’s disappointing and troubling that Chairman Wheeler continues to dodge basic questions about his set-top box proposal,” said the Future of TV Coalition, which has NCTA and USTelecom among its members. “Dozens of programmers, content creators, lawmakers, and community leaders have spoken clearly about the devastating impact this rule will have on the programming marketplace, and particularly on the independent networks serving communities of color. They deserve honest answers -- not dismissals and dodges.” NAB referred to exchanges that Wheeler had with appropriators regarding the length of time required in the broadcaster repacking process set to follow the broadcast TV incentive auction. “It’s disappointing and disingenuous for Chairman Wheeler to suggest that NAB’s repacking advocacy supports the FCC’s arbitrary 39-month deadline,” an NAB spokesman said. “As he well knows, when the FCC initially pushed to repack the country in 18 months, NAB responded in 2013 that it would take at least 30 months to repack the then-expected 400 or so broadcasters. A year and a half later, the FCC first revealed that it might repack as many as 1,300 TV stations. Given the FCC’s decision not to minimize the scope of repacking, the transition will likely require significantly more time.”

CenturyLink and Frontier said NCTA "misses the point" in objecting to their request that the FCC give price-cap ILECs $175 million a year in interim USF support for continuing to provide voice service in extremely remote areas so far unfunded by a new broadband-oriented subsidy mechanism. "The FCC determined last year that customers in these remote areas should continue to be offered voice service until that broadband solution is in place," the two incumbent telcos said in a joint email statement responding to NCTA opposition in docket 10-90 (see 1603140053). "Unfortunately, however, the FCC failed to continue the necessary USF support for that obligation. CenturyLink has joined AT&T and USTelecom in appealing this unfunded mandate." The ILECs said their proposed interim funding "would only be available in areas where there are no other competitive providers, such as cable companies, offering service and where the FCC has recognized that it is too costly to serve without support." They said they share NCTA's concern about devising a long-term solution and agreed the FCC should move swiftly to set up a Remote Areas Fund. "It is disappointing that NCTA is against our proposal as it surely would oppose any action to impose a comparable unfunded voice obligation on cable companies," they said. "More importantly, by adopting interim funding, the FCC will ensure that customers continue receiving critical voice services in these extremely rural, high-cost areas while the FCC moves as rapidly as possible to adopt the Remote Areas Fund."

Multichannel video programming distributors began lobbying the FCC heavily on the broadcaster practice of trying to include stations to be named later in retransmission consent talks. The American Cable Association and American TV Alliance cited the issue at meetings with FCC staff, said ex parte filings (see here and here) Tuesday in docket 15-216. ACA said representatives of Atlantic Broadband, Cass Cable, Frankfort Plant Board, Liberty Puerto Rico and Shentel told Media Bureau staff that large broadcast station groups in particular "regularly engage" in bad-faith bargaining practices in retrans consent talks. ACA's meeting cited stations "allowing their affiliated networks to interfere with their right to grant out-of-market retransmission consent to cable operators" and broadcaster demands for carriage of prospective programming. ATVA also brought up prospective programming -- trying to require MVPDs to carry at set terms and rates networks to be named later -- in its meeting with Media Bureau and Office of General Counsel staff. At that meeting, according to ATVA, were representatives of ACA, AT&T, Dish Network, Time Warner Cable and USTelecom. ATVA said it discussed different types of forced bundling, ceding of negotiation rights and after-acquired station licenses. ATVA said it also repeated its arguments the FCC has legal authority to adopt its proposals. NAB didn't comment Wednesday.

A USTelecom request for ILEC relief continued to draw resistance from rivals and state commissions, and support from incumbent telcos, in reply comments posted this week in FCC docket 13-3. The battle lines were basically the same as in initial comments on USTelecom's 2013 petition asking the FCC for a declaratory ruling that incumbent telcos are nondominant in the provision of switched access voice services (see 1602230069). The FCC asked parties to refresh the record (see 1601210066). "ILECs remain dominant in the switched access marketplace, and USTelecom has been unable to offer sustainable evidence otherwise," said Incompas, representing CLECs and other ILEC competitors, urging the FCC to deny the petition. Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and South Dakota regulatory commissions also said (here, here, here) USTelecom hadn't made the case for the requested relief. The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission said it based its opposition on the data in the FCC's October 2014 local competition report, which "indicates that the ILEC provision of switched access service still remains a dominant service." The USTelecom petition is premature, it said. But USTelecom said no parties opposing its requests offered "any tangible or new evidence to dispute the overwhelming facts in the record clearly demonstrating that [ILECs] are not dominant in the provision of switched access voice services because they no longer possess sufficient power to control prices in that marketplace." USTelecom said it wasn't seeking blanket deregulation of those services. It wants ILECs to have the same rights as others to (1) file tariffs on one day's notice and without cost support, (2) face a 30-day (instead of 60-day) waiting period for discontinuance applications to be granted and (3) be eligible for presumptive streamlined treatment for more types of transfers of control under Section 214 of the Communications Act. It said the relief wouldn't affect special access services, wholesale obligations or forbearance decisions. AT&T said the current regulation imposes administrative costs and hurts dynamism by "inhibiting carriers' ability nimbly to adjust to changes in consumer demand in today's hypercompetitive marketplace." Alaska Communications also backed the petition.

USTelecom and Incompas jointly asked the FCC to allow parties to make public aggregated data derived from industry filings in the agency's special access business broadband rulemaking, which the commission has prohibited as confidential or highly confidential information subject to a protective order. USTelecom and some ILECs previously made such requests (see 1602230057 and 1601290053), but Incompas represents CLECs and wireless critics of the ILECs, giving the telco request broader backing. In a filing posted Monday in docket 05-25, USTelecom and Incompas want parties to be able to include in their public comments and filings “numerical, statistical, and graphical descriptions of data aggregated at the national level, including the presence of providers and their facilities,” with data allowed to be aggregated for industry segments such as ILECs, CLECs and cable, but not for single providers such as Level 3. They also asked that parties be able to make public such data aggregated at a regional level and for metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), states, or urban, suburban or rural areas, without identifying the particular MSAs, states, or areas. They asked that the data descriptions be allowed "at the national, regional, anonymized MSA or other anonymized location or circuit level concerning the adequacy and completeness of the data.” They provided examples for each of the categories listed, but said the list wasn't meant to be exhaustive and asked the FCC to confirm there may be other categories of nonconfidential aggregated data that could be filed in the public record. They also said the category lists were included only to clarify the requests, not to mean that either group was expressing a view as to their “relevance or probative value.” USTelecom further asked that the commission encourage all parties to review the redactions in their comments or filings "to remove any improper redactions of non-confidential information, consistent with the categories on the list (as those categories may be revised and approved by the FCC), and to resubmit those comments and filings into the public record" to inform the debate. The FCC had no comment.

Public interest and consumer groups pressed the FCC to move forward on a privacy rulemaking, which the agency is expected to do at its March 31 meeting (see 1603030066). The letter slams a “consensus” proposal offered last week by major associations representing ISPs (see 1603010069).

With a rulemaking imminent, major industry trade associations submitted to the FCC a consensus proposal on ISP privacy rules Tuesday. Meanwhile, FTC Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen said the FCC would be better off leaving ISP privacy to her agency, which has expertise in the area, rather than approving its own set of rules. Ohlhausen spoke Tuesday on an Information Technology and Innovation Foundation panel.

The House Commerce Committee approved a modified version of the Small Business Broadband Deployment Act (HR-4596) Thursday with Democratic backing, as expected (see 1602240060). That earned praise from industry officials. Both the bipartisan amendment and then the legislation received uncontroversial voice votes. The legislation would exempt small businesses from the FCC net neutrality order’s enhanced transparency requirements, which on a temporary basis currently exempt ISPs with fewer than 100,000 subscribers. The bill originally would have codified that and raised the threshold definition of a small business to 500,000 subscribers, which spurred Democratic opposition during the subcommittee markup. A bipartisan compromise between Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa, settled on a 250,000-subscriber cutoff in defining a small business and included a five-year sunset provision. “I was glad we were able to reach a conclusion in a fair and balanced way,” Walden said. “This is what folks want us to do,” Loebsack said during the markup. The American Cable Association, the Competitive Carriers Association, CTIA, NTCA, the Telecom Industry Association and USTelecom issued statements lauding the compromise and supporting committee approval. “NTCA devoted significant effort to working with these offices to explain how the requirements would affect small businesses,” CEO Shirley Bloomfield said. Walden released a discussion draft of the original legislation in January and formally introduced the bill as HR-4596 Wednesday. Net neutrality advocates originally had warned against the measure. "Today’s amendment modestly improves the original bill, but this legislation remains a solution in search of a problem," said New America Open Technology Institute Policy Counsel Josh Stager. "The FCC already granted an exemption from its transparency rules for small providers. The bill’s sponsors have not demonstrated why Congress needs to step in now, or why being transparent with customers is burdensome for ISPs. Every consumer deserves basic Open Internet protections regardless of whether their ISP is big or small." Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood dismissed the bipartisan compromise as “a giveaway to ISPs claiming that it’s a burden to comply with the Open Internet Order’s sensible obligation to provide useful information to their own customers.” The compromise cutoff “exempts every single provider other than a couple dozen of the nation’s largest cable and phone companies,” Wood said.

The FCC should include an Alaska Plan in a looming rate-of-return USF overhaul, General Communications Inc. (GCI) and other Alaska telecom interests are telling commission officials. The plan is aimed at supporting broadband deployment in rural Alaska, and time is of the essence, given the state's construction season, they say. Native American groups are separately pushing for including a Tribal Broadband Factor, citing a projected reduction of almost $33 million in support for carriers serving tribal lands under a draft FCC order. Alaska Communications Systems (ACS) also has asked the FCC to adopt its price-cap USF proposal for Alaska.