New Jersey hasn’t been allocating funding from the 911 System and Emergency Response Trust Fund Account to counties, despite having done so during and before 2009, said the New Jersey Association of Counties (NJAC) in reply comments to the FCC in docket 09-14 on the report to Congress on state collection and distribution of 911 fees. The state also has been diverting expenditures of the 911 Trust Fund to non-911 system capital and operations, the New Jersey Wireless Association (NJWA) said in its reply comments. T-Mobile was the only other organization to file reply comments by the March 9 deadline. T-Mobile wants the FCC to clarify the status of 911 fee collection in order to ensure transparency, efficiency, accountability and equitable cost sharing among consumers who benefit from 911, before it recommends the adoption of any new fees or increases to existing fees, the comments said.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who circulated an NPRM Thursday on proposed privacy rules for ISPs requiring them to protect subscribers (see 1603100019), said in a Huffington Post blog post aimed at consumers: The FCC is protecting “your data.” The NPRM is set for a vote at the FCC's March 31 open meeting, as reported by Communications Daily (see 1602110054 and 1603100019). A senior FCC official said on a call with reporters the NPRM will explore a wide range of options. Wheeler said the proposal doesn't ask questions about edge providers like Facebook and Google but is sector specific. There's a long history in the U.S. of sector privacy rules and the FCC is the expert agency over ISPs, a senior agency official said.
A proposal by ISPs on privacy rules included groups representing nearly all ISPs (see 1603010069) except wireless ISPs, said Robert Quinn, AT&T senior vice president-federal, in a blog post Wednesday. FTC oversight has worked well, Quinn said. “All major ISPs have enacted privacy policies which explain to consumers the information that ISPs collect and how that data is used,” he said. “At AT&T, we’ve continued to simplify our policy, including several years ago when we went to a single comprehensive privacy policy that describes plainly and simply the information we collect, how we collect it and how we use it.” Quinn said he was AT&T chief privacy officer for several years and can say firsthand “we take customer privacy and how we communicate our polices to our customers seriously.” But some groups are pushing for much stricter rules than ISPs have faced in the past (see 1603070049), Quinn said. “To get there, those groups have characterized ISPs as ‘gatekeepers,’ asserted that ISPs (as opposed to companies like Google) are the real leaders of targeted advertising and, finally, argued that the Federal Trade Commission is, in essence, incompetent at policing privacy given the tools they have available.” Those arguments aren't supported by the facts, he said, though he warned the FCC may be listening. “Time and time again, the FCC appears to want to place its thumb on the scale in favor of Internet companies and against the companies that invest in broadband infrastructure in this country,” he wrote. “Last year, it was the Title II proceeding. Last month, we were talking about set-top boxes, this month it’s privacy, next month it could be special access.” The FCC did not comment. "I’ve characterized ISPs as ‘gatekeepers’ because that is what they are,” said John Simpson, Consumer Watchdog privacy project director, responding to Quinn. “Edge providers like Google and Facebook do pose serious privacy concerns, but that is no justification for not dealing with the privacy issues raised by ISPs and their unique position. That is what the FCC is legally bound to do now that broadband providers are classified as common carriers.” The FTC has tried to protect consumers' privacy, “but because it doesn’t have rulemaking authority in this area and can only move against ‘unfair and deceptive’ acts, its powers are limited,” Simpson said. “The phone and cable ISP industry is totally disingenuous claiming that the use of privacy policies is an effective way to protect consumers,” said Center for Digital Democracy Executive Director Jeffrey Chester. “These companies are engaged in significant cross device tracking and targeting using their advantage over subscriber information. They are expanding their work with data brokers, acquiring powerful consumer data assets, and are engaged in practices that threaten the privacy of their customers. The FCC has to step in before these broadband giants further invade our privacy.”
Enactment of the Digital Security Commission Act (HR-4651/S-2604) would likely improve understanding of the encryption issues in Apple's ongoing legal standoff with the FBI but may not mean long-lasting changes to the encryption debate within the federal government, cybersecurity law experts said Wednesday during a New America event. Apple formally objected last week to U.S. District Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym's order in Riverside, California, which tried to compel the company to help the FBI access an iPhone used by one of the alleged San Bernardino, California, mass shooters (see 1603020061). Though the tech sector is attempting to be publicly monolithic in its support of Apple, they're far less so behind the scenes, said Steptoe and Johnson lawyer Michael Vatis, former director of the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center.
FCC process overhaul probably isn't dead in the Senate despite the exclusion of bicameral FCC Process Reform Act proposals from the latest FCC reauthorization bill text (S-2644), senior GOP senators told us Wednesday. That reauthorization was initially seen as the Senate vehicle for including these proposals and in draft form included several last year, to some Senate Democrats’ chagrin. The House has unanimously approved bipartisan compromise versions of the FCC Process Reform Act multiple times now.
Consensus on privacy rules for ISPs is unlikely and the FCC will have to step in said attorney James Halpert, who represents ISPs and others, and John Simpson, Consumer Watchdog privacy project director, on a segment of C-SPAN’s The Communicators taped Tuesday. The FCC is expected to vote on a privacy NPRM at its March 31 meeting (see 1603030066). An announcement is expected as early as Wednesday, industry officials told us.
The FCC circulated a draft order that would extend Lifeline USF support to broadband coverage and to streamline administration of the program that subsidizes low-income telecom service, as expected. The draft is expected to be considered at the agency's March 31 meeting, as Communications Daily first reported. The order would allow Lifeline support to be used for stand-alone broadband or bundled broadband/voice packages in addition to current voice service. The order would phase out the support for stand-alone mobile voice service and phase in broadband minimum standards over the next few years, said an FCC fact sheet.
The FCC’s net neutrality order goes beyond broadband regulation and threatens edge companies, the Internet, free speech, free enterprise and freedom in general, said three prominent critics at a Conservative Political Action Conference panel Thursday. If “you want to control the people, and you want to control the government and private enterprise, the first place you start is political speech control,” said former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell. An FCC spokesman had no comment Friday.
Broadband is the “defining infrastructure of the 21st century” and it shouldn't be a surprise that the FCC will consider privacy rules for ISPs, FCC Wireline Bureau Chief Matthew DelNero said Thursday at an FCC symposium. A vote on the rulemaking is likely at the commission's March 31 meeting, he said, noting that Chairman Tom Wheeler said as much during congressional testimony Wednesday
Federal regulatory approval of Charter/TWC/BHN coming before the California Public Utilities Commission decision expected by May 12 (see 1602120055) is "a possibility," Charter Communications CEO Tom Rutledge said Tuesday at a Morgan Stanley conference. The FCC's unofficial 180-day shot clock for review of the Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks deals was at 158 days Wednesday, with the agency "working ... to be consistent with their shot clock," Rutledge said. While upward of 95 percent of Charter video customers take an expanded video package, affordability "is a real issue," Rutledge said, saying video expenses are driven by programmers and programming bundles. He said optimally Charter would sell smaller, tailored programming packages but "I don't have the right to buy programming that way." Pricing is seeing "some moderation," Rutledge said, saying New Charter's bigger scale should help with video pricing. He said Charter's cloud-based Spectrum Guide user interface was rolled out in Missouri and Nevada, and is being introduced in other parts of the company's current footprint. He also said the company sees it as a means to increasing its customer base: "There's a tremendous amount of entertainment in that [video] package; it's hard to represent because of the user interfaces." Asked about future mergers and acquisitions opportunities for Charter, Rutledge said, "At the moment, M&A isn't really attractive to me. Just out of sheer exhaustion. But there's opportunity out there and we'll take advantage as those things come to us." In a separate presentation at the Morgan Stanley conference, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said that the day after it called off its attempt to buy TWC, Comcast Cable CEO Neil Smit "said we're going to make customer service our best product." Referring to Smit's being a former Navy SEAL, Roberts said, "I thought to myself he's had some worse missions than a merger that failed. It is early innings but were seeing the beginning of a turnaround and results" with video customer growth in 2015 -- the first such growth in years. Roberts said he sees Comcast moving toward providing a variety of broadband-related services, such as remote diagnostics of connected devices in homes: "We are looking at smart Internet as an opportunity not any other company has -- even if all those aren't our devices." A Comcast goal this year is to move to a system where all customer transactions can be done on mobile devices, Roberts said.