The FTC Office of the Inspector General (OIG) investigated eight instances of fraud, waste, abuse and employee misconduct over the past five years, according to documents disclosed to Communications Daily under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Six investigations covered relatively small-scale individual misconduct -- using or selling commission equipment for personal benefit, misusing company funds, unpaid loans between employees. This is the first part in an occasional series on federal agencies’ IG investigations.
Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., faced off against a fierce challenger backed by the tech industry Tuesday in his Silicon Valley district’s highly watched Democratic primary. Ro Khanna, an attorney who was deputy assistant secretary of Commerce during President Barack Obama’s first term, outraised the seven-term Honda, amassing $2.6 million, compared with Honda’s $2.09 million. Khanna’s campaign website touts several telecom and media priorities, such as an Internet Bill of Rights (http://bit.ly/1otwRbg) that calls for a right to net neutrality, universal Web access, the right to be free of warrantless metadata collection and more. Last month, Khanna blasted FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler for his net neutrality NPRM, saying: “Frankly, a former telecommunications lobbyist should never have been appointed to chair the Federal Communications Commission in the first place.” Honda is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and signed a letter to Wheeler asking for Title II reclassification of broadband and expressing his own disappointments in the NPRM. Honda’s website points to his own tech focus, spotlighting his work in bringing a patent office to California and an emphasis on nanotechnology and broadband, from access and adoption issues to fighting for net neutrality protections. Honda was an “instrumental ally in the establishment of a National Broadband Plan to lay out a bold roadmap to internet accessibility and service,” it said (http://bit.ly/1x2ayPu). Election rules would allow both Honda and Khanna to proceed to the November general election if they emerge with the two highest tallies of votes in what is an open primary, allowing both Democrats and Republicans to compete. Results were still coming in at our deadline.
Free Press has begun campaigning against industry-backed Republican House legislation that would stop the FCC from reclassifying broadband as a Title II telecom service, as net neutrality advocates have requested. House Communications Subcommittee Vice Chairman Bob Latta, R-Ohio, last week introduced HR-4752 (CD May 30 p6), which has no co-sponsors and is referred to the Commerce Committee. “Latta’s bill is for the biggest companies that punch his campaign dance ticket, and not for the millions of people who have urged the FCC to protect the open Internet by making these same companies common carriers,” wrote Free Press Senior Director-Strategy Tim Karr in a blog post Thursday (http://bit.ly/1ku9zCo). Karr cited the $60,450 Latta has received in the 2014 election cycle from telecom and media industry players, including many “Net Neutrality haters,” as Karr called them. MapLight research “shows that the members of Congress who have been most active in opposing the idea of establishing net neutrality rules under Title II have received more than twice as much campaign money from the cable industry as the average for all House members,” President Daniel Newman told us in a statement last week when asked about Latta’s bill. Karr dismissed the legislation as “toxic” and urged people to send letters to Congress attacking it (http://bit.ly/1x1GfIY). Latta, in posting a link to industry endorsements for the legislation on his Facebook page (http://on.fb.me/1ueu74P), was widely attacked on these counts across several dozen comments. “Congrats on your new job at Comcast,” one commenter told Latta. “Thanks for nothing.” In response, Latta defended his position. “Those seeking to impose 1930’s telephone regulations on the Internet are desperately seeking a solution in search of a problem,” Latta told us in a statement. “The classification of broadband Internet access as an information service is a long-standing position I have held that has been shared by both the Federal Communications Commission and the Supreme Court. Regulating the Internet as a public utility is bad for the economy, bad for jobs, and most importantly, bad for consumers.”
Maine’s Democratic U.S. Senate challenger, Shenna Bellows, wants the FCC to reclassify broadband as a Title II telecom service to allow stronger net neutrality rules, one of many telecom and media issues that have crept into a 2014 midterm election cycle. Bellows has many priorities in telecom, from the importance of rural broadband access to phone surveillance concerns to opposition to Comcast’s proposed $66 billion buy of Time Warner Cable.
Using Title II of the Communications Act to ensure nondiscrimination on the Internet wouldn’t work, would lead to massive litigation and would be a “ticking time bomb” that would reverberate throughout the Internet ecosystem, said panelists at a Thursday FCBA event. It would also raise thorny USF issues as regulators try to determine which high-tech companies should pay into the fund if broadband becomes a telecom service and thus regulated under Title II, some said. But not everyone agreed that Title II classification would lead to the suggested parade of horribles.
State broadcast associations fully supported a proposal to establish a system for delivery of multilingual emergency alerts, while NAB, noncommercial broadcasters and pay-TV operators support it but cautioned against imposing unnecessary burdens on emergency alert system (EAS) participants. Comments in a public notice proceeding that stemmed from a 2005 petition from Minority Media and Telecommunications Council were due this week (CD April 28 p19). The proposal focuses on a “designated hitter” backup plan, which involves broadcasters helping to transmit EAS messages for non-English stations that are knocked off-air (CD March 13 p10).
The FCC got tremendous deference from an appeals court in response to a challenge of 2011 USF/intercarrier compensation rules, said attorneys in interviews Tuesday. That’s disappointing, some said, but not surprising given the complexity of the issues. The FCC won a sweeping victory Friday as the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied all challenges against the order (CD May 27 p1). As the 45-day clock counts down for motions for rehearing by the full court, at least one VoIP provider is considering a challenge. But because of the complexity of the case, and the deference often granted to the panel that heard the challenge, such requests for rehearing are unlikely to be successful, said attorneys.
The FCC scored a court victory Friday as a three-judge panel held unanimously that petitioners were “unpersuasive” in their “host of challenges” to the 2011 USF/intercarrier compensation order (http://1.usa.gov/1r18uaa). The 31 consolidated petitions for review were denied by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It’s a validation of the agency’s power to condition the receipt of USF money on the promise of broadband buildout. The decision also affirms the agency’s authority over access charges on all telecom traffic. NARUC General Counsel Brad Ramsay told us he'd be “stunned” if no one appealed this to the Supreme Court, something others predicted (CD Nov 21 p6) after almost five hours of USF oral argument in November.
Comcast faces questions in California about whether it waited to tell regulators it mistakenly published the listings of 74,000 people, including domestic violence victims hiding from attackers, until the passage of a state law the company now says shields it from penalties. The case had been seen as significant by local and national consumer advocates as a test of state regulatory authority during the IP transition. It took on added weight last week when critics of Comcast paying about $66 billion including debt for Time Warner Cable used it as ammunition against the deal.
Odds of a nationwide emergency alert system test this year, the second-ever such exercise, likely depend on how effectively and quickly the FCC can address the aspects of the test location code, some EAS experts said in interviews. The Public Safety Bureau is preparing for a test to follow the first one in 2011 (CD May 2 p1). The FCC received comments about time discrepancies, the location code and other concerns, in response to a public notice that asked about equipment and operational issues from the test (CD Nov 12 p8). No parameters or date for another test has been set, an FCC official said.