House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., said he hopes the FCC’s open Internet order falls when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rules on the FCC’s authority to impose the regulations, he said at the NARUC conference Tuesday. If they do, Walden said he will block any legislative efforts to reinstate the rules. “Let me be clear, not on my watch,” he said.
Questions about telecom reliability and public safety dominated the first days of the winter NARUC meeting in Washington. Two resolutions addressed public safety concerns -- one proposed more emergency coordination, and another dealt with the possibility of spectrum interference and its possible dangers to public safety entities. Panelists discussed safety implications of technology transitions and the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy.
Pressure is growing on FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski to say something, anything, about his plans for the future, now that the second term of the Obama administration is underway. Last week, Genachowski was peppered with questions in the news conference after the commission meeting, but said nothing about his departure plans (CD Feb 1 p11). Also on the rise is pressure on the administration to appoint the first-ever woman to chair the FCC, one of the most high-profile of the independent federal commissions, following the departure of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis.
CompTel CEO Jerry James told state regulators that incumbent telcos must abide by the interconnection regulations of the Communications Act and must file the agreements on the state level. “The ILECs must comply with Sections 251 and 252,” James said in a Monday speech. “This interconnection must be filed and should be filed at each state commission.” The regulations are still “applicable” as well as vital and aren’t a matter of wanting to “regulate the Internet” or trying to “turn back the clock,” he said.
Should telcos have to file IP-to-IP interconnection agreements with state regulators? Several competitive carriers say yes. In a Thursday petition, they question Verizon’s undisclosed potential IP-to-IP interconnection agreements and ask the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable to remedy the situation. They pointed to February 2012 statements from Verizon that it had one such agreement in place for its FiOS VoIP service and is “negotiating others.” The group of CLECs, which includes EarthLink Business, Cbeyond Communications and tw data services, don’t view the action as legal or fair, according to the petition. The “failure of Verizon” has prevented state regulators from their “statutory duty,” the carriers said.
Cisco views last week’s NTIA report on the 5 GHz band as mostly a positive development for industry, hungry for more bandwidth for Wi-Fi, said Mary Brown, director-government affairs, in an interview Wednesday. Cisco also released a report by Plum Consulting, which predicts Europe could reap more than €16.3 billion ($22.1 billion) in future economic benefit if 5 GHz spectrum there is made available for Wi-Fi. The FCC announced Wednesday the 5 GHz notice of proposed rulemaking on Wi-Fi in the band is tentatively on the agenda for the commission’s Feb. 20 meeting. The only other item is a cell signal booster report and order.
The telecom industry was sharply divided on AT&T’s petition to eliminate legacy interconnection rules, as the U.S. telecom infrastructure moves toward all-Internet Protocol services. ILEC comments supported the petition, which would start with deregulatory “experiments” in various wire centers to gauge the technological and competitive effects of eliminating several ILEC obligations. Carriers and cable companies cautioned against eliminating interconnection requirements in the Telecom Act that they say protect consumers and competitors. The CLECs were split on a competing proposal by NTCA, which seeks an omnibus proceeding the association said would retain consumer-friendly regulations and incentivize IP interconnection. State associations and commissions worried about ensuring consumer protections as well as maintaining their own authority. Public interest groups were wary of AT&T’s petition, but several minority groups encouraged the idea of limited deregulatory trials to determine the effect on minority customers.
State regulators came out swinging against AT&T’s proposal to eliminate legacy interconnection rules as the nation’s telecom infrastructure moves toward all-Internet Protocol services. AT&T represents its petition as promoting the interests of American consumers, but it’s really just “a transparent attempt to impose the business plan of a single corporation” on “the entire nation,” said the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates Monday (http://xrl.us/boc4os). Individual state commissions and associations supported NTCA’s petition, which they said would be a more tempered approach that retains some existing rules to protect consumers. In a blog post Monday, AT&T’s Bob Quinn urged the commission to let it do “trials” of deregulation in various wire centers so the FCC could “capture and address the operational, technical and policy issues that necessarily will arise” as the industry transitions away from time-division multiplexing (TDM) technology.
The NTIA concluded Friday that more work must be done to understand the challenges to federal agencies with operations in the 5350-5470 MHz and 5850-5925 MHz bands before the agency can conclude that they can be safely reallocated for Wi-Fi or other unlicensed use. The NTIA report comes after FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced plans at CES for a proceeding on the two bands (http://xrl.us/bn953e). NTIA had no comment beyond the report.
The FCC Friday released model rules for broadband and wireless facility siting aimed at state and local governments. “This provision will accelerate deployment and delivery of high-speed mobile broadband to communities across the nation,” the FCC said in a news release (http://xrl.us/bocbtp). “This action will create greater certainty and predictability for providers that today invest more than $25 billion per year in mobile infrastructure, one of the largest U.S. sectors for private investment.” The commission also launched a proceeding looking at how to expedite the use of temporary cell towers, cells on wheels (COWs) and cells on light trucks (COLTs), to expand cell capacity during big events like the Presidential Inauguration or the Super Bowl.