The FCC will proceed as planned on the National Broadband Plan while it considers whether to change the regulatory classification of broadband, General Counsel Austin Schlick said Friday during a teleconference sponsored by the National Regulatory Research Institute. Schlick also said the FCC could issue an interpretive order on reclassification without first proposing and taking comments on a notice of proposed rulemaking.
West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin praised Frontier for outlays it plans to make in his state. The company’s anticipated investment “truly shows Frontier’s … desire to bring the highest level of services to our citizens,” the Democrat said Tuesday at a news conference. That day, Frontier said it’s on track to complete its acquisition of Verizon wireline networks in 14 states on July 1, and that it and the Communications Workers of America have settled all issues related to Frontier’s West Virginia acquisition. Manchin lauded the settlement. The company will have nearly 2,000 workers in West Virginia. “Great service starts with great employees, and we have made commitments to provide added job security in West Virginia,” said Chief Operating Officer Dan McCarthy. The settlement with the union includes extending the Verizon contract with CWA in West Virginia by two years, expanding job security to cover all Verizon employees who are union members and honoring existing Verizon labor contracts, Frontier said. Frontier, which has committed to adding 150 new jobs in West Virginia and opening a regional headquarters in the state capital of Charleston, pledged to keep at least 1,600 union members in its West Virginia workforce through August 2013. The company will bring back to the U.S. about 500 online help desk jobs Verizon had sent overseas. Frontier plans to spend about $310 million in West Virginia the next 3-1/2 years, including $48 million on broadband deployment by Dec. 31, 2013, the company said. The outlays include those required by the Public Service Commission order approving the transaction. Frontier will pre-fund some of the $310 million. McCarthy said the company will have access to $72.4 million that the utility commission ordered Verizon to put into service quality and broadband deployment. Frontier also expects to have access to $126 million in federal stimulus funds the state has received, McCarthy said: “Our investments here are business as usual for a company that will be the largest communications company in West Virginia and throughout rural America."
In a broadband-related order, the FCC agreed to allow fixed terrestrial wireless licensees to operate channel bandwidths of as much as 30 MHz in the upper 6 GHz band. The Fixed Wireless Communications Coalition requested the change in February 2008, and the commission proposed approval in a notice of proposed rulemaking a year ago. The FCC noted general support for the proposal. “We find such action could serve the public interest by making an additional source of spectrum for high capacity microwave links more readily available,” the order said. “As FWCC states, such links support a variety of important commercial, public safety, and consumer uses, including backhaul for broadband systems.” The commission noted that it has granted many waivers allowing 30 MHz channels in the band. “All of the commenters agree that our existing rules and policies are sufficient to prevent congestion and speculative licensing. There is no indication in the record that the many waiver requests that the Bureau has already granted for 30 megahertz channels in the Upper 6 GHz Band have caused problems for relocating licensees.” The FCC also granted a FWCC request that it allow conditional licensing for non-federal use, with NTIA’s consent, on two additional channel pairs in the 23 GHz band: the 22.025/23.225 GHz and 22.075/23.275 GHz channel pair.
Draft public safety legislation by House Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., envisions $11 billion for the construction and operation of a nationwide, interoperable public safety network. A draft we obtained Monday would fund the network using proceeds from auctions of the 700 MHz D-block and other spectrum, with additional money from the U.S. Treasury. Public safety groups have opposed that approach, favoring legislation to directly allocate the D-Block to public safety (CD June 8 p1). The House Communications Subcommittee plans to discuss the bill at a hearing Thursday.
STANFORD, Calif. -- A veteran FCC economist fleshed out alternatives for auctioning spectrum that broadcasters give up for reuse in mobile broadband. The commission could give out overlay licenses, hold separate auctions to clear and re-license the spectrum, or set up a process to make both changes at the same time, said Evan Kwerel, senior economic adviser to the FCC’s Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis, saying he spoke only for himself.
Free Press encouraged the FCC to beef up its ex parte rules, mandating more transparency, in reply comments filed at the FCC. “Meaningful ex parte disclosures provide substantial value to the public,” the group said. “Free Press participates actively in a wide range of agency proceedings and has filed hundreds of notices of ex parte communication. Based on our experience, the burden of filing ex parte notices is minimal, and the value to the public of transparent processes -- particularly when ex parte presentations contain original arguments or material -- greatly outweighs the burden.” Fines by themselves are not enough to discourage wrongdoing by large, deep-pocket companies, Free Press warned. “To promote a level playing field for advocates, the Commission should favor disqualification, other equitable remedies, or variable fines tailored to organizational size,” the group said. “There is no fixed amount of monetary forfeiture that will be simultaneously large enough to be a meaningful deterrent for corporations with multibillion-dollar revenues and yet small enough not to cripple a non-profit organization.” The “draconian” suggestions of doing away entirely with oral ex parte lobbying made by the Consumer Federation of America and Public Knowledge ought to be rejected by the FCC, the NAB said. That “would deprive policymakers of the benefits of the ex parte process,” it said. None of the eight panelists at an FCC workshop on ex parte filing reform, which included a Public Knowledge representative, wanted the agency to discourage meetings in favor of positions only made in filings (CD Oct 29 p6). An alternative suggestion from the two public interest groups that ex parte presentations be recorded on video or fully transcribed is “simply overkill and unnecessary,” the NAB said. “PK/CFA in fact acknowledges that full audio and video recordings of every oral ex parte presentation could become unwieldy. NAB suggests that they also are impractical, unduly burdensome, and would inhibit free-flowing, useful discussions.”
With a week to go before a June 17 FCC vote on a broadband reclassification notice of inquiry, leading broadband and high-tech companies said Wednesday they're starting the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (TAG). That gives reclassification opponents another potential arrow in their quiver. This new group is being chaired by former commission official Dale Hatfield, who logged time last year as a member of the Obama Administration’s FCC transition team. The move comes as some members of Congress pressure the FCC to rethink changing how broadband is regulated (CD June 9 p1). Members include AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, Dish, EchoStar, Time Warner Cable and Level 3, said a news release.
Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, wants to use the appropriations process to stop the FCC from acting on Chairman Julius Genachowski’s “third way” broadband regulation proposal. At a hearing Wednesday of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services, Culberson said he would offer an amendment to FCC budget legislation prohibiting the agency from using any federal funds to “regulate the Internet,” including for reclassifying broadband transport under Title II of the Communications Act. Subcommittee Chairman Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., said he doesn’t support the amendment and won’t work with Culberson to refine it.
The Maine Public Utilities Commission will maintain a federal exemption relieving rural carriers from some interconnection obligations otherwise required by federal law. A unanimous vote Tuesday upheld the exemption for carriers Unitel, Oxford and Oxford West, while a majority of the three commissioners voted to keep the exemption for the Lincolnville and Tidewater phone companies. This means that in their geographic service territories the five will remain the sole wireline service providers, the commission said. County Roads Communications had petitioned the commission to require the five carriers to negotiate with County Roads for service interconnection so that County Roads partner Time Warner Cable (see related item this issue) could provide digital phone service in the rural carriers’ territories. “Our decision came down to an analysis of the current financial ability of the rural companies to withstand market competition if the exemption were lifted,” commission Chair Sharon Reishus said in a written statement. “Customers in these rural areas must be assured a telephone service provider of last resort and access to Lifeline services. Although the Commission has a long history of recognizing the value of competition in the telecommunications market, in this instance, where Time Warner is not proposing to expand the availability of its service throughout the entire service territory of the rural companies, selective competition would undercut the ability of the rural companies to fulfill their provider of last resort obligations.” The commission weighed multiple factors for each rural carrier, including the technical feasibility of the proposed interconnection, whether lifting the exemption would unduly burden the rural phone company and whether lifting the exemption fit with the universal service goals of ensuring quality phone service at just, reasonable and affordable rates and access to advanced telecom and information services, the commission said. It plans to issue a formal order codifying the decision.
If the Maine Public Utilities Commission accepts a staff recommendation on which initial public comments were due Tuesday, Time Warner Cable Digital Phone and Comcast Phone would have to request interexchange carrier status for their VoIP networks in the state. The commission staff found both operations to be telephone services under Maine law, and so subject to commission regulation. That conclusion is not preempted by federal law, the staff said May 18 upon completing an inquiry begun in 2008. Both companies have argued that if the agency embraces this conclusion it would violate state legislators’ intent. Comcast Phone is certified as a competitive local exchange carrier in Maine. Time Warner Cable, which doesn’t have CLEC status there, buys wholesale telecom services from CRC Communications of Maine.