Approve the Senate Commerce Committee’s cybersecurity bill or face doom: That was the stark choice posed by the George W. Bush administration’s last Director of National Intelligence at a committee hearing Tuesday. Mike McConnell, executive vice president of Booz Allen Hamilton’s national security business, laid out a vision for a future Internet brought under federal control in the same way that railroads came under heavy regulation at their peak of influence. Meanwhile, an FCC official made a pitch for his agency to use its experience in collecting status information from traditional communications networks to do the same for the Internet at large.
A proposed Emergency Response Interoperability Center (ERIC) would be housed at the FCC in the Public Safety Bureau and would come under a Public Safety Advisory Board, according to a concept paper posted on the FCC website. Meanwhile, public safety groups and companies that serve them said they liked what they heard at Thursday’s FCC meeting about public safety recommendations coming in the National Broadband Plan -- especially a recommendation on the need for a next-generation 911 network.
A coalition of Internet and other communications companies is opposing, through a procedural back door, FTC efforts to go after behavioral targeting of ads. The group, NetChoice, said Thursday that topping its periodic list of the worst legislative proposals in the country concerning the Internet is a bill to free the commission from special restrictions on its rulemaking work under the Magnuson-Moss act of 1975 and put it, like other federal agencies, under the Administrative Procedure Act.
Harmonizing telecom rules across sub-Saharan Africa faces several major challenges, a report last month for the ITU and European Commission found. Most information and communication technologies regulation now exists at the regional or national level, with wide variations in content and time lines and, in some cases, non-binding rules, it said. The review, part of the Harmonization of ICT Policies in sub-Saharan Africa project funded by the EU, compared the current level of regulatory standardization in various regional organizations.
The FCC needs to do a better job publicizing efforts to resolve consumer complaints about wireless service and work more closely with state regulators on wireless complaints, said Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau Chief Joel Gurin Tuesday on a panel on wireless consumer complaints at a National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners meeting.
The keys to running a successful state universal service fund are clarity of purpose and clarity of process, said panelists at the winter meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. In a Tuesday session, consultants Peter Bluhm of Rolka, Loube, Salzer Associates and Eric Seguin, vice president corporate development with contract fund administrator Solix, joined Elizabeth Barnes, a lawyer with the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, in parsing the best methods for managing a fund.
FCC officials went back to work along with the rest of the federal government Friday, after a four-day storm-related federal government shutdown. Officials we spoke with said it was business as usual Friday at the FCC for the most part, though commuting was a struggle in Washington. Commissioner legal advisors got an update on the National Broadband Plan slated to be finalized March 17. FCC officials said work on the plan has proceeded throughout the week. “Most people seem to be back -- some in the broadband team didn’t miss a day,” with several officials car pooling in an SUV as most of Washington was shut down, an official said. “Things look pretty normal around here today,” said another. Judging from staffing at the Media Bureau and some commissioners’ offices, about half of FCC staffers showed up at the office Friday, a third agency official said. Others are telecommuting and some staffers besides those drafting the broadband plan worked during the government shutdown, the official said. Those working on the state of media project were planning workshops on the subject with a public notice to announce it, the person said. It’s unclear if the commission will issue a public notice clarifying that all comment deadlines were delayed four business days because of the closure, the person said. But most communications lawyers will understand that’s the case, the staffer said. Some sidewalks near the commission’s headquarters were a “disaster” including those outside the L ‘Enfant Plaza Metro stop, the official said. An announcement is expected shortly on a new date for a public forum on an emergency response interoperability center, which was scheduled for Wednesday, but postponed, a Public Safety Bureau spokesman said. Meanwhile, filings at the FCC have piled up like the snow that covers Washington. The commission posted online Friday more than 500 comments and ex parte filings received there through the earlier part of the week.
The 9th U.S. Court of Appeals rejected arguments by competitive carrier North County Communications that a district judge should have heard out the company’s effort to collect termination charges from wireless carriers. North County alleged that it “began sending monthly bills to the Defendants for traffic termination in January, 2003,” and that it “billed the Defendants $0.004 per minute and $0.007 per call set-up, before increasing its rate to the prevailing market rate of $0.011 per minute,” but the defendants refused to pay or agree to a compensation arrangement. The case turned on jurisdiction. “North County challenges the district court’s dismissal of its declaratory judgment claims for lack of subject matter jurisdiction,” said a decision written by Judge Johnnie Rawlinson (http://xrl.us/bgvaje). “Specifically, the district court held that North County had no private right of action to enforce the compensation arrangements in federal court.” North County maintained in its appeal that it could seek compensation in federal court under the Communications Act and other federal law. “A broad assertion of a private right of action is not easily maintained under the Federal Communications Act, as our statutory analysis is intertwined with the requisite deference to the Commission’s interpretation of the Federal Communications Act,” the court said. “The Commission has not determined that the CMRS providers’ failure to pay compensation violates the Federal Communications Act.” A wireless-industry lawyer said the decision “reaffirms an unsettled Interconnection issue in favor of CMRS carriers.” The FCC has left “unanswered a number of important issues regarding CMRS-CLEC interconnection duties and rates,” the attorney said, noting that the Telecom Act doesn’t deal specifically with this kind of interconnection.
Dissolution of a stay in federal bankruptcy court means FairPoint Communications must begin on March 1 crediting Maine customers’ bills for rate adjustments required because the company failed to meet service quality benchmarks in 2008-2009, the state Public Utility Commission said. The Tuesday dissolution of the stay authorizes enforcement of a November commission order that FairPoint customer bills in Maine be lowered by $1.72 per line per month for a year starting March 1, the commission said. The rate adjustment will cost the company slightly more than $8 million, it said. The regulator had ordered FairPoint to credit customer bills starting Dec. 1, but the company’s bankruptcy filing led to postponements and a court- ordered mediation. The Maine commission staff member who participated in the mediation agreed Tuesday to recommend that the commission approve regulatory requests by the telco in a reorganization plan the company filed Monday in bankruptcy court, the commission said. Utility commissions in Vermont and New Hampshire have approved the plan, company CEO David Hauser said Monday (CD Feb 8 p8). “FairPoint’s requests are related to change of control of the company, and certain modifications to the broadband build-out and pricing requirements which had been imposed by the Commission on FairPoint in the 2008 order approving the FairPoint/Verizon merger,” the Maine commission said. “The Commission expects FairPoint to file a petition in the next several days asking the Commission to commence a public proceeding in order to consider the company’s request for approval of a proposed change in control of the company and for modifications of provisions of the 2008 Verizon/FairPoint merger order.”
The business of the FCC is limping along even with the federal government closed Monday, Tuesday and possibly Wednesday. Thursday’s meeting has been delayed until 3 p.m. Feb. 18. The commission on Tuesday also postponed Wednesday afternoon’s scheduled Emergency Response Interoperability Center forum. The FCC probably will extend some filing deadlines a few days by public notice. Under FCC rules, anything due when the government is closed is generally due the next business day.