Rep. Michael Michaud, D-Maine, urged Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a letter made public Thursday to modernize the rules that govern the Rural Utilities Service’s Community Connect program. Michaud said the grant program, which funds broadband infrastructure projects to rural communities, contains “outdated” broadband eligibility standards in need of revision. The program’s definition of broadband transmission services at 200 kbps is no longer accurate because most small businesses require a minimum of 3 Mbps broadband capacity in order to work reliably, the letter said. “Improving this standard will ensure that more struggling rural communities are able [to] expand broadband access for their residents, schools, health care providers, and businesses,” the letter said. The agency did not comment.
Inmarsat and in-flight broadband provider Gogo signed an agreement to offer capacity to commercial airline customers using Inmarsat’s forthcoming Global Xpress Ka-band network. Through Global Xpress, Gogo will provide “improved capacity, global coverage and significant cost advantages to its commercial airline customers,” Gogo said in a news release (http://xrl.us/bn7cin). With the addition of Global Xpress, Gogo has the ability to provide the most complete range of solutions, “which enables us to service the full-fleet needs of our current and future airline partners,” it said.
Senate Democrats ratified Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., as chairman of the Appropriations Committee Thursday, filling the vacancy left by Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, who died Monday. The Association of Public Television Stations celebrated the senator’s assignment as a victory for public broadcasting, in a news release Thursday.
Windstream and the state of Oklahoma agreed to dismiss charges of bribery and conspiracy to defraud a school district that a state grand jury found in August, the telco said Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bn7ccr). The case dates back to what Windstream called “a customer event that Windstream hosted at the 2007 NCAA Final Four men’s basketball championship for business customers, including the Broken Arrow School District.” Windstream “denied any wrongdoing but entered into today’s agreement in the interest of reaching a compromise acceptable to it and to the state” and “pledged to take certain steps affirming its commitment to full compliance with all federal, state and local laws,” the telco said. Windstream will pay the Broken Arrow Public Schools Foundation $100,000, non-deductable, the Wednesday agreement said (http://xrl.us/bn7ccg). “This agreement provides a fair conclusion to our Multicounty Grand Jury investigation into wrongdoing with Windstream Corporation and Mr. [James David] Sisney during his time as superintendent of Broken Arrow Public Schools,” said Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt in a statement (http://xrl.us/bn7cck). Sisney had received free lodging, food and beverage, transportation, sports tickets and souvenirs at the 2007 event, the agreement said. Windstream’s conditions to avoid trial will help ensure “this doesn’t happen again,” Pruitt added.
Intelsat and ITC Global signed two agreements for broadband capacity. ITC plans to use Intelsat 18 at 180 degrees east “to provide C-band services to its mining customers in eastern Russia,” Intelsat said in a press release (http://xrl.us/bn7cdu). Intelsat said ITC will integrate its services into a sophisticated network and incorporate carrier-in-carrier technology. ITC also signed a contract for capacity on Intelsat 906 at 64 degrees east, “enabling broadband service to a major natural resources provider in Western Australia,” Intelsat said.
The Oregon Public Utility Commission has received more than 1,600 complaints about rural call completion problems since June 2011, it said. The PUC has approved a new set of rules to combat the issue by forbidding anyone holding an intrastate telecommunications certificate “from blocking, choking, reducing or restricting traffic in any way” and from misleading or deceiving, the PUC said Wednesday evening (http://xrl.us/bn7b9q), saying it will fine violators up to $50,000. The PUC is responsible for levying the fines, and the Oregon Department of Justice will go to the circuit court to collect them on behalf of the state, a PUC spokesman said. The problem has continued to come up nationally and in other states, but waiting for “a national solution” is “not acceptable,” said Chair Susan Ackerman in a statement: “The Commission cannot stand by and do nothing while Oregonians continue to experience these problems daily.” Service providers will now be liable for their underlying carriers, the PUC added. Companies must “complete long-distance calls to rural areas with the same accuracy at which they complete to urban areas,” according to the new rules.
The National Public Safety Telecommunications Council said the 30-month period proposed by the FCC for rebanding 800 MHz licensees along the U.S.-Mexico border is unrealistically short, allowing only seven to eight months for “planning, negotiation and mediation” between licensees and Sprint Nextel. The revised bandplan follows an amended protocol agreement signed by the U.S. and Mexico June 8 modifying the international allocation of 800 MHz spectrum in the U.S.-Mexico border region. NPSTC said it consulted with licensees along the border. The city of San Diego, for one, told NPSTC the “proposed planning and negotiating timeframe is unrealistic and contradicts the actual experience of the 800 MHz reconfiguration in other areas,” said the NPSTC filing (http://xrl.us/bn7b78). “There is already a wealth of experience from multiple regions that indicates more time is often needed,” NPSTC said. “Overall, 800 MHz rebanding is now 7 years into what was originally planned as a 3 year process. Further, NPSTC agrees that implementation in the U.S./Mexican border area will be complex ... given the many factors involved.” The FCC Public Safety Bureau proposed a timetable for the rebanding in August (http://xrl.us/bn7b8e).
The FCC rejected the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition’s petition for reconsideration filed in the wake of a 2008 order approving Sprint Nextel’s partnership with Clearwire. PISC supported the transaction, but challenged the FCC’s decision to include 55.5 MHz of Broadband Radio Services (BRS) spectrum in the screen used to evaluate the transaction. “We dismiss the Petition to the extent it challenges the inclusion of BRS into the spectrum screen because PISC lacks standing to raise such a claim in this proceeding given its full support for the Commission’s decision to grant these applications, and because the Petition is not an appropriate procedural vehicle for addressing PISC’s concerns about the application of the spectrum screen to future transactions,” the FCC said (http://xrl.us/bn7b6i). The commission also rejected PISC arguments that the partnership, New Clearwire, should face the “unique burden of reviewing its agreements to determine which provisions relate to its open network commitments, and then submit for prior Commission approval changes that affect those provisions, subject to a notice and comment process.” The coalition “advances no factual basis for imposing such a burden on New Clearwire in the competitive circumstances at issue here,” the order said. This week Sprint announced a deal to buy the remainder of Clearwire it doesn’t own (CD Dec 18 p7). The FCC launched a notice of proposed rulemaking in September examining how it evaluates mobile holdings when it considers wireless transactions.
Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt., said Wednesday he'll stay on as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the next Congress. There was speculation he'd become Senate Appropriations Committee chairman, following the death Monday of Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii (CD Dec 19 p8). “Chairing the Judiciary Committee and maintaining my seniority on the Appropriations Committee will allow me to protect both the Constitution and Vermont,” said Leahy in a news release. Following Inouye’s passing, Leahy is now the longest-serving member of the upper chamber and was sworn in as the new president pro tempore Tuesday.
Reaction was divided on the FCC’s special access order, which seeks mandatory submission of data on the state of competition for the dedicated business Internet service (CD Dec 19 p1). CompTel CEO Jerry James said he was “encouraged” that the commission is “moving forward to address the flawed framework that has been in place for the special access market.” CompTel hopes the data collection and further notice of proposed rulemaking “leads to rapid, fact-based evaluation and correction of special access market failures,” he said. The Computer and Communications Industry Association said the data request would “at last expose a long-standing vestige of monopoly in the telecom world that must be dealt with.” American businesses must “no longer [be] held hostage to a complex web of inflated rates for wired broadband connections with unreasonable and anticompetitive terms and conditions,” said CCIA Vice President Cathy Sloan. NARUC said the order was long overdue. “I am hopeful, with this order, that we will finally get answers and find out just how competitive the market for these services is,” said NARUC Telecom Committee Chairman John Burke of Vermont. But AT&T Senior Vice President Bob Quinn said the commission should devote its time and resources to “developing policies that promote investment” in infrastructure that can deliver IP-based, high bandwidth services to business customers. “Measuring the level of competition for aging, TDM-based 1.5 Mbps services that increasingly are being supplanted by faster, more efficient IP-based services, is misplaced,” he said. The Internet Innovation Alliance questioned the FCC’s continued focus on special access given that business consumers have many more options than they did when the rules for special access were put in place. The commission “should be asking itself whether it is worthwhile to undertake such a large examination of competition for a service that is rapidly being replaced by an IP-based technology and whether its resources would be better spent creating a clear path forward for the deployment of this newer technology across America,” IIA said.