Federal agencies should be limited in how they interpret their own jurisdictions through Chevron doctrine deference, a free-market think tank said: “If there is no jurisdiction, there is no deference.” The Supreme Court case City of Arlington, Texas, et al v. FCC directly addressees the question and could produce the “most significant administrative law decision in a decade,” Free State Foundation adviser and Case Western Reserve law professor Jonathan Adler wrote in a Monday Free State blog post (http://xrl.us/bn3kvf). Adler detailed the way that Congress and other legal avenues determine proper jurisdiction. “Courts, not agencies, have the comparative advantage in resolving matters of jurisdiction,” he said. “Agencies should only receive Chevron deference when they are exercising that authority Congress has delegated, and they should not receive deference when facing the question of whether the agency has authority at all.” The high court received opening briefs last week, will get supporting briefs this week and FCC response Dec. 19 (CD Nov 21 p1).
An affiliate of Curtis Media agreed to buy a North Carolina FM translator in Burlington and one in Roxboro from Liberty University for $200,000, said a news release Monday from the buyer’s broker, Media Services Group.
The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio is asking state residents to complain about rural call completion problems, Commissioner Lynn Slaby wrote in a Monday Cleveland.com op-ed (http://xrl.us/bn3kto). “Many rural customers understandably, yet mistakenly, place the blame for their call-completion issues on their local telephone companies or the local telephone companies servicing the town being called,” Slaby wrote, saying “these problems are generally caused by the route a rural call takes when transported by the network of either the caller’s long distance company or wireless telephone company.” She encouraged affected customers to report the problems to the PUC as well as the FCC. These problems frustrate customers and can affect businesses, she said. The PUC has taken “active interest” but the incidents “often involve service providers that are not telecommunications service providers, such as voice-over-Internet protocol service and Internet service providers, who do not fall under the [PUC’s] regulatory authority,” she said. She also encouraged customers to contact their wireless or long distance providers to help push them for solutions.
A government proposal legalizing extensive tracking of Internet users is up for debate this week in the German Parliament’s second chamber, the German Working Group on Data Retention said. The measure would allow law enforcement and intelligence agencies to access the information without judicial order or reasonable suspicion of crime, and wouldn’t limit identification of Internet Protocol addresses to a case-by-case basis, it said. It require ISPs to install electronic data-handover interfaces. The government also plans to grant access to email account passwords and voicebox and mobile phone PIN codes without clearly defining the preconditions to such access, the working group said. The law project is unconstitutional, it said.
Public interest groups urged the FCC to avoid hobbling the licensee of AWS-4 terrestrial mobile service spectrum with lower power and stringent out-of-band emissions requirements. Without obligations that deter or condition the sale of AWS-4 licenses, the FCC “may end up conferring a $4 [billion] to $6 billion subsidy while actually making the market less competitive if one of the two dominant carriers ends up with the AWS-4 spectrum,” New America Foundation, Public Knowledge and Free Press said in an ex parte filing in docket 12-70 (http://xrl.us/bn27zp). The presumed licensee of AWS-4 spectrum, Dish Network, may get a vote from the FCC to build the terrestrial network this year (CD Nov 22 p1). The groups, filing jointly as the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition, suggested augmenting the buildout requirements with a “use it or lose it” license condition “that would permit other parties to make use of unused AWS-4 spectrum on a localized basis” until the licensee deploys and offers the service, they said during a meeting with Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel and staff.
Proposals are due Monday for the Commerce Department’s auditing contract for the NTIA’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) grantees. The original response date was last Monday, but a Nov. 15 amendment extended the deadline. The contract is to “assist the [Office of Inspector General] in conducting audits and oversight into programs and operations” of the BTOP programs, the latest 76-page request for proposals said (http://1.usa.gov/T2ZLON). It described both financial and performance audits planned for many different grantees, which have operated on three-year grant cycles since 2010 when first awarded. The audit contract will last from Jan. 1, 2013, to Jan. 8, 2016, the RFP said, calling for an auditor to begin and complete 110 audits with “no more than 20 audits” in a six-month period. It prioritizes the order and schedule by which the contractor should complete the audits. The audits will take place, potentially, at the grantee locations as well as at either the Department of Commerce or the contractor’s facilities, the RFP said. Commerce is looking to audit about 50 for-profit, second-year grantees, mostly comprehensive community infrastructure recipients, and 20 second-year government and non-profit public computing center and sustainable broadband adoption grantees. It’s also seeking to audit 20 third-year BTOP government and non-profit public computing center and sustainable broadband adoption grantees as well as 20 third-year comprehensive community infrastructure grantees on the basis of equipment and closeout procedures, said the fall documents. The RFP, issued by the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, was originally posted in late October, with several amendments added over the course of the last several weeks. The federal business opportunities website lists several interested vendors (http://1.usa.gov/XKPjD7).
Call termination problems are increasing “in frequency and severity" in the state of Washington, the Washington Independent Telecommunications Association told the FCC in an ex parte filing released Friday (http://xrl.us/bn27qy). Several of the association’s member companies participated in tests, it said. The association reported that up to 12 percent of members’ calls failed to complete while 17 percent completed with poor quality. Under 5 percent of the calls were nomadic VoIP, it added. The problem affects the companies’ revenue and “frighteningly” creates public safety problems, the association cautioned, also describing challenges for schools and other groups of public interest. There’s also access problem charges in which companies fail to include proper caller identification codes, it said. “This theft of access revenue puts an additional burden on the universal service fund,” it said. Executive Director Betty Buckley met with staff to FCC commissioners Robert McDowell and Ajit Pai Nov. 14, according to the filing.
The FCC should not require broadband providers to submit information on their “best efforts” broadband services in the forthcoming special access data request, Cbeyond, EarthLink and Integra Telecom told the Wireline Bureau in a letter Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bn27oy). The CLECs were responding to a request from bureau staff, they said, which asked whether CLECs could “quantify the burden” of submitting information on the areas where they provide “best efforts” broadband services to the state entities that collect such information for purposes of the NTIA National Broadband Map (NBM). A mandatory request to provide such coverage information would be “burdensome” for many CLECs, which have limited resources compared to large ILECs and cable companies, they said. EarthLink estimated it would take over 1,000 employee hours, at a cost of at least $60,000, to provide coverage information sought by state entities for the NBM project, the filing said.
CenturyLink requested additional time to implement new rules established in the Cramming Order, which required telcos to highlight third-party charges on customers’ bills (CD April 30 p7). The telco said it needed more time to separate non-carrier third-party charges into telecom and non-telecom components, with separate totals being presented on carriers’ bills. “Due to the number of CenturyLink systems, and associated multiple bill formats, the separation of non-carrier third-party charges into the required different components requires a major IT release, with attendant system testing,” the telco wrote (http://xrl.us/bn27ob). CenturyLink’s next major IT release won’t occur until April, so it needs an extension until May 30, it said. CenturyLink called its request “very limited in scope,” estimating less than 2.5 percent of its customer base sees non-carrier third-party charges. Without the extension, CenturyLink would have to place the disclosure on customer bills by Dec. 26, it said.
Wyoming isn’t easily to meet the FCC’s requirement that high-cost support recipients annually self-certify “that pricing of their voice services is no more than two standard deviations above the national average urban rate,” the National Exchange Carrier Association (NECA) told the FCC, echoing multiple parties from the state. NECA conducted analysis that supports earlier petitions of the Wyoming Public Service Commission and Wyoming Telecom Association, it said Wednesday in an ex parte notice (http://xrl.us/bn27od). The price level within two standard deviations is $27, the state organizations told the FCC in December 2011. “All 5 RLEC [rural local exchange carrier] study areas in Wyoming have at least one exchange with a local rate in excess of $27,” NECA said. “In total, 77 exchanges representing 93% of all RLEC exchanges within the state of Wyoming have local rates exceeding $27.” The problem affects as many as 34 states, according to NECA. It questioned whether urban and rural residential voice service rates should be compared and encouraged alternative methods apply to such high-cost recipients. “The Commission should allow carriers to self-certify their local residential voice service rates and rate structures are at or below the rates approved or allowed to take effect by their state commission, or otherwise authorized under state law,” NECA said.