Standard & Poor’s upgraded Allbritton’s long-term credit rating to B+ from B. The rating reflects Standard & Poor’s belief that the company will keep its debt-to-earnings ratio below a certain threshold, Standard & Poor’s said.
General Communications wants the FCC to reverse a Universal Service Administrative Co. decision seeking a $58,000 reimbursement of high-cost support it doled out to GCI (http://xrl.us/bnrdw2). USAC said GCI’s effort to “substantiate the subscriber lines reported in its Form 525 were inadequate,” but that finding was “arbitrary and capricious” and “not supported by the record,” GCI said.
Verizon Wireless and Alltel are relinquishing their eligible telecom carrier designations in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia by the end of the year. That’s because Verizon Wireless’s universal service funding will be eliminated at year’s end under the terms of the Alltel Acquisition order, Verizon Wireless said in a filing (http://xrl.us/bnrdvp). Relinquishment of ETC status will have no impact on Verizon Wireless network coverage in any state, nor will there be any impact on its rollout of 4G LTE service, it said.
The D.C. Public Service Commission struck back at the FCC Wireline Bureau in a Monday filing (http://xrl.us/bnrdym). The heart of the disagreement concerned the PSC’s allegation that Verizon improperly calculated its access recovery charge in multiple states. PSC Chairman Betty Anne Kane blasted the bureau for not responding to questions she had posed: “Namely, whether a price cap incumbent local exchange carrier ... may refrain from imposing an Access Recovery Charge (ARC) in a state where only a few exchanges have reached the Residential Rate Ceiling,” she said. The bureau “silence” on this issue has enabled Verizon’s ARC payment activities, Kane argued. Verizon has denied improperly calculating the charges in response to the D.C. and Delaware accusations (CD Sept 25 p16). The bureau declined comment.
Frontier gave the FCC updated locations it will target for broadband deployment as part of Phase I of the Connect America Fund (http://xrl.us/bnrdtv). Frontier, which accepted $72 million to deploy broadband to unserved areas, was the first carrier to accept money from the fund (CD July 10 p5). The telco says it “remains committed” to deploying broadband to 92,877 households, but has “reevaluated” the locations it will deploy to. Frontier will continue updating its deployment data until the final location information is due in July, it said.
A company that exits the National Exchange Carrier Association pool to convert to price caps should not be allowed to set its rates to generate more revenue than it was entitled to as a member of the NECA pool, AT&T told FCC Wireline Bureau officials Thursday, an ex parte filing said (http://xrl.us/bnrdpn). The bureau should ensure “revenue neutrality” by establishing initial rates to reflect exiting the pool, and initializing price cap indices, AT&T said. AT&T was referring to the recent exit from the NECA pool of Consolidated, Frontier and Windstream. AT&T estimated that their initial interstate special access rates were overstated by as much as $15 million.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., introduced a pair of bills aimed at increasing people’s digital privacy rights and preserving global access to Internet-related goods, services, and communications. Lofgren unveiled the ECPA 2.0 Act (HR-6529) (http://xrl.us/bnrdp7) and the Global Free Internet Act (HR-6530) (http://xrl.us/bnrdqh) late last week. An outspoken critic of legislation aimed at regulating the Web, Lofgren said in a news release Tuesday that “we need proactive laws designed to preserve an open and truly global Internet from [Stop Online Piracy Act] SOPA-like legislation, unduly restrictive treaties and trade agreements, and overbroad government surveillance.” The ECPA 2.0 Act would amend and modernize the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to set clear standards for how law enforcement can use people’s cellphone location information. It would require the government to obtain a warrant before it requests a person’s online data from ISPs, tracks the location of a person’s wireless device, or compels service providers to disclose bulk data requests, among other other requirements. Lofgren’s second bill, the Global Free Internet Act, would create a task force to guide U.S. Internet policy and respond to practices that threaten the free flow of global Internet communications. Lofgren said it is “unlikely” that Congress will act on the bills before the end of the year but said she plans to reintroduce them in the next session of Congress.
IPv6 adoption has grown 150 percent over the last year, said Lorenzo Colitti, Google IPv6 expert, at the meeting of the IP-address registry for Europe and the Middle East, RIPE. If that rate of adoption were sustained, 50 percent of all Internet users would have IPv6 in five years, he said. Colitti said World IPv6 Launch Day this summer was quite successful, with query rates using the new, longer addresses going up 75 percent: “We actually had real impact. We got thousands of websites, dozens of ISPs and home vendors to leave it on. If you deploy IPv6 to your access network, 40 percent of your traffic to v6 users will be v6 traffic.” He said 7 percent of AT&T customers use IPv6 and it will reach the five-million-user mark by the end of the year, and 20 percent of Verizon Wireless LTE phones are using the new protocol on a daily basis.
An ITU-T group on child online protection (COP) wants the names of organizations that can be contacted to share experiences, work and other activities, said the director of the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau in a letter asking administrations and other members to supply them. The group will coordinate activities with relevant standards development organizations and forums, including discussion on work plans and schedules of any needed COP deliverables, it said. Understanding the legal and regulatory environments for COP is one of the rationales for the work, it said. One of the group’s aims is to promote a coordinated approach toward needed standardization, it said. The group will help organize tutorials, workshops and seminars. The group will also coordinate work with the organization’s radiocommunication and development sectors and in an ITU Council group.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski isn’t taking a public position on whether AT&T’s FaceTime restrictions may violate its net neutrality rules. AT&T has come under heavy fire from public interest groups for the carrier’s decision to block iPhone customers from using the app unless they subscribe to a new data plan (CD Sept 19 p1). Despite repeated questioning at a Vox Media event Tuesday, he declined to comment specifically. “This is one that could very well come before us in a formal way, so I shouldn’t comment,” he said. Genachowski said he encourages discussion and multistakeholder forums, but acknowledged that “good faith efforts” don’t always resolve things. “If it doesn’t lead to a resolution and a complaint is filed, we will exercise our responsibilities and we will act,” he said.