Lucent Technologies World Services will pay the U.S. $4.2 million in a settlement over False Claims Act allegations. The U.S. claimed the company had submitted misleading testing certifications to the U.S. Army connected to its construction and modernization of Iraq’s emergency communications system, the Department of Justice said Friday. The army awarded the Alcatel-Lucent subsidiary a $250 million contract in March 2004 to build Iraq’s Advanced First Responder Network, a 911-style emergency response and first responder communications system, Justice said. The settlement also resolves a December 2008 “whistleblower” lawsuit filed by Geoffrey Wilson, the former contract manager for the project. He will receive $758,000 from the settlement for suing in a Washington state federal court on behalf of the U.S. under the False Claims Act (http://xrl.us/bnq8me).
The FCC must “proceed cautiously” as it implements Text-to-911 because there are many technical and practical issues to work out and it’s “unclear” how quickly such a system can be implemented on a national basis, Sprint Nextel told Public Safety Bureau Chief David Turetsky and counsel to Chairman Julius Genachowski Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bnq8mv). When implemented, Text-to-911 will remain a “best efforts” service with “substantial limitations,” such as the lack of specific location information, delayed text messages, out of order delivery, or total failure to be delivered, Sprint said. “It is critically important that consumer expectations for this service be properly set,” the carrier said.
The Delaware Public Service Commission backed the D.C. Public Service Commission’s request for the FCC to review the way Verizon calculates its access recovery charge, an FCC filing posted Friday said (http://xrl.us/bnq8m5). The FCC permitted this charge under the 2011 USF/intercarrier compensation order, and the telco implemented the charge in Delaware in July, the filing said. Verizon’s calculation of the charge “may be causing Delaware’s residential customers to pay more than their fair share of the lost revenues recoverable,” the PSC argued, and it wants a review. The PSC questions whether the charge is calculated correctly throughout the former Bell Atlantic states, where Verizon’s now the telco after combining with that company. Verizon “properly” calculated the rates and “applied those rates consistent with FCC rules,” a spokesman told us. The company tries to keep the charge low and doesn’t charge the maximum rate in many cases, he said. Verizon attacked the D.C. PSC’s request, in a Sept. 14 filing (http://bit.ly/PgQstX).
Supporting broadband without expanding the contribution base to include broadband, one-way VoIP, text messaging and enterprise services will lead to older households “shouldering an unfair and an inequitable share of USF assessments,” AARP representatives told FCC Wireline Bureau officials Friday (http://xrl.us/bnq8ma). The commission should assess all services that benefit from the USF program, AARP said.
The launch of SES’ Astra 2F was rescheduled for this Friday. The satellite was originally scheduled to launch last Friday (CD Aug 22 p20). Arianespace “needed additional time to do some testing,” an SES spokesman said. The satellite will be located at 28.2 degrees east and carry Ku- and Ka-band payloads offering direct-to-home and next generation broadband services in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, SES said in a news release (http://xrl.us/bnq8nu). Astrium is the contractor for heavy-lift launcher Ariane 5 and for Astra 2F, Astrium said (http://xrl.us/bnq8qk).
Philadelphia petitioned the FCC to waive its 800 MHz radio narrowbanding deadline for 18 months, in a filing posted to docket 99-87 Monday. The city can’t easily meet the Jan. 1 deadline due to delays and complexities involved with rebanding, said the request seeking expedited action on a waiver. There’s “both skyscraper canyons of Center City and the rolling hills of the more suburban residential areas,” which create radio frequency problems, the petition said (http://xrl.us/bnq8if). Philadelphia assured the FCC it has the “necessary funding to relocate 150-4 70 MHz systems to the 800 MHz Trunked System or to bring those lower frequency systems into narrowband compliance.” The city requests a new narrowbanding deadline of July 1, 2014.
Motorola Solutions needs guidance to comply with the FCC’s narrowbanding guidelines and the sale and repair of its Part 90 land mobile radio equipment for narrowband waiver recipients, an ex parte filing said Friday (http://xrl.us/bnq8gb). The company has questions about how the agency is enforcing and parsing some of its rules: Is repairing a 25 kHz-capable device the same as building one? Building one isn’t allowed after December, when the VHF/UHF narrowband deadline passes, the filing said. Motorola representatives met with the Public Safety Bureau Sept. 19 and requested a public notice be issued to answer these different concerns, the filing said.
Rep. Jeff Landry, R-La., introduced a bill to neuter the FCC’s USF reform order. The Restore Effective Statistics to the Calculation of USF Expenditures (RESCUE) Act would ensure that the order on the commission’s Connect America Fund and high-cost USF support would no longer have force or effect and require the FCC to prepare a report on alternatives. The bill introduced Friday said the order will “invariably” lead to the closure of many small businesses, was made in direct conflict with the USF mandate, relies on unpredictable regression models and “unfairly manipulates” federal support for carriers. The bill’s a “significant step to correct the FCC’s deeply flawed method for limiting USF support for rural telecommunications providers,” NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield said in a news release. “This bill highlights three of the most significant shortcomings of the commission’s new statistical caps on universal service support: their disregard for statutory mandates requiring that federal universal service support be predictable; their alarming inaccuracy; and their retroactive nature that penalizes prior commitments made in good faith by job creators all over this country.”
The network affiliate groups of ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC along with the NAB said TV stations would lose ad and retransmission consent revenue if Aereo is allowed to continue operating. The parties filed a joint friend-of-the-court brief in a case before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in which a group of media companies sought to overturn a lower court’s decision not to block Aereo from operating. Briefs supporting the appellants were due Friday. At our deadline, a group of sports leagues had also appeared to have submitted a brief, though it was not available in the docket. And Cablevision, whose litigation in its remote-storage DVR case set the precedent for the lower court’s ruling, had been permitted by the court to file a brief, the docket showed.
Nine House Republicans said they are seriously concerned about the FTC’s participation with international partners in the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), in a letter sent Friday to FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. The GOP members said they were alarmed that the FTC is “driving the development of policies and technical Do Not Track standards to restrict online advertising without any formal legal process or Congressional authorization, but rather through informal agency threats.” The letter was written by Reps. Tom Graves, R-Ga., Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., Reid Ribble, R-Wis., Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., Tim Walberg, R-Mich., Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., Dennis Ross, R-Fla., and Dan Burton, R-Ind. The members asked Leibowitz whether the Congress had empowered the FTC to participate in such international discussions, how much money the commission had spent on W3C activities, and whether the agency’s actions were consistent with congressional support for Internet freedom, among other questions.