Adam Bender

Two judges seemed supportive of FCC auction rules in oral argument Friday at the U.S. Circuit Appeals Court for the District of Columbia. Alvin Lou Media is challenging the commission’s handling of an auction for a permit to build an AM radio station in Las Vegas. In the argument, Judges Douglas Ginsburg and Judith Rogers seemed to defend the FCC. Judge Brett Kavanaugh mostly kept quiet.

A major transition this summer may leave thousands of Americans without service, and it has nothing to do with digital TV. Starting July 1, deaf consumers using Internet- based telecom relay service will no longer be reachable through the proxy numbers they've used for years. But despite education efforts, many TRS users still don’t realize they need to register a local 10-digit phone number, said executives of relay companies and consumer groups we polled. “There are a lot of consumers who are still confused and experiencing problems getting a telephone number,” and they're facing new problems once they do have one, said CEO Sheri Farinha of the NorCal Center, a consumer group.

When making cybersecurity policy, government mustn’t throw critical infrastructures into “one big box with a set of solutions that get applied exactly the same in all contexts,” said Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy & Technology. Decisions on power grids and water facilities don’t have “free expression and democracy implications” like the Internet does, she told a media briefing Wednesday. Policymakers should avoid assigning cybersecurity a broad definition “that could squeak virtually any aspect of American life into the mix,” she said. CDT is engaged in the cybersecurity debate at the White House and on Capitol Hill. A White House report on its 60-day review of the federal cybersecurity is due Friday, while Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, have floated a bill in Congress on the topic. Harris expects more cybersecurity bills to show up soon because “at least” eight subcommittees can claim jurisdiction over the issue. CDT plans to assess the White House report based on how it addresses transparency, what entity it picks to lead the cybersecurity effort and what market incentives it establishes for information sharing between government and industry, said Senior Counsel Greg Nojeim. “Transparency builds trust” with businesses and the public, who want to know how their privacy and security will be affected, he said. So far, the Obama administration review team “gets high grades” because they have reached out to all interested parties, Nojeim said. The White House shouldn’t make the National Security Agency the leader of the cybersecurity effort, CDT officials said. The NSA “is not designed or inclined … to protect civil liberties,” said Harris. Worse, the NSA has conflicting interests, Nojeim said. “Say you're the NSA and you discover a vulnerability in a system used by a foreign government and you exploit it. Will the NSA be disclosing information about that vulnerability in order to protect U.S. systems against similar intrusions by foreign governments?” A better choice might be the Homeland Security Department, which was “statutorily charged with protecting critical infrastructure,” he said. DHS has faced problems with funding and leadership, but “that should change with a change in administrations,” he said. In making new cybersecurity policy, the White House doesn’t need to abandon all efforts of the Bush administration, Nojeim said. “Just because something hasn’t worked to date is not a reason to end its activity,” he said. “What they need to do is figure out how to fix problems that weren’t fixed in the last administration.”

It’s not clear how much the FCC will use the definitions it must provide the NTIA -- on what “broadband,” “open access” and “unserved” and “underserved” areas are -- to make broader decisions on future commission policy, commission and industry officials said Tuesday. The commission is required to act quickly, making major policy calls difficult. “The pragmatist in me says it would be difficult to do anything beyond” current policies, said an industry lawyer. “There isn’t a whole lot of time and those issues would be very contentious, slowing the process down.”

Comparing the U.S. to other countries on broadband availability will be the FCC’s toughest task as the agency implements the Broadband Data Improvement Act, telecom executives and researchers said in comments at the commission Friday. Many international reports miss key variables needed to draw accurate conclusions, they said. Although most comments focused broadly on how to satisfy Congress’ goals in the act, some groups urged the FCC to focus on special interest areas where they said information is lacking.

The FCC will likely get lengthy input on a vast array of controversial telecom issues, as it attempts to develop a national broadband plan, said industry officials we polled for reaction Thursday. In a 52-page notice of inquiry released Wednesday (CD April 9 p1), the FCC asks questions on universal service reform, open networks and nondiscrimination, the role of competition, how to define broadband, and several other big issues. The FCC is required under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to deliver its national broadband plan to Congress by Feb. 17.

The FCC opened a rulemaking to revamp universal service high-cost support for non-rural carriers. In a notice of inquiry adopted 3-0 Tuesday and released Wednesday, the FCC asked how it should respond to a 2005 remand by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2005, the court called unlawful the FCC’s current non-rural rules, which address carriers like Qwest that serve high-cost areas with too many lines to be considered “rural” by the statutory definition.

The FCC 8th Floor hoped to release a notice of inquiry on universal service high-cost support for non-rural carriers by late Tuesday, an FCC official told us, but it hadn’t done so at our deadline. Tuesday afternoon, the item was still waiting for votes, the official said. The notice includes a laundry list of questions asking how the FCC should respond to a 2005 remand by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (CD April 7 p9). In order to avoid a court-imposed deadline, the FCC agreed with state and carrier petitioners to a timeline whereby the agency would issue the NOI by Wednesday, a further notice by Dec. 15, and a final order by April 16, 2010.

A petition to stop prerecorded calls to consumers who port landline numbers to wireless was denounced by creditors, phone companies and others involved in automated messaging. In comments in an FCC rulemaking, they said a customer who has consented to calls on a landline number probably still wants them after cutting the cord. But consumer activists said cellphones are more private than wireless phones and deserve different treatment under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

The FCC is working on an American Sign Language video to help teach the deaf how to get 10-digit phone numbers for Internet-based telecom relay services, said a spokeswoman for the Consumer & Governmental Affairs bureau. The video will appear on the commission’s Web site, but the spokeswoman declined to say when. An FCC official told us the project is on the “front burner.” Consumer groups for the deaf have urged the commission to do more outreach. The groups say marketing-filled education efforts by TRS companies have confused consumers (CD March 30 p8). One of the groups, Telecommunications for Deaf and Hard of Hearing is “optimistic” that the FCC will finish the clips “within the next several weeks,” Executive Director Claude Stout said. “The videos will be extremely helpful as we would get the information neutrally from the FCC. Some providers are doing a good job producing their own video clips. But they also market their brand” relay services “as they explain how to get a 10-digit number or how to make an emergency call.”