Monica Hogan

The FCC will devote an additional $42.19 million to fund all eligible rural healthcare program services for the current funding year, said an order commissioners adopted Friday for docket 02-60. It permits Universal Service Administrative Co. to carry forward unused funds from prior years. It waives a cap on multiyear commitments and upfront payments that would result in unnecessary reductions in support for rural healthcare providers and patients. Chairman Ajit Pai circulated a draft order last month (see 2002210052). Pai tweeted earlier Friday that he wanted a vote so the additional funding could go to help healthcare providers address the spread of the coronavirus. After OK, he tweeted, "we finally got the votes!" This "is a critically important step that the FCC took today, particularly in light of the coronavirus pandemic," Pai said. "COVID-19 presents serious challenges to healthcare providers, and they need every tool in the toolbox at their disposal, particularly the enhanced connectivity that enables them to provide vital healthcare services to the American public. Today's order ensures that rural Americans will have access to the healthcare services they need." A commissioner's aide said there wasn't controversy among commissioners over the order's adoption.

A reassigned numbers database in development to help mitigate unwanted robocalls should be free to access by nonprofits, the Credit Union National Association told the FCC. Comments were posted through Thursday in docket 17-59. The National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions also urged exempting credit unions from payment of fees for use of the database, or rejecting structure recommended by the FCC North American Numbering Council and adopting one "that does not unfairly burden credit unions." It said the proposal disadvantages smaller users: "Requiring a single, up-front expenditure may bar smaller and less sophisticated credit unions from access to the database." It disagreed with a recommendation to offer volume discounts to large users. The American Bankers Association agreed with NANC that charging high per-query rates would suppress the volume of numbers that callers check against the database. Its members expect to "query millions of customer phone numbers each month," ABA said. The FCC should offer additional review and comment opportunities after NANC produces a more-detailed cost funding and fee structure for a new reassigned numbers database, NAFCU said.

As fears about the spreading coronavirus increase, stakeholders are upping requests (see 2003060036) for additional government actions on telehealth and remote patient monitoring. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) said Thursday Michigan plans to give Medicaid patients easier access to telehealth services during the pandemic. That will expand "opportunities for safe, quality care through telemedicine," she said.

Section 230 of the Communications and Decency Act may need to be revisited, suggested Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. A quarter century after enactment, 230 immunity "has not always been a force for good, particularly in light of some of the extraordinarily broad interpretation given to it by some courts," DAG Rosen told a Free State Foundation conference Tuesday. He listed some criteria to consider in such revamp efforts.

Chairman Ajit Pai plans to further deregulate voice service providers and "examine whether certain pricing and tariffing regulations that the FCC imposed on incumbent phone companies when they held a monopoly on local telephone service still make sense today," he blogged Monday, outlining his agenda for the March 31 commissioners' meeting (see 2003090044). The meeting will also have a vote on robocall/caller ID authentication, as Pai disclosed last week (see 2003060055). Three Media Bureau items also were tentatively scheduled, including related to ATSC 3.0.

Expanded residential telehealth use could support patients and healthcare providers during the U.S. outbreak of COVID-19, providing pre-diagnosis triage and keeping contagious patients away from doctors' offices waiting rooms, stakeholders said in interviews last week. Some said more reliable, affordable and ubiquitous connectivity is needed.

The FCC issued a proposal to prohibit most satellite providers from bidding in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund auctions with claims of offering low-latency service, asking about an exception for SpaceX in a public notice on docket 20-34 in Tuesday's Daily Digest. "We propose prohibiting providers that intend to use geostationary or medium earth orbit satellites from selecting low latency in combination with any of the performance tiers." Comments are due March 27, replies April 10 on RDOF Auction 904 procedures, OK'd 3-2 by commissioners Friday (see 2002280002). "Some service providers that use these satellite technologies have acknowledged that they cannot meet the low latency requirement that 95% or more of all peak period measurements of network round trip latency are at or below 100 milliseconds," the PN said. "SpaceX contends that its low-earth orbit satellite service can meet the low-latency threshold." That's a modification in language from the draft (see 2002070056). Another PN offers a guide with technical and mathematical details on Auction 904 bidding procedures.

There's a need for a new federal broadband plan, with different metrics and tasked outside the FCC, panelists said Tuesday during the Incompas Policy Summit. They commented on the 10-year-old FCC National Broadband Plan.

Safe harbor rules should protect the telecom industry from liability when providers inadvertently block a legitimate call, they said, but companies placing outbound calls to customers demand efforts to ensure legitimate calls go through and corrective action when they don't, in comments to the FCC Wireline Bureau posted through Monday in docket 17-97. Public health and safety sectors report "alarmingly increased levels of blocked or mislabeled calls," said the Credit Union National Association. There's no comprehensive or reliable data on the effectiveness of blocking tools that identify illegitimate or fraudulent calls without also interfering with the ability of legitimate providers to have their calls completed or not mislabeled as spam, it said. USTelecom tells the FCC providers act with care and caution while call blocking. Providers are sensitive to overblocking, the accuracy of their analytics tools improve every day, and providers want to quickly address legitimate calls that are inadvertently blocked, it said. Industry can address concerns while under a safe harbor, it said. ACA International, which represents collection agencies, opposed a safe harbor and wants the FCC to rescind its call blocking declaratory ruling. It said current regulations give too much discretion to voice service providers to determine what types of calls can be blocked. Calls sent by alarm company central stations responding to an alarm continue to be blocked or labeled as potential fraud by voice providers, said the Alarm Industry Communications Committee. AICC urged the FCC to adopt a critical call list of numbers that may never be blocked, including central station numbers used to respond to alarms. But a database of whitelisted numbers "would be a target for bad actors to spoof and otherwise exploit, even with robust security measures," CTIA said. T-Mobile asked the FCC to work with stakeholders to adopt a narrow definition of critical calls, such as those from public safety answering points. T-Mobile also asked the FCC to remain flexible as it measures the success of call blocking. "The tactics used by scammers to target and reach consumers are always evolving," it said. Voice service providers should notify callers immediately upon blocking or labeling a call as spam, Twilio said, and designate a contact point for redress when calls are blocked erroneously. Industry must coalesce around a standard enabling transmittal of secure handling of asserted information using tokens (Shaken) and secure telephone identity revisited (Stir) call authentication information access across TDM-based networks as mandatory implementation deadlines approach, the Cloud Communications Alliance said.

The FCC voted to propose an Oct. 22 auction date for the first phase of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund and to release a public notice for docket 20-34 on procedures for its auction 904. That was despite pushback from Democratic Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Geoffrey Starks, as was expected (see 2002270004). They partly dissented. The PN would seek comment on proposals such as how large the eligible bidding areas should be and how much information should be collected in short-form applications.