Monica Hogan

ISPs serving rural communities are helping to facilitate telemedicine expansion through hospitals, healthcare providers and directly to the home, stakeholders said in interviews in recent weeks. After much talk about such opportunities, experts said they now expect more deployments. Industry is partnering with academics, hospitals and others in the rollout. Government has a role, too.

ISPs expect wide participation in the first phase of the $20 billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund auctions FCC Chairman Ajit Pai signaled he wants in 2020, they said in interviews this month. RDOF replaces the Connect America Fund phase II USF program that supports deployment in high-cost, sparsely populated areas (see 1907110031). "We'll start to see the pace of things quicken in 2020," said Mike Saperstein, USTelecom vice president-policy and advocacy.

Cincinnati Bell agreed to sell its telecom company, with a network footprint of more than 1.3 million homes in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Hawaii, to Toronto-based Brookfield Infrastructure in a deal announced Monday valued at $2.6 billion, including stock purchase and the assumption of the telco's debt. "The transaction strengthens our financial position, enabling accelerated investment in our strategic products that is not presently available to Cincinnati Bell as a standalone company," said Leigh Fox, president-CEO of Cincinnati Bell, in a statement. "This will allow us to drive growth and maximize value over the long term," he said. Brookfield Infrastructure CEO Sam Pollock said the company will leverage its operating expertise to help Cincinnati Bell management "complete its industry-leading fiber optic roll-out plan."

The rechartered North American Numbering Council met for the first time Monday. The FCC is conducting a single-run auction Tuesday on toll-free 833 numbers in which the highest bidder wins but pays the second highest bid. "We're looking forward to learning from the results," said Jordan Reth, NANC alternate designated federal officer. Winners will be announced "shortly," she said. The group wants to know if the single-round auction is the best design, and if not, hear suggestions for other designs. It will evaluate whether outreach was effective, Reth said, and ask participants to evaluate application requirements. It wants to evaluate upfront payment mechanisms that screen for "sincere offers," she said. The Toll Free Modernization Working Group is tasked with sending a report within six months of release of auction results to NANC, 30 days before a vote to send the document to the FCC, Reth said. Wireline Bureau and Office of Economics and Analytics Auctions Division posted letters in Monday's Daily Digest to two toll-free 833 number auction applicants (here and here), explaining why they aren't qualified. The FCC also asked the Interoperable Video Calling WG for recommendations on a database approach to addressing interoperability for video phone services, after the last NANC couldn't reach consensus (see 1909120047). The report should include performance standards and funding options, Reth said now. It's due to NANC by June 28, the FCC by July 29. NANC's charter ends Sept. 16, 2021. Its next meetings are conference calls Jan. 13 and Feb. 13. NANC is taking nominations for WGs through Dec. 26 in docket 92-237.

Revisit the latest net neutrality ruling, industry and other stakeholders asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Friday petitions for rehearing and rehearing en banc in Mozilla v FCC, No. 18-1051. In October, the court upheld much of a 2018 FCC net neutrality partial rollback (see 1910010018). Mozilla filed (in Pacer) with Etsy, Incompas, Vimeo and the Ad Hoc Telecom Users Committee. "Mozilla's petition focuses on the FCC's reclassification of broadband as an information service and on the FCC's failure to properly address competition and market harm," the company blogged Friday. It said "the court should have done more than simply criticize the FCC's assertion that existing antitrust and consumer protection laws are sufficient to address concerns about market harm without engaging in further analysis." The National Hispanic Media Coalition asked (in Pacer) the D.C. Circuit uphold judicial precedent by properly reviewing procedural rulings and agencies' obligations under the Administrative Procedure Act. Exclusion of consumer complaints from the public record and the FCC denying the ability to review them "requires the commission's reclassification ruling to be vacated," NHMC said. The group requested tens of thousands of consumer complaints in 2017 under the Freedom of Information Act (see 1709150031). New America's Open Technology Institute, Free Press, Public Knowledge, the Center for Democracy & Society, Computer & Communications Industry Association and the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates said an NPRM failed to propose Communications Act Section 257 legal authority the agency used to justify deregulation. “We were pleased with the D.C. Circuit’s decision upholding our return to a light-touch approach to regulating broadband," an FCC spokesperson emailed. "We are confident that decision will stand and that we will continue to have a free and open Internet.”

FCC Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Geoffrey Starks concurred during a unanimous vote to clarify the VoIP symmetry rule Thursday. That upholds reversal of a 2015 rule that would have allowed over-the-top VoIP providers to assess terminating fees on long-distance calls even if they had neither last-mile end-office facilities nor partnered with a local exchange carrier that did. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit later vacated the older rule and remanded it.

Don't expect material changes to a draft remand and declaratory ruling on the VoIP symmetry rule when commissioners vote at Thursday's meeting, FCC officials said this week. Over-the-top VoIP providers disagree with national interexchange carriers about whether and how the former should be compensated for terminating calls they originate (see 1912050034). The agency ruled on functional equivalency for VoIP services in 2015, allowing them to be compensated for certain end-office billing elements for OTT or VoIP-originated traffic, with some exceptions (see 1502120030). David Aldworth, CEO of Teliax, said his company was in litigation with a national IXC over related tariff disputes after that. Courts referred the proceeding back to the FCC as a matter of primary jurisdiction. IXCs have dealt in self-help for years and chose not to pay end-office bills as they awaited the next decision, Aldworth said. If there's a silver lining in the declaratory ruling, even if commissioners side with IXCs, Aldworth said, it's that "if there is retroactivity, there are not a whole lot of refunds to be paid" from VoIP providers to IXCs because the IXCs hadn't been paying the OTT providers for call terminations. The draft addresses a CenturyLink petition (see 1805180073). CenturyLink, both an IXC and a VoIP services provider, argues the draft "is confused when it asserts that its approach better 'promotes competition in the voice marketplace' than the rule endorsed in 2015."

The increasing use of IoT technologies over the next few years creates new challenges for FCC oversight over RF measurement, Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Julius Knapp said during Wednesday's Practising Law Institute conference. Because the advanced technologies don't necessarily allow their batteries to be swapped out every few weeks as they run down, new RF safety issues must be addressed as IoT devices rely on wireless power transfer to recharge. It's very easy to track RF in cellphones through standardized measurements, he said. Newer IoT devices can focus energy into very small areas, "but you can't see it," so it's hard to know where to measure, Knapp told us. "If you can't see it, how many spots do you have to measure?" Knapp is retiring early next year (see 1911270055), and was heralded at the PLI conference Wednesday and with a standing ovation Tuesday at the FCBA Chairman's dinner (see 1912110042). An NPRM last week on RF has questions on wireless power transfer (see 1912040036), Knapp said. Advanced applications of wireless power transfer can provide charging from a transmitting unit to one or more receiving units at distances of a meter or more while the receiving unit is in motion, the NPRM said. It seeks comment on the proposed definition of wireless power transfer devices that transfer electromagnetic energy between a power transfer unit and receiving unit.

The FCC launched an application programming interface Lifeline carriers can use to verify a potential enrollee's eligibility, the agency said Tuesday. The API connects a carrier's enrollment system to the Lifeline program's national eligibility verifier run by Universal Service Administrative Co. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said that now, "Lifeline will be a more efficient tool for connecting some of our most vulnerable citizens to broadband." The API initially launched in a test (see 1910100007). CTIA thinks these efforts "to enhance the National Eligibility Verifier with new features that can make it easier for millions of low income Americans" using the subsidized wireless, said Matt Gerst, vice president-regulatory affairs, in a statement. It's "a positive step forward which can serve as a building block to make the National Verifier more efficient and effective for all stakeholders," emailed Lifeline lawyer John Heitmann of Kelley Drye. The FCC and USAC didn't provide details of what's involved with the API.

Banks asked the FCC to grant Capital One a declaratory ruling that financial institutions getting an "opt-out" request from the recipient of an autodialed text message can follow up asking whether the request applies to all informational texts or a particular type. Comments posted through Tuesday in docket 18-152. The American Bankers Association said "banks often confront ambiguous expressions of intent to revoke consent," and customers could "face real harm" if they don't receive fraud alerts or data breach notifications. Consumers may partially revoke consent, the National Consumer Law Center said. The National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions supports "a reasonable, uniform opt-out method." Clarify the opt-out confirmation issue for all legitimate businesses, said the Association of Credit and Collection Professionals.