The FCC seeks comment on a small-provider exemption to new net neutrality transparency duties, the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau said in a public notice issued Monday in docket 14-28. CGB said the February net neutrality order adopted enhancements to its existing transparency rule requiring local broadband providers to disclose to consumers, edge providers and others information about the "commercial terms, performance characteristics and network practices" of their services. In response to the concerns of small broadband ISPs, the FCC temporarily exempted providers with 100,000 or fewer subscribers, but directed the bureau to seek further comment on the exemption and adopt an order on whether it would maintain the exemption and at what level by no later than Dec. 15, the PN said. CGB clarified that the current exemption applies to providers with 100,000 or fewer broadband connections. The bureau asked about the exemption's burdens and benefits, the proper threshold and whether a one-time extension of the exemption would be justified to help smooth the transition if the FCC doesn't make the exemption permanent. Comments are due 30 days after publication of the PN in the Federal Register, replies 30 days later.

The FCC released its order Monday giving interconnected VoIP providers direct numbering access, which was adopted Thursday 5-0 (see 1506180060). The 78-page order sets up a process to allow VoIP providers connected to traditional phone networks to obtain phone numbers directly from numbering administrators rather than through telecom carrier intermediaries. It established various conditions "designed to minimize number exhaust and preserve the integrity of the numbering system." The FCC disagreed with commenters that said the agency had to classify interconnected VoIP service as a Title II telecom service under the Communications Act to give providers of the service direct numbering access. The FCC said nothing in Section 251(e) restricted the commission's numbering jurisdiction to telecom carriers. NARUC was among the most explicit and seemed to raise a litigation threat in warning the commission not to give interconnected VoIP providers direct numbering access without classifying their service under Title II (see 1506120013). Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said in her statement that the agency should decide the VoIP classification issue and stand by it. The FCC said arguments that it should address certain intercarrier compensation issues in the same order were "speculative" and "do not constitute sufficient grounds to delay VoIP direct numbering access." A footnote confirmed it declined to act on Level 3's proposals seeking to ensure CLECs can collect local switching access charges when completing the VoIP calls of providers with direct numbering access, as expected (see 1506190047). The order said Level 3 raised the issue a few days before the beginning of the sunshine period. The commission called its related VoIP symmetry rules complex and said it lacked an adequate record to fully evaluate Level 3 proposals and implications.

The FCC rejected all major changes sought by industry, in an order on various petitions for reconsideration on the service rules for the TV incentive auction. The order had been approved by the FCC through electronic voting (see 1506180041). “As we have stated before, our intention is to begin accepting applications to participate in the incentive auction in the fall of 2015, and to start the bidding process in early 2016,” the FCC said. “We issue this Order now in order to provide certainty for prospective bidders and other interested parties in advance of the incentive auction.” Commissioner Ajit Pai said in a statement that he approved in part and concurred in part on the order. “While I do not agree with the resolution of every single petition for reconsideration addressed in this Order, I do agree with how we dispose of the overwhelming majority of them,” he said. "And second, working together, we improved the item.” Pai cited a change the FCC made to consumer education requirements imposed on broadcasters. TV “stations repacked after the auction will have every incentive to inform their viewers of a channel change in the most effective manner,” he said. “It will be a matter of economic self-interest.”

Clarification: Renee Gregory, wireless aide to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, plans to return to the agency after maternity leave (see 1506180036).

Justice Department opposition to Comcast buying Time Warner Cable is a prime example of federal regulators increasingly letting consumer well-being and not politics steer regulatory decisions, Bill Baer, assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division, said Thursday at London's Chatham House. "Enforcement in the U.S. today is less a political football than at any time in its history," Baer said in remarks posted online. Baer's address focused on ways disruptive technologies or new competition is met by businesses, and the role the DOJ plays in trying to ensure consumer welfare trumps such strategies as collusion -- such as major book publishers and Apple, until challenged by the DOJ -- or acquiring the competition -- such as AT&T's attempt to buy T-Mobile, until opposed by the DOJ. "Political pressure is still there. Competition results in winners and losers. A lot of money is at stake," he said. On Comcast/TWC, the federal agency had concerns about the huge broadband customer share Comcast would have, and the collapse of that accusation "has cleared the way for future innovations that seem poised to transform how consumers interact with video and other online content," Baer said. Meanwhile, in the wireless industry, the DOJ backed FCC spectrum auction rules "to ensure smaller, disruptive firms are not blocked by the leading carriers," he said.

Renee Gregory, wireless adviser to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, is leaving the post, Wheeler said Thursday. She will be replaced by FCC veteran Jessica Almond, who already was named acting legal adviser, Wheeler said. Almond has had a variety of jobs at the FCC, most recently as chief of staff at the Wireless Bureau. Also leaving the FCC is Priscilla Argeris, senior legal adviser to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. Argeris is leaving the area, Rosenworcel said.

Commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O’Rielly told reporters after the FCC meeting Thursday that they feel their interests are sometimes ignored by Chairman Tom Wheeler. O’Rielly said during the meeting he felt misled on the Telephone Consumers Protection Act order (see 1506180046). “We consistently come forward with a solution that we think would work for everybody,” Pai said in his own news conference with O'Rielly after Wheeler's news conference. “What we’re told is, ‘No. This is a red line. No, you can’t have that.’” The chairman’s office refuses to agree to any compromise with other support from all three majority offices, said Pai. “At the end of the day, you end up with an unprecedented level of 3-2 votes.” Pai said the FCC under Wheeler makes the agency under former Chairman Kevin Martin seem like a “time of collegiality and compromise.” O’Rielly said he has looked for common ground. The current majority is “happy to accommodate you if you’re going to agree with them,” said O'Rielly. In the Lifeline order, also approved Thursday, at one point there were four votes for a cap, O’Rielly said. A cap was blocked by one of the Democratic commissioners, he said. “At what point does the minority of the majority become tyranny?”

Instead of looking back after five years of implementation, the National Broadband Plan should be reviewed each year, said NBP author Blair Levin, now of the Brookings Institution, during a panel Wednesday at the institution. "Somebody on an annual basis should be saying, 'How are we doing?'" he said. "I asked the chairman of the FCC to do that, but his PR person vetoed it saying if we did that, people would criticize us, and I just said, 'Well, that's a good thing.' We should be willing to be judged." The discussion comes as the NBP marks its five-year anniversary this year and focused on development of the plan, the changes that have been made over the past five years and what lies ahead for U.S. broadband development. The plan has changed the focus of the FCC permanently, said Austin Schlick, Google director-communications law. "Broadband is now the preeminent service overseen by the FCC. I think that most commissioners would agree." Since moving forward with the plan's spectrum portions, companies such as AT&T have embraced the use of unlicensed spectrum, which has helped to remedy the traffic overload, said Schlick, who was general counsel at the FCC when the NBP was issued. To move forward with the national plan and continue to make universal access a reality, Levin said that states have to want to play a role in the deployment of broadband. Part of that involves the Google Fiber initiative. Every time Google announces it's coming to a new city, the telcos are right behind in announcing gigabit service as well, said Schlick. Often, existing telcos are able to get gigabit service deployed before Google because the company has to start from scratch, he said. "You can see a price difference between markets where we are and markets where we aren't, but this is a good thing," Schlick said. "Companies provide better service at lower prices where we enter the market, and now you're seeing deployment of gigabit networks where Google is not at all. The idea has caught on."

The telecom and cable industry and electric utilities drew different lessons from comments to the FCC on pole attachment rates. Replies largely repeat arguments made in the initial comment round (see 1506050037). Cable and telco interests asked the FCC to take further steps to harmonize at lower levels the pole-attachment rates they must pay, while utilities, which own most of the poles, are happy with the current regime. The record “overwhelmingly demonstrates” that the agency should quickly grant the petition for reconsideration filed by Comptel, NCTA and tw telecom in 2011, NCTA said. “It appears that certain electric utilities are taking advantage of the reclassification of broadband as an excuse to significantly raise pole attachment rates for cable operators and telecommunications carriers,” the cable association said. “Granting the NCTA/COMPTEL Petition is necessary to prevent this result, which is why the petition is supported by a wide range of broadband providers, including cable operators, telecommunications carriers and wireless providers.” Six major power companies, filing together, drew the opposite conclusion. The record shows that pole attachment rates are an insignificant part of operating expenses for most ISPs, said Ameren, American Electric Power, Duke Energy, Oncor, Southern Co. and Tampa Electric. “Broadband providers -- cable companies in particular -- continue to repeat the message that lower pole attachment rates mean greater broadband deployment,” the utilities said. “But there is no evidence to support this message. Continuously repeating it does not make it true.” Four years after the initial pole attachment order, the record “is devoid of any evidence that lower pole attachment rates spur growth, competition, or benefits to consumers in the market for broadband services, and in fact, electric utilities have demonstrated that the opposite is true,” said a coalition of electric utilities, representing additional power companies. It's to be seen whether the order reclassifying broadband as a Communications Act Title II service will have any effect on pole attachment rates, the coalition said: Granting the relief sought would be “contrary to law, and arbitrary and capricious.” Comments were posted in docket 07-245.

Related broadcasters asked the FCC to reject or hold up AT&T's planned buy of DirecTV while the agency processes the group's emergency complaint alleging DirecTV failed to negotiate retransmission consent in good faith. In a filing in docket 14-90, Blackhawk Broadcasting, Bristlecone Broadcasting,Broadcasting Licenses, Eagle Creek Broadcasting of Laredo, Ltd., Mountain Licenses, Northwest Broadcasting and Stainless Broadcasting objected to FCC approval of AT&T/DirecTV and asked that the transaction be held in abeyance while the agency reviews the group's emergency complaint (see 1506120021). "The Complaint provides a compelling real world example of DIRECTV’s failure to negotiate retransmission consent for the carriage of broadcast stations’ signals in good faith as mandated by Congress and the Commission," the broadcast group said. "The Complaint focuses on matters of direct relevance to the Commission’s review of the Applications, including issues of both substance (whether DIRECTV uses its size to secure below-market retransmission consent rates from broadcasters, especially small broadcasters) and process (whether DIRECTV conceals relevant marketplace facts during negotiations). ... FCC approval of the Applicants’ proposed combination would substantially exacerbate, in a manner that contravenes the public interest, the inequities and imbalances which already tilt the retransmission consent playing field too strongly in favor of DIRECTV. DIRECTV is a massive incumbent [multichannel video programming distributor] and should not be permitted to merge with another giant MVPD, AT&T, particularly given the latter’s status and dominant market power as one of the two largest entrenched wireless incumbents in this country." The FCC's nonbinding 180-day "shot clock" for the AT&T/DirecTV review has been stopped on Day 170 since March 13 for unrelated reasons. AT&T and DirecTV representatives didn't respond to our queries.