The FCC asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to reject Neustar’s challenge of the agency’s March order effectively giving rival Telcordia the inside track to become the next local number portability administrator. Neustar is the longtime incumbent LNPA. Neustar had asked the court for an expedited review of the challenge (see 1505070047). The challenge isn't ripe because the March order is “not final Commission action,” the FCC told the D.C. Circuit in a pleading posted by the agency Friday. “Rather, it is an interim step in a process that, after additional Commission action, may result in the selection of a new Local Number Portability Administrator. Because the order from which Neustar seeks review is not final, the Court lacks jurisdiction to review it.” The selection of a new LNPA is a process that “has involved multiple steps over the course of several years” and the order "is merely the latest stage," the FCC said.

The FCC unanimously approved the creation of a regulatory fee category for satellite carriers in its 2015 rulemaking on regulatory fees, said a regulatory fee NPRM and order in Friday's Daily Digest. This corrects a “long-time imbalance“ in the treatment of pay-TV carriers “that exempted two of the nation’s largest [multichannel video program distributor]s from contributing to the regulatory costs of the Media Bureau because they happened to be satellite operators,” said Commissioner Ajit Pai in a statement. The NPRM seeks comment on total proposed FY 2015 fees of $339.8 million. That breaks down to $21.3 million or 6.28 percent from International Bureau regulatees, $69.3 million or 20.4 percent from Wireless Bureau regulatees, $131.1 million (38.57 percent) from Wireline Bureau regulatees, and $118.1 million (34.75 percent) from the Media Bureau regulatees, the order said. The NPRM seeks comment on a request for relief from fee assessments by the Puerto Rico Broadcasters Association. Along with new fees for direct broadcast satellite, the order contains instruction for a new toll-free number fee requirement, and takes amateur radio vanity call signs and general mobile radio service off the fee schedule, the order said. It included in the rulemaking specifies when delinquent fee debt is transferred to the U.S. Treasury.

FCC E-rate changes are working, but this isn't the time for the agency to stop moving forward, Commissioner Mignon Clyburn told the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition in a speech Friday. The group understands “E-rate modernization was about far more than just adopting speed targets and revamping a budget,” Clyburn said in written remarks. “I am optimistic, because the FCC remains focused on its objective of ensuring access to world-class digital learning tools -- an objective shared by SHLB and the education community.” Clyburn asked attendees to provide plenty of feedback about how the revisions are working in practice. Also “tell us what we are doing right, because positive feedback is welcome as well,” she said. Clyburn also repeated calls for similar overhaul of the USF Lifeline program. The FCC isn't meeting a congressional mandate to ensure that all Americans, including those with low incomes and in rural and high-cost areas, have access to advanced telecom and information services at affordable prices, Clyburn said. “Lifeline, the only universal service program focused on bridging the affordability gap, remains stuck in an era where leg warmers, stretch stirrup pants, and scrunchies were the fashion craze, and talking on our home telephone or sending a letter through the mail were the main means of communicating.” Lifeline should help people build a better life, she said. The program's goal should be “for it to work so effectively that current subscribers will no longer need Lifeline, or any other federal benefits program,” she said. Industry and FCC officials have predicted Lifeline changes could headline the agency’s June 18 open meeting (see 1505010051). Chairman Tom Wheeler is to circulate draft orders for that meeting Thursday. Wireline Bureau Chief Julie Veach said in a blog post Friday that the FCC has drawn some important lessons from its Low Income Broadband Pilot Program, including lessons for possible Lifeline changes. Among the lessons is that consumers “respond well to having a choice of plans” and all households don’t have the same needs for “data speeds, usage amounts, service type and devices,” Veach wrote. Price matters, even if it is not the only barrier to adoption, and carriers “aren’t necessarily the best” at addressing these barriers, especially “lack of digital literacy and relevance to one's life,” Veach said. There is no “silver bullet,” she said. “While the pilots were focused on different approaches for adoption, let's be clear that Lifeline is focused on ensuring services are affordable, not to solve the broadband adoption challenge,” she said. “As the Commission moves forward to consider how to restructure the Lifeline program for the digital age, the pilot report will help provide useful data for the Commission and public to consider.” The FCC also released the report on the pilot program Friday.

The Department of Justice and the FCC, backed by intervenors, asked the U.S. Court of Appeals Friday for the D.C. Circuit to deny the telco/cable request to stay the FCC net neutrality order's Communications Act Title II broadband reclassification and Internet conduct standard (see 1505130049). “We remain confident the court will deny the request for a stay," an FCC spokeswoman said. "Petitioners have not demonstrated that they are likely to prevail, and granting the stay motion would strip the FCC of the ability to protect consumers and innovators from harmful conduct by broadband providers.” In their opposition, DOJ and the FCC said the stay motion wasn't what it seemed. "It asks the Court to halt the application of Title II of the Communications Act to broadband, while allowing three bright-line rules to go into effect," they said. "But those bright-line rules are precisely the kind of regulation this Court held (in Verizon v. FCC, 2014) could not be applied until and unless broadband was reclassified as a 'telecommunications service.'" DOJ and the FCC said the Supreme Court's 2005 NCTA v. Brand X ruling was controlling, giving the commission authority to set telecom policy in a complex area, including the discretion to divide broadband into a telecom service of pure transmission and a separate information service, such as providing an email address. "The order does precisely that," they said. "The decision to reclassify broadband as offering a telecommunications service is consistent with the marketplace today and necessary to fulfill the goals of an open Internet, which the Verizon Court held were valid." DOJ and the FCC disputed petitioner claims they would suffer irreparable harm, another stay requirement: "Petitioners showcase a few broadband providers representing a small percentage of the marketplace to allege that the entire industry will be harmed, yet even these cherry-picked examples fail to demonstrate harm from the order." Former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes "would be astonished to hear petitioners claim that unfairness, vagueness, and uncertainty result from the use of case-by-case adjudication in which the commission simply seeks the 'experience' that our common law tradition extols," the agencies said. In their opposition, industry and "public interest" intervenors said the broadband reclassification and net neutrality rules "safeguard the public's ability to use the Internet ... without interference from petitioners." They said "the harms from a stay would dwarf the speculative injury petitioners claim, none of which is irreparable and little, if any, of which qualifies as injury at all." The intervenors are Cogent, Comptel, Dish Network, Level 3, Netflix, Etsy, Kickstarter, Meetup, Tumblr, Union Square Ventures, Vimeo, Credo Mobile, Demand Progress, Fight for the Future, Center for Democracy and Technology, New America's Open Technology Institute, Vonage, the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates, ColorOfChange, Public Knowledge and Free Press. The telco/cable petitioners have until noon next Friday to file a reply.

Alamo Broadband and USTelecom asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit not to dismiss their initial challenges to the FCC net neutrality order. In a joint opposition to the agency's motion to dismiss their filings, Alamo and USTelecom said the FCC had conceded they have since filed timely supplemental petitions for review of the order following its Federal Register publication. "The Court need not decide the motion to dismiss now and can -- and should -- refer the motion to the merits panel, which may address it if necessary to resolve this case," said the company and the association. "In any event, contrary to the FCC’s claims, neither its regulations nor this Court’s precedents clearly resolve the question of when a party may petition for review of a declaratory ruling that is included in an FCC document that also promulgates new regulations."

The FCC Enforcement Bureau cautioned ISPs the agency will be watching to ensure that the privacy of consumers is protected after the agency’s net neutrality order takes effect June 12. The order “applies the core customer privacy protections of Section 222 of the Communications Act to providers of broadband Internet access service,” the Wednesday notice reminds ISPs. The FCC may offer additional guidance, the bureau said. Until then “the Enforcement Bureau intends to focus on whether broadband providers are taking reasonable, good-faith steps to comply with Section 222, rather than focusing on technical details,” the bureau said. “By examining whether a broadband provider’s acts or practices are reasonable and whether such a provider is acting in good faith to comply with Section 222, the Enforcement Bureau intends that broadband providers should employ effective privacy protections in line with their privacy policies and core tenets of basic privacy protections.”

The Broadband Opportunity Council got only a handful of questions Wednesday during a webinar designed to answer broad queries as it seeks public input on barriers hampering broadband deployment. The council was established March 23 by President Barack Obama and is led by the Departments of Agriculture and Commerce, through the Rural Utilities Service and NTIA. “The plan is to make sure that we develop a national broadband expansion plan,” said Keith Adams, assistant administrator at RUS, who spoke during the webinar. “We must use the unique opportunity to collectively join in with the president’s broadband mission and deliver unprecedented impact.” The council already is taking a close look at all federal programs that support broadband “or have the potential to promote broadband services via any type of modifications to rules or regulations,” he said. The council is seeking recommendations from agencies for executive actions and will prepare a final report to the president in August, he said. “We want to make sure that we’re getting all kinds of information from industry, from state, local governments, from anybody who has a stake in understanding how we can provide broadband,” Adams said. The council wants “firsthand feedback on the current issues,” said Douglas Kinkoph, acting associate administrator over the NTIA Office of Telecommunications and Information Applications. “We want to solicit new, bold ideas,” he said. “We’re open to all ideas and issues that you are experiencing.” Comments should cover adoption and deployment issues, Kinkoph said. “It’s important to be specific in regards to the programs, rules, agencies, obstacles and opportunities.” Commenters should avoid addressing issues already before the FCC, such as net neutrality or intercarrier compensation, he said. The council said in a May 6 notice it's seeking comment on: “(i) Ways the federal government can promote best practices, modernize outdated regulations, promote coordination, and offer more services online; (ii) identification of regulatory barriers to broadband deployment, competition, and adoption; (iii) ways to promote public and private investment in broadband; (iv) ways to promote broadband adoption; (v) issues related to state, local, and tribal governments; (vi) issues related to vulnerable communities and communities with limited or no broadband; (vii) issues specific to rural areas; and (viii) ways to measure broadband availability, adoption, and speed.” Comments are due June 10.

A U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit panel struck Daniel Berninger's motion to stay the FCC net neutrality order that reclassified broadband Internet access as a Communications Act Title II service. The panel's order Tuesday said the court's clear intent in previous orders was for Berninger's case to be consolidated with others in a single joint motion for a stay, but Berninger, founder of Voice Communication Exchange Committee, filed his motion separate from a previous stay request of telco and cable groups. The latter motion targets only the Title II broadband reclassification and an Internet conduct standard, not the net neutrality rules against Internet blocking, throttling and paid prioritization (see 1505190033). The D.C. Circuit denied a motion by intervenors, including Public Knowledge, backing the FCC order that had sought to exceed previous page limits in a separate opposition to the stay motion. The panel did allow intervenors to file a single joint response of up to 20 pages by noon Friday, when the FCC response is due. The panel gave telco/stay petitioners until noon May 29 to file a reply of up to 28 pages. In another development, judges for the 3rd Circuit ordered that a challenge to the net neutrality order by Full Service Network, Sage Telecommunications, Telescape Communications and TruConnect Mobile be transferred to the D.C. Circuit. The FCC had requested that change.

Alex Nogales, president of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, said Tuesday he's resigning from the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC) because he was unhappy the group had posted an article by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, which he said alleged that labor leader Cesar Chavez would not have supported NHMC’s work on net neutrality. MMTC removed the article from its website after it appeared there only briefly. Nogales announced his resignation in a blog post on the Huffington Post. MMTC had no immediate comment.

Voice Communication Exchange Committee founder Daniel Berninger asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Tuesday to stay the FCC net neutrality order that reclassified broadband Internet access as a Title II telecom service. Berninger said the entire order should be stayed because it "threatens his livelihood," which is "predicated on the ability to design, develop, and deploy services that are not subject to regulation by the FCC under Title II -- an ability that will be forever lost if the order takes effect." Berninger asked the court to act before June 12, the order's effective date, or as soon thereafter as practical. Major telco and cable groups asked the D.C. Circuit last week to stay the order's broadband reclassification and its Internet conduct standard but not its net neutrality rules barring Internet blocking, throttling and paid prioritization (see 1505130049). A D.C. Circuit panel asked the FCC to respond to that petition by noon Friday and for the telco/cable petitioners to reply by May 28. Those petitioners Tuesday opposed a motion by intervenors, including the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates and Public Knowledge, to supplement the FCC response to the stay with their own opposition as "unfair to petitioners" due to page limits.