The next FCC will likely roll back net neutrality and broadband reclassification in two steps, Raymond James analysts wrote investors on their recent discussions with communications policy professionals at a conference they hosted. "We believe the new Republican controlled FCC will initially refrain from enforcing most aspects of net neutrality and Title II regulation post inauguration," they wrote. "A proceeding to formally remove the rules will take at least 6 months to write and get through the Commission (likely in time for an early to mid-summer appointment of the two vacant seats at the FCC, including a permanent chair)." They said there appears to be congressional support for a net neutrality legislative solution after "growing irritation with the FCC." On merger and acquisition reviews, they said the general view is the FCC "has been far too activist" and "should be less involved." They said incoming President Donald Trump's choice for assistant attorney general for antitrust "will signal whether the DOJ will see a shift in its enforcement policies in reviewing M&A," but company synergy arguments "may need tempering" regardless. "Since synergies largely involve headcount, our panelists felt this would not be a good argument under a Trump administration, and other offsets such as consumer benefit and interest from lower pricing or other such byproducts of the deal would have to be highlighted," wrote the analysts. They said broadband looks likely to be part of any infrastructure initiative, adding to ongoing FCC Connect America Fund subsidy efforts. Bank of America Merrill Lynch cable/satellite analysts largely agreed, in a Wednesday note, saying they believe the GOP election sweep increases "the likelihood of: (1) a reversal of the Open Internet Order (and at a minimum a considerable de-risking of retail price regulation...) (2) a re-write of the 1996 Telecom Act with a shift towards a lighter regulatory touch, and (3) a reversal of much of the regulations adopted under" President Barack Obama and Chairman Tom Wheeler. They also noted Trump's interest in a $1 trillion infrastructure package and said the Trump antitrust policy remains unclear, given his expressed opposition to AT&T buying Time Warner and the traditionally "less interventionist" Republican stance. AT&T met Thursday with Trump (see 1701120040).

AT&T Chairman Randall Stephenson met Thursday with President-elect Donald Trump but didn't talk about the company's planned $108.7 billion buy of Time Warner, the telco said in a statement. "Rather, as the country’s leading investor of capital for each of the last five years, the conversation focused on how AT&T can work with the Trump administration to increase investment in the U.S., stimulate job creation in America, and make American companies more competitive globally." The Trump transition team didn't comment on the specifics of the meeting but said such meetings between Trump and business leaders generally have been about job creation and regulatory barriers to growth and expansion. Trump has said he opposes the deal on media consolidation grounds (see 1610220002).

Union workers reported extensive AT&T phone and internet outages in California and Nevada, the states where they're considering a strike against the company over worker benefits and work practices (see 1612190050). The states faced mudslides and flooding after a weekend winter storm hit and continued into the week. The California Public Utilities Commission is “in communication with AT&T and we are monitoring the situation,” a CPUC spokeswoman emailed Wednesday. The Nevada Public Utilities Commission hasn’t received any outage reports from AT&T for the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe in the past week, a Nevada PUC spokesman said. Communications Workers of America District 9 said in a Tuesday news release that service calls jumped 350 percent over the weekend and AT&T technicians have been working 14-hour days. AT&T technicians saw the worst outages in California areas of Redding, Napa, Clear Lake, Auburn, Placerville, Sacramento, Stockton and around Lake Tahoe, CWA said. The union's workers, who are in contract negotiations with AT&T and last month held demonstrations, claimed the outages could have been avoided if AT&T better maintained their infrastructure. “For years, we’ve been telling AT&T executives about widespread infrastructure problems and saying the company needs to invest in the basic landline services our customers need before it’s too late,” said CWA member Keith Mitchell, a maintenance splicer in San Diego County. “But AT&T chose to ignore us and the needs of our customers, and now the company is forcing us to work in dangerous conditions to clean up their avoidable mess.” An AT&T spokesman responded that the company invested more than $7.25 billion in its California wireless and wired networks over the past three years. “Ongoing extreme weather conditions and the heaviest rain in a decade have created an unusually high level of network repair work, which we are addressing by bringing in additional technicians from other parts of the country and through local technicians working overtime,” he said. “We’ll do everything we can to safely address the increased work load until the extreme weather passes and the situation returns to normal.”

The Department of Transportation said it formed an advisory committee on automation, including the development and deployment of self-driving vehicles. A Wednesday DOT news release said the committee, which will hold its first meeting Monday, will also help the department determine needs involving research, policy and regulations. "This new automation committee will work to advance life-saving innovations while boosting our economy and making our transportation network more fair, reliable, and efficient," said Secretary Anthony Foxx. General Motors CEO Mary Barra and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti will co-chair the 25-member committee. Other members include: Information Technology Industry Council President Dean Garfield; Uber regional general manager Rachel Holt; former Environmental Protection Agency head Lisa Jackson, now Apple vice president-environment, policy and social initiatives; John Krafcik, CEO of Google's Waymo; Amazon Senior Corporate Counsel-Aviation Gerry Murphy; and former US Airways pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who's now CEO of Safety Reliability Methods.

New USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter said regulatory clarity and parity are key to spurring broadband deployment that connects everyone and everything. "Translating the Internet of Things into the Infrastructure of Things will take smart policy and even smarter public-private collaboration at all levels of government," he wrote in a Morning Consult commentary Wednesday. Spalter said clarity is needed for broadband providers that invested more in infrastructure, $1.5 trillion, than any other sector over the past two decades while being subjected to "Washington whiplash" -- "heady" talk of broadband importance mixed with "increasingly regressive policy decisions" undermining investment. "We need to reverse this troubling trend by establishing policies that encourage investment in new and better broadband," he wrote. He also backed a level playing field. "Telecommunications companies alone remain shackled to stale regulatory structures written in the rotary phone era or, at best, when the honk and screech of dial-up internet was the siren call of the future. These companies should be free to compete head-on with their cable and other rivals -- free from dated, discriminatory rules," he wrote. Spalter said the country must remain committed to a "connected nation" of people and things. "A new Administration and Congress present an opportune moment to take a fresh look at how we build for the future," he wrote. "Many believe a major push on infrastructure holds out the greatest hope for meaningful, bipartisan progress. It is essential that this push include broadband."

President-elect Donald Trump publicly acknowledged he now believes the Russian government orchestrated the hacking of IT systems of the Democratic National Committee and the campaign of former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. U.S. intelligence agencies said Friday Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the hacks of Democratic and Republican campaigns (see 1701060060). Trump earlier criticized the intelligence agencies’ assessment (see 1701050062). "I think it was Russia,” Trump said during a Wednesday news conference. “I think we also get hacked by other countries and other people.” Trump suggested the focus on the hacks was disproportionate with previous cyber incidents, citing the reaction to the Office of Personnel Management data breaches revealed in 2015. “When we lost 22 million names and everything else that was hacked recently, they didn’t make a big deal out of that,” Trump said. “That was something that was extraordinary. That was probably China. We had much hacking going on.” In fact, the hack made headlines nationwide then. Trump also said the DNC’s cybersecurity practices were “totally open to be hacked." Senate Intelligence Committee Republicans this week pointed to a possible disparity between the relative vulnerability of DNC and Republican National Committee servers to cyberattacks. Senate Intelligence Democrats disputed those assertions (see 1701100076). Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson said during his confirmation hearing Wednesday he would need to examine existing and proposed additional sanctions against Russia aimed at responding to the hacks before deciding how to act. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., criticized Tillerson’s answer, saying on the Senate floor that to “duck the question and refuse to commit to continuing these sanctions is tantamount to sweeping international laws under the rug.” Secretary of Homeland Security nominee John Kelly said during his confirmation hearing Tuesday (see 1701100081) he accepted the intelligence agencies’ report on the Russia hacks “with high confidence.” Kelly told the Senate Homeland Security Committee he's still reviewing a Department of Homeland Security-backed proposal to reorganize the department’s National Protection and Programs Directorate as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Agency. Kelly said he backs “evolving” DHS’ authorities to allow a faster response to cyberthreats.

FCC staff released a "digital inclusion plan" to follow up on its Lifeline overhaul and other changes to USF telecom subsidy programs. The Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau offered "strategies and recommendations" to ensure "that the reforms of the last several years -- the establishment of the Connect America Fund, rate-of-return reform, E-rate modernization, and this year’s Lifeline modernization -- are fully realized," said the plan it issued Wednesday. The bureau said the FCC could support "Lifeline aggregation projects," take steps to make the purchase of ISP services "simpler and more transparent," consider using the educational broadband service to provide service to underserved areas, and seek to identify legislation that might promote digital inclusion opportunities. "This plan marks another step in the Commission’s efforts to better understand non-price barriers to digital inclusion and to facilitate existing and forthcoming efforts addressing them," the plan said. It "seeks to promote and highlight digital inclusion initiatives generally and those that leverage the modernized Lifeline program to bring broadband access to more Americans." The plan also "explores how the Bureau can engage consumer groups, community groups, philanthropic organizations, local governments, and corporations to increase broadband adoption and digital literacy among those who remain offline."

Apple advised the FCC against adopting a requirement that all service providers implement a standardized opt-out menu for wireless emergency alerts, in replies to the FCC in docket 15-91. Commissioners approved revised rules for alerts in September, over a partial dissent by Commissioner Mike O’Rielly, and sought comment on additional rule changes (see 1609290060). Instead of mandating what the opt-out menu will look like, the FCC should “allow the best consumer experience based on different companies’ hardware, operating systems, and user interfaces,” Apple said. The maker of the iPhone also said the FCC shouldn’t rely solely on third-party applications to implement additional alerting functionality. The National Weather Service said geotargeting of alerts isn’t accurate enough and must be improved. “The NWS supports the public safety agencies who overwhelmingly agree on the need for device-assisted geo-targeting that matches the geocode, circle, or polygon defined by the alert,” the agency replied. The NWS also reminded the FCC it repeatedly has urged a requirement that carriers include an interactive map showing the recipient’s location relative to the alert originator’s defined threat area. A coalition of groups representing the deaf and hard of hearing said alerts should be made available in American Sign Language (ASL). “For many individuals who are deaf, hard of hearing, deafblind, and deaf with mobility issues, there simply is no adequate substitute for ASL,” the coalition said. “Contrary to popular public perception, ASL is not derived from English, nor any spoken language. Instead, it is an independent linguistic system with morphological and grammatical complexity comparable to or exceeding that of spoken languages.” Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, the National Association of the Deaf, Deaf and Hard of Hearing Consumer Advocacy Network and Association of Late-Deafened Adults were among those who signed the comments. Wireless carriers urged the FCC to proceed with caution. The “proposed improvements” are “premature in many instances and unworkable in others,” AT&T wrote. “Imposing upon the voluntary WEA participants a set of requirements that they cannot satisfy can only cause the Participating Cellular Mobile Service Providers to reexamine the nature of their commitment to the system.”

An expected Republican rollback of telecom regulation and further industry consolidation are among factors Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts see influencing the communications sector in 2017. The rollback of the FCC net neutrality and broadband reclassification order "would be positive for all telecom and cable fixed and wireless broadband providers including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Charter, Sprint, T-Mobile, CenturyLink, Frontier, Windstream and Cincinnati Bell," they wrote investors Tuesday. But they said the biggest factor affecting industry valuations was "the rate at which the market believes video is migrating to broadband (OTT) and specifically to mobile broadband." Another significant factor is "the interplay of fiscal forces on interest rates, taxes and the dollar," they said, suggesting AT&T "is poised to be among the biggest beneficiaries of corporate tax reform." The analysts said Commissioner Ajit Pai is likely to become acting chairman and "at a minimum refuse to enforce rules he opposes and possibly go further and officially forbear from all aspects of Title 2 price and other regulation of broadband." Some sort of bipartisan compromise could be attempted to codify net neutrality principles, "but to what degree they ban services like 'paid prioritization,' 'zero rating' and other related services remains a very open question with positive optionality for carriers," they wrote. In the incentive auction, the analysts said the most they expect industry to bid collectively is $20 billion, with cable, and particularly Comcast, the biggest swing factor. They believe AT&T buying Time Warner will likely win approval. But "the market is vastly over-reacting" to the prospect of a Sprint/T-Mobile materializing, though odds of regulatory approval under the Republicans would be better than they were under the Democrats, they wrote: And 5G fixed wireless broadband is coming, with Verizon having the most aggressive deployment schedule.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology's long-anticipated draft "Version 1.1" (v1.1) update to the Cybersecurity Framework, released at our deadline Tuesday, includes a new section on developing effective cybersecurity metrics. NIST has been considering potential updates to its existing 2014 framework in response to comments last year from stakeholders who encouraged the agency not to pursue a major revamp of the document (see 1602240065). NIST's framework “can be used as the basis for comprehensive measurement” of the efficacy of cyber risk management practices, the draft said. The framework's implementation tiers and categories are themselves metrics, NIST said. Any metrics on cyber risk management “should be designed with business requirements and operating expense in mind,” the agency said. “The expense of a measurement system may increase as the accuracy of measurement increases. To mitigate undue cost to the organization, the accuracy and expense of a system need only match the required measurement accuracy of the corresponding business objective.” NIST included the metrics section in the draft “to get the conversation started,” said Framework Program Manager Matthew Barrett in a news release. “Measurements will be critical to ensure that cybersecurity receives proper consideration in a larger enterprise risk management discussion.” V 1.1 also includes additional information on managing cyber supply chain risks and clarifications of framework terms. NIST said it's collecting stakeholder feedback on the v1.1 draft through April 10.