Law firms Arnold & Porter and Kaye Scholer will combine to become Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer beginning Jan. 1, Arnold & Porter said in a statement on its website Thursday. The combined firm will have around 1,000 lawyers working at nine domestic and four international offices, it said. The new firm will have close to 400 lawyers in Washington, D.C., A&P said. “Arnold & Porter's focus aligns with Kaye Scholer's critical strengths in bankruptcy, corporate, finance, intellectual property, litigation, real estate, and tax,” the release said. Current Arnold & Porter Chairman Richard Alexander will chair the combined firm.

The transition team for president-elect Donald Trump has staffers tracking different government agencies, according to a chart circulating among industry officials. Jeffrey Eisenach, a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the staffer listed as tracking the FCC, as expected (see 1611090034 and 1611090038). Eisenach defended Trump’s telecom stances on C-SPAN’s The Communicators this month (see 1611040057). Bill Walton and David Malpass are the transition staffers listed as overseeing the transition’s advisers on economic issues, including Eisenach and Ray Washburne, a Texas investor who’s tracking the Commerce Department. Washburne has been vice chairman of The Trump Victory Committee. Michael Torrey is the transition staffer eyeing the Agriculture Department, which includes the Rural Utilities Service, and Kevin O’Connor is tracking the Justice Department. The Trump transition didn't confirm the authenticity of the circulating chart. “My No. 1 priority in the coming two months is to try to facilitate a transition that ensures our president-elect is successful,” President Barack Obama said Thursday after meeting with Trump. Trump has created a website and Twitter account for his transition effort. “We’ve got a lot of really great priorities,” Trump told reporters Thursday at the Capitol, expressing interest in “big-league jobs.” Great speculation has surrounded Trump’s leading advisers and surrogates and what positions they could receive in the incoming administration. “I’d love to be the person that comes up with a solution to cybersecurity,” Trump backer Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City, told Fox News Thursday, declining to comment specifically on a possible administration role as attorney general or Homeland Security chief. “Now, I’d like to invent the real overall holistic solution to cybersecurity.” Giuliani, who chairs the cybersecurity practice at Greenberg Traurig, is listed as taking a leave of absence currently.

The FCC again is looking at possible additional uses for the 4.9 GHz band, which is set aside for public safety, the commission tells us. An NPRM began circulating Thursday regarding use of the band. The agency didn't elaborate. The FCC issued an NPRM on 4.9 GHz use in 2012 (see 1211020061) and a public notice in 2013 (see 1311010052).

The FCC Task Force on Optimal Public Safety Answering Point Architecture (TFOPA) will meet Dec. 2, the agency said Wednesday. It starts at 1 p.m. EST in the Commission Meeting Room at FCC headquarters. The gathering is to be the last under TFOPA’s current charter. TFOPA is to take up reports from its three working groups on optimal 911 service architecture, cybersecurity and resource allocation, a notice in the Federal Register said.

While required to build fiber to 12.5 million homes by 2019 as one of the conditions of its purchase of DirecTV, that fiber buildout size could be a floor rather than a ceiling, AT&T Chief Financial Officer John Stephens said Wednesday during the Wells Fargo investor conference. "We would be willing to do more." Stephens also said DirecTV integration is ahead of schedule regarding cost management. "We kept [revenue generation] expectations tempered," he said. "We thought it would take a year to get things going, and it has." AT&T revenue expectations also have been hampered by a tepid U.S. economy, he said. While the carrier has announced a $35 price point for its upcoming DirecTV Now streaming service (see 1610250053), the company plans to subsequently add features and content that will result in other price points, he said. Stephens also said one aim of DirecTV Now is as an entry point to the market of 20 million or so U.S. households without pay TV, letting AT&T then try to bundle broadband or other services with it.

CenturyLink and Frontier Communications said a draft FCC business data service order would "unduly affect mid-size ILECs ... in ways that would be deeply harmful" to investment in broadband connections and jobs. The commission must "carefully consider the current state of market competition in how it implements any reform to existing grants of Phase II pricing flexibility, noting the particularly competitive nature of the transport market," said the two telcos in a filing posted Wednesday in docket 16-143 on a meeting with an aide to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. In a meeting with the same aide, BT Americas asked the FCC to strengthen enforcement of packetized BDS rates offering data speeds of 50 Mbps or less, it wrote. "The Commission should require carriers filing price caps for TDM services to also file proof with the Commission that the weighted average of their posted Ethernet service rates 50 Mbps and under -- each carrier’s Actual Price Index (API) -- is below a Price Guideline Index (PGI) set by the Commission." Although the mechanism wouldn't constitute price-cap regulation and carriers wouldn't file tariffs for those services, BT said, "in a complaint proceeding, if a complainant could show that the API exceeded the PGI for the Ethernet services at issue, then there would be a presumption that these Ethernet prices charged by the seller were unjust and unreasonable." An Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users Committee filing said the FCC "must treat low-speed Ethernet services" (under 100 Mbps) "no differently than TDM-based DS1 and DS3 services," which the draft proposed to subject to price-cap regulation and cuts. In a filing on meetings with aides to Commissioners Mike O'Rielly, Mignon Clyburn and Ajit Pai, Consolidated Communications said that proposed BDS rate cuts should be prorated for ILECs that have been price-cap regulated for only a few years under an FCC order adopting an industry CALLS (Coalition for Affordable Local and Long Distance Services) access-charge proposal. Commissioners tentatively plan to vote on a BDS item Nov. 17 (see 1610270054).

Comcast, Charter Communications, Cox Communications, Mediacom and many smaller cable companies and others challenged areas where CenturyLink plans to offer broadband using incremental Connect America Fund Phase 1, Round 2 subsidy support, according to filings in FCC docket 10-90. Competitors had until Monday to tell CenturyLink they provided unsubsidized service in the 9,703 census blocks where the telco plans to offer the subsidy-supported broadband (see 1609230056). The phone-service provider didn't comment Tuesday.

The FTC will explore in a Dec. 6 event how changing consumer demographics, including how advertising and marketing are transforming to reach diverse groups, are influencing the commission's activities, said the agency in a Tuesday news release. The agency, which will convene consumer groups, demographers, law enforcement personnel, marketers and researchers, also will explore how fraud is changing and what regulators can do to fight it. It said studying such issues will help the FTC "continue to strategize, prioritize, and prepare for the years ahead." The 9 a.m. event, which will be webcast, will be held at 400 7th St. SW.

Odds of AT&T's $108.7 billion buy of Time Warner getting regulatory OK are about even, wrote a stock analyst, based on conversations with about 20 experts, including former FCC chairmen, ex-commissioners and congressional telecom staffers. Though the analyst, MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett, said the approval faces a 50-50 probability, "many of them felt it is nearly impossible to assign any odds at this stage," he wrote Monday of his contacts. "At the time of this writing, Time Warner shares trade at a yawning 24% discount to AT&T’s offer price of $107.50." Odds would be lower than even for approval if the FCC reviews the deal, higher if the commission doesn't, Moffett emailed us Tuesday of the consensus of his interviews. A reason "this transaction is so hard to forecast is that we don’t even know at this point who will conduct the review," Moffett noted of whether the FCC will review the deal or just DOJ. "On one point, there was clear consensus. This process will take a long time. The consensus was to look for an early 2018 decision, with the full process likely taking eighteen months. The key issue is the relatively cumbersome process of personnel changeovers that are coming at the FCC and DOJ" with the presidential elections. The telco looks "forward to discussing the many benefits of this transaction with regulators and legislators," said a past statement (see 1610260070) from General Counsel David McAtee that a company spokesman pointed us to Tuesday. "In the modern history of the media and the Internet, the U.S. government has always approved vertical mergers like ours, because they benefit consumers, strengthen competition, and, in our case, encourage innovation and investment.” Zero rating and programming access likely will be a key focus of government review of the combination, experts have told us (see 1611020034).

Hogan Lovells sought to break down the details of the telecom plans for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump as part of the firm’s 2016 election report. “Although Trump might agree with Clinton that more spectrum should be made available for commercial use, he has generally eschewed the type of government spending proposed by Clinton as wasteful, and has instead argued that a vigorous new round of tax cuts and regulatory relief will better spur growth in the sector,” the firm said. “These views are generally shared by his base.” A Clinton administration “would likely appoint an FCC chair and commissioners who support the major consumer protection initiatives of current FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, including robust net neutrality, cable set-top box, and Internet privacy rules” and “also likely appoint people who support Wheeler’s efforts to reduce the cost of business data services (previously called 'special access') provided by incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) and speed-up the local zoning and siting processes for small cell wireless networks.” A Trump agenda would deviate from Wheeler’s, the firm predicted, also pointing to Trump’s objections to AT&T buying Time Warner (see 1611080023). “Trump’s appointees would likely be more focused than Clinton’s appointees on reducing overall government regulation ... of the communications industry,” it said.