Recent FCC efforts in the name of protecting consumers and promoting competition include last year's open Internet order, 2014's update of minimum benchmark broadband speeds and adopting new rules earlier this year modernizing the Lifeline program, the agency said Wednesday, as Chairman Tom Wheeler wrote an opinion piece on the subject. Of the 14-page report, 10 pages are bullet-point synopses of various policy decisions, orders and enforcement actions in five categories. Under open networks, the FCC pointed to its work on cracking down on Wi-Fi blocking and modernization of the E-rate program. Under protecting competition, the FCC highlighted its spectrum aggregation policy revisions. Under consumer protection, the agency mentioned robocalling limits and nixing the sports blackout rule. Under strengthening emergency communications, it cited its rules promoting text-to-911 availability and updating wireless emergency alerts. For consumer empowerment, the FCC pointed to creation of its mobile broadband speed test app and Consumer Help Center. Wednesday on CNET, Wheeler wrote, "Thanks to advances in communications technology, there's never been a better -- or more complex -- time to be a US consumer. Faced with many challenges, Americans should know that the FCC works every day to protect consumers." He also talked up the broadband privacy and set-top box proceedings now before the agency, saying the privacy order on October's agenda will "give consumers the tools they need to make informed decisions about how ISPs use and share their data." A draft order circulated earlier this month, and may get a 3-2 vote (see 1610060031). He also said the set-top proposal the commissioners are considering "would end the set-top box stranglehold" by letting consumers access their pay-TV content via free apps and would give viewers "a better viewing experience thanks to integrated search and new innovation that will flow from enhanced competitive choice." The set-top item has been seen as possibly stalled, with many eyes on what Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel will do (see 1610180052).

The Disaster Information Reporting System for Hurricane Matthew is now deactivated, the FCC Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau said in a public notice Tuesday. The hurricane caused numerous telecom network outages across the Southeast coast (see 1610110038).

Correction: The FCC isn't assigning stations to a queue for tower crews. The queues were used for modeling purposes to simulate capacity constraints on equipment manufacturing/ordering for the scheduling tool (see 1610170063).

Pointing to traditional fixed satellite service (FSS) earth station licensing practices that it says leave significant amounts of spectrum unused, the Fixed Wireless Communications Coalition (FWCC) is pushing the FCC for major changes in earth station licensing. In a petition for rulemaking Monday, FWCC said it wants FSS frequency coordination rules to be more akin to those governing fixed service (FS). "The routine practice of full-band, full arc earth station coordination might have made sense fifty years ago," FWCC said, saying FSS earth station coordination should be only for the frequency, azimuth and elevation angles it intends to use; that the earth station license and construction certification specifies those combinations; and that a frequency/azimuth/elevation angle combination on a license that goes unused for more than 90 days must be reported to the FCC and deleted from the license. Its proposal would let an FSS application coordinate additional frequency/azimuth/elevation angle combos as "growth capacity" that can be renewed indefinitely and that FS applicants must try to avoid. The group proposed an exception where FSS applicants can ask for a waiver letting one coordinate a choice of frequencies/azimuths/elevation angles without any construction deadlines if the earth station will be part of a network with a need to access multiple satellites. FWCC said this petition differs from a similar attempt it made in 1999, since that request made no mention of growth capacity. FWCC declined Tuesday to name its membership. Membership includes microwave equipment makers, licensees of terrestrial fixed microwave systems, communications service providers, public utilities, public safety agencies, cable-TV providers and backhaul providers.

The battlefield for fighting state restrictions on municipal broadband has moved to state legislatures, an aide to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said Tuesday. In a speech at a Coalition for Local Internet Choice conference in Minneapolis, Wheeler counselor Gigi Sohn restated Wheeler’s promise to testify before state legislatures considering repeals of the muni broadband limits. Wheeler made the promise after the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals overturned the FCC order pre-empting Tennessee and North Carolina restrictions on expanding municipal broadband networks (see 1608100049). “The battlefield is no longer the FCC and the courts, but state legislatures,” Sohn said, according to prepared remarks. “And the battle plan is no longer to file convincing petitions and briefs. It is for advocates for local Internet choice to bring every local mayor, city council, business, school, college, library, chamber of commerce and citizen together to convince state officials that for the future of those cities and towns and by extension, the state itself, localities must have the ability to determine their own broadband futures. ... And if you’d like, Chairman Wheeler will be happy to help.” Sohn cited pole attachment regimes and specifically the make-ready process as holding up broadband deployments. “This ‘make-ready’ process is ripe for gaming by those who disfavor competition,” she said.

President Barack Obama Monday touted his efforts to connect U.S. schools to broadband. “We're bringing in high-speed internet into schools and libraries, reaching 20 million more students and helping teachers with digital learning,” Obama said at a high school in Washington, D.C. “And coding isn’t, by the way, just for boys in Silicon Valley, so we’re investing more in getting girls and young women and young people of color and low-income students into science and engineering and technology and math.” He cited the nature of the global economy and how “jobs can go wherever they want because of the internet and because of technology.” A White House fact sheet released Monday noted the ConnectED broadband initiative that Obama invoked.

Verizon General Counsel Craig Silliman indicated the 2014 data breach of Yahoo's 500 million users (see 1609220046 and 1609230026) revealed last month might imperil the acquisition of the technology company. "I think we have a reasonable basis to believe right now that the impact is material and we're looking to Yahoo to demonstrate to us the full impact," Silliman said in a statement Thursday, provided by Verizon. "If they believe that it's not, then they'll need to show us that." A Verizon spokesman said the company is about 50 percent to 60 percent complete in its investigation into that matter. In response, a Yahoo spokeswoman emailed, "we are confident in Yahoo’s value and we continue to work towards integration with Verizon." Meanwhile, 31 Republican and 17 Democratic representatives on Friday wrote to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, asking for a briefing on Yahoo's scanning its customers' emails to comply with a secret U.S. government order (see 1610050038). "There is significant confusion regarding the existence and nature of the program described by these [media] reports and legal questions implicated by the accuracy of specific details," wrote the coalition, led by Reps. Justin Amash, R-Mich., and Ted Lieu, D-Calif. In a news release, Amash said Congress has a responsibility to ensure surveillance practices comply with the Constitution and federal law.

Most FCC employees have a positive view of their workplace, but don't feel they have sufficient resources or that steps are taken to deal with poor performers, said the 2016 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) by the Office of Personnel Management. The survey, released by the commission Friday, was administered to the whole federal government from April 26 to June 14. Six-hundred forty-eight of 1,552 FCC employees surveyed participated, and most agreed or strongly agreed with statements such as “The work I do is important,” and “I like the kind of work I do.” Government-wide, 83 percent of employees said they liked the work they do, while at the FCC, 80 percent said so. Twenty-two percent of FCC employees said they agree pay raises at the commission correlate to performance, and 28 percent said they agree the FCC takes steps to deal with poor performers, but those numbers are consistent with the government-wide results, wherein 22 percent said raises are based on performance, and 29 percent said poor performers are dealt with. The survey shows FCC employees have some concerns with senior management: Forty-three percent said senior leaders “generate high levels of motivation and commitment in the workforce” and 44 percent said they were satisfied with the policies of senior leaders. Government-wide, 42 percent said they were satisfied with their leaders' policies, and 40 percent said their leaders motivated them. Seventy-seven percent of FCC employees said their supervisors were doing a good job, vs. 70 percent government-wide. Sixty-nine percent of FCC employees said the commission is accomplishing its mission successfully, while the government-wide response was 74 percent. The National Treasury Employees Union, which represented some FCC staff, and OPM didn't comment.

NTIA petitioned the FCC to reconsider or clarify parts of a July tech transition order to address special challenges facing federal government agencies as telecom customers (see 1607140066). The commission set out a reasonable approach to facilitating tech transitions while minimizing consumer harms, NTIA said, but federal users are different from other customers, given their procedures and "mission-critical" functions. NTIA said federal agencies are "particularly vulnerable to unanticipated and accelerated network changes," and while the FCC's "adequate replacement" framework helps, it doesn't fully address agency issues. For example, NTIA said carrier applications to discontinue "legacy data services" are eligible for streamlined review and automatic approval, "raising the specter of unexpected or unplanned changes in a large segment of services used by federal agencies." Even if the framework reduces concerns that service changes may hinder service, it doesn't resolve "planning, budgeting, and procurement challenges" in navigating the transition, it said. To address the challenges, an NTIA petition posted Thursday in docket 13-5 asked the FCC to: "(1) clarify whether, if at all, or under what circumstances, services such as T1 and Integrated Service Digital Network (ISDN) fall within the meaning of 'legacy voice service'; (2) reconsider its interoperability protection requirement to define a list of 'low speed modems' and create a presumption that devices that use such modems are entitled to interoperability protection; (3) prescribe limited testing requirements for small carriers; and (4) use its 'public interest' review of carriers’ section 214 discontinuance applications to promote greater information exchange and more cooperative planning between carriers and their federal customers about network transitions, to reduce the potential impact such transitions may have on critical government operations."

Emergency alert system participants reported some problems after a nationwide EAS test in September, Gregory Cooke, an associate division chief in the FCC Public Safety Bureau, told the FCC Consumer Advisory Committee Friday. The test was the second nationwide of the EAS and, according to the early analysis, it mostly went smoothly (see 1609280074). But problems were detected, Cooke said. One-third of those who provided feedback to the FCC after the test indicated there was no problem, Cooke said. Others reported receiving audio, but not a text crawl and vice versa, he said. “In some cases, participants ran the text crawl too quickly or did not supply sufficient contrast so the text crawl could be read easily," he said. “This is a problem we have been aware of for quite a while. It’s one that is not built into the architecture. This is how individual TV and radio stations set up their system.” The FCC is working on best practices for stations so they can ensure they don't run the crawl too quickly and it's presented with proper contrast, he said. “That’s going to be an ongoing issue.” Another nationwide EAS test is likely, but hasn't been scheduled, Cooke said.