The FCC OK'd Pandora's request for a declaratory ruling, letting it be up to 49.99 percent foreign owned. The company had also sought to buy KXMZ(FM), Box Elder, South Dakota, from Connoisseur Media, and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) sought to block that deal and opposed Pandora's petition. "We take no action at this time on the Assignment Application and related pleadings," said an order Monday approved by commissioners, with Commissioner Ajit Pai concurring. He called parts of the process "absurd," and noted that Pandora's request to buy KXMZ has been pending for two years. Pandora's "difficulties" to "prove that foreign entities do not beneficially own or vote more than 25 percent of its shares" are "far from unique," wrote Commissioner Mike O'Rielly. Connoisseur and Pandora lobbied the FCC last week to OK the deal (see 1505040031). Buying KXMZ would qualify Pandora for the same Radio Music License Committee license "under the same terms as our competitors," noted Dave Grimaldi, the company's director of public affairs. "This move makes sense to us beyond the licensing parity alone. Pandora excels in personalizing music discovery, and terrestrial radio is experienced in integrating with a local community." ASCAP had no immediate comment.

Wireless broadband in the U.S. is the best in the world, but the nation still lags in offering wired connections at blazing speeds, Gigi Sohn, counsel to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, said in a speech Monday to the “Moving Forward Toward a Gigabit State” conference in New Haven, Connecticut. International rankings “consistently score the U.S. outside the top 10 in broadband speeds” and “Americans aren’t content with being outside the top 10 in anything that matters,” she said in prepared remarks posted by the FCC. According to Akamai, the average fixed broadband connection in America is about 12 Mbps, Sohn said. “That’s fine if you live alone, and all you’re doing online is minimal browsing each night while streaming a movie on Netflix. But broadband can enable so much more.” The FCC wants to see speeds of 50 Mbps, then 100 Mbps and “and eventually even 1 Gigabit per second,” she said. “When you achieve those speeds … you remove bandwidth as a constraint on innovation.” About 10 million Americans can’t get broadband at any speed, Sohn said. “The costs of digital exclusion are staggering,” she said. “I hear anecdotal evidence all the time about how young people in towns that are offline feel compelled to move elsewhere for fear that there’s no future for them in a town without broadband.” Sohn said projects like Connecticut’s CT Gig Project are critical, especially in areas where commercial operators aren’t stepping up. “When commercial providers don’t step up to serve a community’s needs, we should embrace the great American tradition of citizens stepping up to take action collectively,” she said. “Across America, communities have concluded that existing private sector broadband offerings are not meeting their needs and the only solution is to become directly involved in broadband deployment.”

The six U.S. video relay service providers jointly asked the FCC to halt a proposed cut in VRS rates. The six said the FCC should take steps “to preserve competition and ensure the existence of the three newest and smallest VRS providers until the Commission establishes sustainable rate rules in its ongoing ratemaking proceeding.” ASL Services, CAAG, Convo, CSDVRS, Purple and Sorenson signed the filing, posted Friday in docket 03-123. VRS providers face huge financial pressures, they said. “As explained in the Joint Proposal and follow-up responses to the staff’s questions, providers have endured dramatic rate cuts in 2010 followed by four successive cuts in the last two years. Immediate rate stability is crucial in order to prevent further erosion of functional equivalence, to preserve providers’ ability to innovate, and to preserve reasonable working conditions and compensation for VRS interpreters.” The VRS providers proposed changes in the program aimed at stabilizing rates in March. The steps they proposed then were: requiring providers “to meet a faster service-level requirement so that 80 percent of calls must be answered within 45 seconds”; maintaining compensation rates at the levels in effect during the first half of 2015; doing a trial during which providers could offer “skills-based routing in order to collect data about the cost and feasibility of offering that service”; and encouraging providers to offer deaf interpreters. They expressed a willingness to “work with the Commission’s Disability Advisory Committee to resolve any interoperability issues remaining after the providers’ recent joint efforts to ensure complete interoperability.” Rate stability is a prerequisite to other reforms proposed in the March filing, the VRS providers said last week, “including the more stringent speed-of-answer requirement, the trial of skills-based routing, and increased use of deaf interpreters.”

If the merger of AT&T and DirecTV is approved it would mean expanded fiber to at least 2 million more people through AT&T's Fiber to the Premises GigaPower service, the companies said during a meeting with the FCC Wednesday, according to an ex parte filing Thursday in docket 14-90. The transaction also would let AT&T deploy new, fixed wireless local loop broadband services to about 13 million rural customer locations, the company said. During the meeting, the companies asked the commission to approve the transaction, the filing said. Representing AT&T at the meeting were Wayne Watts, senior executive vice president; James Cicconi, senior executive vice president-external legislative affairs; David McAtee, senior associate general counsel; and Robert Quinn, senior vice president-federal regulatory and chief privacy officer. Representing DirecTV at the meeting were Larry Hunter, executive vice president; Andrew Reinsdorf, senior vice president-government affairs; and William Ryan, vice president. Wednesday, the Alliance for Community Media filed an ex parte notice with the FCC on the transaction that said the merger would result in reduced competition and possible competition in the multichannel video distribution market throughout AT&T's landline footprint. Absent the merger, AT&T would be forced to invest more in building out its U-verse network, which would create more competition in the market, ACM said. The organization also said the claimed public benefits of the transaction are illusory -- neither AT&T nor DirecTV has explained how the merger is essential to achieving those benefits. The transaction also would disserve the public interest by harming public, educational and governmental channels and localism, ACM said.

FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly raised concerns about the FCC’s advisory committees, the role they play and the extent to which they are dominated by the FCC chairman. The Friday blog post is one of several O’Rielly has released suggesting process reform. One big problem is that the chairman’s office has “absolute and complete power over every aspect of their existence,” O'Rielly said. Individual commissioners are often invited to say a few words, but play no role otherwise, he said. “The membership, selection of the committee chairs, timing of any reports and/or recommendations, and all other aspects of their operations are determined solely by the [FCC] Chairman," he said. "If all of the decision-making is in the hands of the [FCC] Chairman, how can a committee’s outcomes ever be considered bipartisan, or better-yet, nonpartisan and independent?” O’Rielly asked whether participation in the committees is really voluntary. “Of course, members must go through the application process, but failure to be involved means that the committee may proceed down a path that is against a party’s interest,” he said. He also questioned how the committees are managed and the “heavy hand” sometimes used by FCC staff. “Since each advisory committee already has a Commission staff designee, why would bureau chiefs or other Commission staff need to be involved at all?” he asked. “It seems inappropriate and potentially caustic to the proper functioning of the committee, and the ultimate realization of solid recommendations, if non-designated staff question the committee’s decisions, influence the agenda, pose questions of members, judge the possible recommendations, or potentially declare specific outcomes.”

The FCC asked two federal appeals courts Thursday to transfer legal challenges to the agency’s net neutrality rules to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The appeals were filed by Texas wireless ISP Alamo Broadband in the 5th Circuit and Pennsylvania CLEC Full Service Network in the 3rd Circuit. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation already selected the D.C. Circuit as the court to hear the initial two appeals of the order, the FCC noted. The agency told the courts that because petitioners seek review of the same FCC order that is being challenged in the cases before the D.C. Circuit, and because the Judicial Panel designated the D.C. Circuit as the court where the agency record is to be filed, they are “statutorily required” to move the cases.

The FCC will consider an order and Further NPRM at its May 21 meeting that would extend the iCanConnect-National Deaf-Blind Equipment Distribution Program and propose to make it permanent, said a notice released by the agency Thursday. The program provides up to $10 million annually from the Interstate Telecommunications Relay Service Fund to support programs that distribute communications equipment to low-income people who are deaf-blind. The program is to expire in June unless extended, an FCC spokesman said Thursday. The order extends the program for an additional year, or until it's made permanent. It provides braille devices, computers, mobile devices, phones and signalers, according to a fact sheet on the program. ICanConnect grew out of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act. Also on the agenda is a report and order and further NPRM that would extend accessibility rules for emergency alerts to “second screens,” including tablets, smartphones and laptops. Under the order, tonal emergency alerts for the blind sent out by broadcasters would be available for those watching TV on a second screen so they can hear what sighted people can see, a spokesman said. The NPRM looks at implementation issues including how remote controls can allow people to switch easily between screens.

NTIA and the Rural Utilities Service sought comment by June 10 on the Broadband Opportunity Council's objectives, said a notice in Monday's Federal Register. It said the council's objectives are to engage with industry and other stakeholders to understand ways the government can better support the needs of communities seeking to expand broadband access and adoption; identify regulatory barriers that unduly impede broadband deployment, adoption or competition; survey and report back on existing programs that support or could be modified to support broadband competition, deployment or adoption; and take all necessary actions to remove these barriers and realign existing programs to increase broadband competition, deployment and adoption.

Clarification: The Fiber to the Home Council hasn't take a position for or against FCC net neutrality rules, per se, though the group has maintained they should not apply to FTTH providers (see 1504280040).

AT&T and its former subsidiary Southern New England Telephone agreed to pay $10.9 million in penalties for allegedly overbilling the FCC’s Lifeline program, the FCC said Wednesday in a news release. “An FCC investigation showed that AT&T and its affiliates continued to provide service to landline customers in the program without recertifying the eligibility of the customers within the 35 days required by Lifeline program rules,” the agency said. The violations were uncovered two years ago. An audit found that a number of Lifeline subscribers no longer qualified for the program hadn't been de-enrolled after the annual recertification process for 2012 and 2013, the FCC said. “These subscribers were given one extra month of Lifeline support, and AT&T improperly claimed reimbursement from the government for this extra month.” AT&T said the problem was self-reported. "We discovered this issue in the course of an internal review, voluntarily reported it, and reimbursed the Universal Service Fund about a year ago. We also have implemented process enhancements so this does not happen again."