FCC involvement in writing “the substantive terms of any license” under the set-top box proposal would exceed its authority, NAB CEO Gordon Smith said in a call Friday with Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. The licensing plan would “fatally undermine the Commission’s stated goal of protecting content and respecting copyright and contracts,” NAB said. Public Knowledge disagreed, in a letter citing legal precedent for the FCC's proposed licensing body. The agency has the authority to “counter factors it believes may 'impede' competition, and as an expert agency, its decision-making is entitled to deference,” Public Knowledge said. “The case that some oversight is necessary to ensure that [multichannel video programming distributors]/device agreements do not undermine competition does not seem particularly difficult to make,” Public Knowledge said. “There is no support for claims that the FCC’s authority somehow does not apply to the apps-based proposal -- which is, after all, based on proposals put forward by the MVPD and programming industry themselves.” The FCC set-top plan also was endorsed in a letter from numerous rural advocacy organizations, including the National Digital Inclusion Alliance and Access Humboldt. “We urge you and your fellow Commissioners to stay strong and to side instead with consumers -- especially rural consumers -- who pay Big Cable and Big Content hundreds of dollars extra every year because of this monopoly they want to protect,” the rural groups said. The FCC should make clear in its final set-top order that “all components of the pay-TV ecosystem, including the pay-TV apps and the devices on which they are viewed, must be directly and unquestionably subject to the Commission’s accessibility rules,” said Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and others in a meeting with aides to Chairmen Tom Wheeler Monday, said an ex parte filing. The apps and third-party devices will all be subject to the 21st Century Video Accessibility Act, the filing said. “Ensuring that all apps and devices are directly subject to the Commission’s accessibility rules, regardless of whether apps are preinstalled or downloaded later, is essential to ensuring certainty and consistency in application and enforcement of the rules.” The FCC didn't provide enough notice for a final set-top rule to apply to direct broadcast satellite, Dish Network and EchoStar said in a joint filing on meetings last week with aides to Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Ajit Pai and Media Bureau staff. DBS providers would require a “gateway” device to comply with the proposed set-top rules, but the NPRM “did not seek comment on the issues related to such a device, much less propose actual rules to govern its design and operation,” the companies said. Rosenworcel is seen as a holdout on FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's set-top box order (see 1609150045).

Seven state attorneys general defended an FCC inmate calling service order limiting ICS rates and fees, which is being challenged in court by industry parties and other state interests. AGs from Minnesota, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Washington state and Washington, D.C., said almost all state prison inmates are eventually released, but in prison they face "prohibitively high charges" for phone calls that far exceed rates outside the correctional system. The AGs support the 2015 order "because providing telephone service to prison inmates at a reasonable cost is feasible, and it fosters public safety, successful rehabilitation, reduction in recidivism, and improved outcomes for offenders' children and families," said their amicus brief (in Pacer) Monday to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (Global Tel*Link v. FCC, No. 15-1461). ICS providers, various other states and sheriffs filed their initial arguments in June (see 1606070030). The FCC and DOJ responded last week, noting the commission updated its rate caps to account for correctional facility costs (see 1609140033).

FCC staff set a pleading cycle on requests for off-campus E-rate USF support to help students get internet access at home without creating cost-allocation complications for schools. Initial comments are due Nov. 3, replies Dec. 5, said a Wireline Bureau public notice Monday in docket 13-184. One petition filed June 7 by Microsoft, Mid-Atlantic Broadband Communities Corp. and others seeks to use TV white space technology in Charlotte and Halifax counties, Virginia. The other petition filed May 16 by the Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law & Policy Clinic on behalf of the Boulder Valley School District in Colorado seeks to allow nearby housing authorities to connect to the school system's self-provisioned fiber network. "The petitions request that the Commission allow E-rate subsidized broadband networks to be accessed by students at home for educational purposes, without an obligation on the E-rate applicant to cost allocate the portion of the traffic attributable to off-campus use;" said the PN. Separately, Funds for Learning met with bureau staffers to discuss analysis of funding year 2016 E-rate funding data and responses to a nationwide survey of E-rate applicants. More than 118,000 school and library sites benefited from the E-rate program affecting over 50 million K-12 students and millions of library patrons, said a filing. It said the number of gigabit or faster connections more than doubled in the past year; half of applicants who considered a self-provisioned network believe it lowered their per-megabit pricing; 22 percent expect their broadband internet connection speeds to at least double in the next three years, while just 10 percent expect their speeds to be unchanged; there's broad support for restoring E-rate discounts for phone service; and the vast majority found Universal Service Administrative Co.'s new online E-rate portal "made the application process significantly more difficult and time-consuming."

AT&T called Incompas/Verizon business data service regulatory proposals nothing like the compromise the two parties suggest it is. Verizon sold so many wireline systems, it "is almost certainly a net purchaser of BDS whose interests are more aligned" with Incompas than with other ILECs, said an AT&T filing posted Monday in docket 16-143, calling their joint recommendations "cynical." As Incompas and Verizon reveal details of their proposals, it's becoming clear their proposals are "structured as a massively one-sided giveaway to Verizon at the expense of consumers, competition and virtually all other BDS competitors," AT&T wrote. It said Verizon had some of the highest BDS rates in the industry where it's the incumbent, "significantly higher than AT&T's, for example." But Incompas is willing to protect Verizon's high in-region rates to win the telco's support for "radical and debilitating rate reductions on all other ILECs and Ethernet providers outside of Verizon's territory," AT&T said. "That may be a win-win for Verizon and INCOMPAS, but it would be hard to design a proposal more inimical to the public interest." AT&T said "Verizon would be rewarded for having DS1 rates that far exceed those of AT&T, because those high DS1 rates translate directly into higher benchmark Ethernet rates for Verizon." Incompas and Verizon didn't comment to us. In a Monday filing, Verizon said cable provides BDS offerings the same way others do, via common carriage. Verizon also asked the FCC to allow existing BDS contracts to run their course rather than void them through "fresh look" requirements, in the filing on a call with Wireline Bureau Chief Matt DelNero. In a blog post, USTelecom said Friday the FCC should stop barring incumbents from discounting BDS prices in about one-third of the country. "Prices could be lower in those areas if the FCC simply granted more flexibility to incumbent providers to lower their prices in all areas of the country," the ILEC group said. A Macquarie Securities note to investors Monday said the impact of new FCC BDS regulation "could be greater" for Frontier Communications and CenturyLink.

The FCC invited input on a Comcast bid for a recordkeeping and reporting waiver under a 2013 rural call completion order, with comments due Sept. 26, replies Oct. 5. Comcast requested a partial waiver of its "obligation to report, record, and retain the call completion information" for certain rural and non-rural enterprise customers for the period through June, said a Wireline Bureau public notice in docket 13-39 listed in Friday's Daily Digest. Comcast has been migrating its business VoIP service to a new IP multimedia system switching platform, but some enterprise customers are still served by legacy soft switches, and company engineers inadvertently didn't capture call detail record data for certain customers due to the network complexity, said the company's Sept. 9 petition. Comcast said its Form 480 reports provide an accurate measure of its rural and nonrual call competition performance because the only likely impact of the omitted data was that the reports reflected lower call volumes. Including omitted pre-July data it recovered from one affected system didn't materially change Comcast's overall call performance metrics, and all omitted data from July have now been recovered and further confirm the performance, it said.

The videogame industry is taking its opposition to Globalstar's broadband terrestrial low-power service plans to the FCC's eighth floor. An ex parte filing Friday in docket 13-213 recapped a meeting involving Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo of America and Entertainment Software Association representatives and Commissioner Mike O'Rielly and a separate meeting with FCC staff including Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Julius Knapp, Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel aide Johanna Thomas, and Chairman Tom Wheeler aide Edward Smith. The video game interests discussed Microsoft tests showing TLPS interference to its Xbox wireless controllers (see 1609140038) and repeated concern about TLPS interference to other consumer uses in the 2.4 GHz band such as Bluetooth hearing aids. They said pushes to allow opportunistic use of Wi-Fi channel 14 wouldn't address the main issue of TLPS impact on 2.4 GHz users. Globalstar didn't comment. In a separate ex parte filing Friday, it said Vice President-Business Operations, Finance and Strategy Tim Taylor discussed its TLPS plans with O'Rielly aide Erin McGrath and again urged the agency to move on authorizing TLPS.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai’s calls for gigabit broadband (see 1609130061) ignore a central reality -- people don’t need internet speeds that fast, said Bronwyn Howell of the American Enterprise Institute. Howell, a faculty member at the School of Management, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, said that point is supported by experience there. The New Zealand government ran a contest and picked the city of Dunedin to get gigabit broadband, Howell said in a blog post. But that development has generated little local interest or excitement. “The reason is, as articulated by the one local journalist (an experienced technology reporter) sufficiently concerned by the move to report on it, is that no one in the residential market actually needs a gigabyte connection -- not even those with four kids all wanting to stream separate Netflix videos constantly while mom keeps the VPN to her office open, dad is HD videoconferencing on Google Hangouts, and ‘the cat has just stepped on an iPhone, triggering an iOS download,’” Howell wrote. “Most businesses don’t need one either -- not even the journalist’s information-intensive newspaper: ‘With around 30 staff in our Auckland office, and some stonking [extremely] huge files to transfer to our printer, we get along just fine with a 100 Mbps fiber.’” Pai Chief of Staff Matthew Berry tweeted a response to Howell: "Companies critical to economic development do! Heard from start-up in [Cincinnati] on importance to it of Cincinnati Bell offering." Others lauded Pai's plan (see 1609140036).

The public interest groups pushing back against an FCC proposal to eliminate a requirement that broadcasters keep a hard copy correspondence file accessible to the public previously advocated in 2012 for requiring stations to put their other files online, NAB said in a letter posted in docket 16-161 Thursday. This violates the “chutzpah doctrine,” NAB said. “As Free Press stated so succinctly in 2012, ‘Public information should be public. In the 21st Century that means online -- not buried in broadcast station filing cabinets.’” The opposition filings to the current FCC proposal have argued that doing away with the correspondence file will disadvantage low-income consumers and people of color, who are less likely to have internet access (see 1608230061). “If Common Cause, Free Press and the others opposing elimination of correspondence files had concerns about access for the poor and people of color, they should have raised that argument years ago when they successfully, and without any self-doubt, pushed for an online public file,” NAB said. Broadcasters are "the ones trying to have things both ways" by claiming simultaneously that keeping correspondence file is a burden and that no one shows up to look at them, Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood told us.

A federal appellate court sided with Free Conferencing on two claims and Qwest on one in a case stemming from traffic-stimulation allegations. A panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on a Qwest appeal of a ruling of U.S. District Court in Sioux Falls, South Dakota that found the CenturyLink long-distance unit didn't prove its claims against Free Conferencing. "We affirm the district court on the claims for intentional interference with a business relationship and unfair competition. We reverse and remand on the claim for unjust enrichment," said the controlling opinion of Judge Myron Bright released Thursday in Qwest v. Free Conferencing, No. 15-2406. Free Conferencing entered into a contract over a decade ago to have Sancom, an LEC, host FC's free conference call bridges and split revenue generated by long-distance traffic and associated terminating access charges collected by Sancom from interexchange carriers (IXCs), wrote Bright, who explained background in the case. FC knew the contract would take advantage of the tariff, but the district court said FC's president was credible in arguing he didn't know the arrangement was unlawful. The arrangement caused a spike in traffic and Qwest eventually stopped paying Sancom access charges, leading Sancom to sue Qwest in 2007, followed by Qwest suits against both Sancom and Free Conferencing. Under prodding from Qwest, the FCC issued a series of decisions and findings on traffic-stimulation disputes, including one saying Sancom couldn't bill Qwest under its tariff for calls terminating at FC's bridge. Qwest and Sancom settled for an undisclosed amount, but Qwest and FC went to trial in 2014. The district court rejected all Qwest claims and the IXC appealed on three. While upholding that decision on two claims, the 8th Circuit panel sided with Qwest in ruling that the lower court failed to consider important factors undergirding its unjust enrichment claim. Bright's ruling vacated the lower court decision on that claim and remanded it for reconsideration. In conflicting dissents, Judge Bobby Shepherd said he would have denied Qwest's unjust enrichment claim, but Judge Diana Murphy said Qwest was "entitled to recover from Free Conferencing on its claims for tortious interference and unjust enrichment" after she concluded FC and Sancom deliberately avoided compliance with the law. CenturyLink emailed that it was pleased the court found in its favor on one count and said it's considering its legal options. Free Conferencing didn't comment.

NTIA's Digital Economy Board of Advisors, formed last year to make recommendations about the digital economy and internet policy to the Commerce secretary, plans a public meeting Sept. 30 at Mozilla headquarters in Mountain View, California, said an agency notice in Wednesday's Federal Register. It's the second full meeting for the 17-member board, which initially met in May (see 1605160058) to determine priorities. Markle Foundation CEO Zoë Baird and Mozilla Foundation Executive Chairwoman Mitchell Baker co-chair the NTIA board. The meeting, which will be webcast, will have two sessions, from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. EDT and 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. EDT.