Self-described "competition advocates" urged the FCC to move quickly to regulate business data services to protect consumers and competitors from the "market power" of incumbent telcos. "Reforms to the BDS regulatory regime must provide a platform for robust competition and eliminate the monopoly and oligopoly rents that plague the BDS market," said a Public Knowledge filing posted Tuesday in docket 16-143 on a meeting it and others had with an aide to Chairman Tom Wheeler and other staffers. Also participating were representatives of Common Cause and Next Century Cities, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, New America's Open Technology Institute and the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition. They said the FCC approach "must be effective, flexible, and future-proof." A proposed test to distinguish between competitive and noncompetitive markets should focus on the existence of actual competition, not potential competition, because the agency's past predictive judgments had often been inaccurate and justified unwarranted deregulation, they said, and the test should be reapplied at regular intervals based on updated data. CenturyLink, Frontier Communications and ITTA officials addressed the "procedural, legal and policy shortcomings" of several proposals in the FCC's Further NPRM on BDS. The industry parties voiced opposition to the BDS framework proposed by Incompas/Verizon, "which contrary to those parties' claims, is not at all a 'middle ground between many different perspectives,'" said an ITTA filing on their meeting with an aide to Commission Mignon Clyburn. They emphasized the inroads cable companies have made into the BDS market and said the wireless backhaul market is "competitive axiomatically" and should be treated as such. In a blog post, Free State Foundation board member and former FCC chief economist Tim Brennan disputed that the relevant geographic market for regulating BDS services was individual buildings, which he said "makes no sense." Though the FCC wasn't proposing such a definition, he said the agency could be open to the approach in the future. "The FCC may (or may not) have good reasons for finding competition inadequate in the BDS market. However, in doing so, I hope that the agency continues to show a willingness to break precedent with past views and not adopt a view of the building as the market that would likely be unsustainable in any other context," he wrote.

CBS executives listened to a discussion in conference calls last week of a revised app-based set-top approach “at the invitation of the [FCC] Chairman’s office,” said an ex parte filing. The apps involved would be designed and controlled by pay-TV carriers and “would help ensure that our valuable content and services remain inside of, and under the control of, [multichannel video programming distributors] with whom we have a direct contractual relationship for the distribution of our product,” said the CBS filing on the Wednesday and Thursday calls. The discussed proposal has technical issues in the delivery of viewer measurement data, and the system should use a license that has been drafted “exclusively” by MVPDs and programmers, the filing said. “We expressed support for the approach that provides that programming at all times remain inside of an MVPD-controlled app and that honors the sanctity of our contracts and content rights,” CBS said.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump made a rare mention of the internet, speaking Monday on foreign policy at Youngstown State University in Ohio. “We cannot allow the internet to be used as a recruiting tool and for other purposes by our enemies,” Trump said, referring to the Islamic State group. “We must shut down their access to this form of communication and we must do it immediately.” Trump cited ideas about shutting down parts of the internet during the GOP primary season. The idea demonstrates “both poor judgment and ignorance about how technology works,” several tech industry and ex-FCC officials said last month (see 1607140086). Cyberwarfare will be “essential in dismantling Islamic terrorism” and a Trump administration would “aggressively pursue” a strategy internationally of “expanded intelligence sharing and cyberwarfare to disrupt and disable [the Islamic State] propaganda and recruiting,” Trump said Monday.

Neustar plans a court challenge to a recent FCC order approving a contract that sets the terms for Telcordia to become the next local number portability administrator (see 1607210020). Neustar, the LNPA incumbent, filed a letter (in Pacer) Friday to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which is reviewing the company's previous challenge to a March 2015 order that conditionally selected Telcordia as the LNPA (Neustar v. FCC, No. 15-1080). Neustar said the FCC acknowledged in an Aug. 8 letter (in Pacer) that the July 25 order approving Telcordia's master services agreements to run the Number Portability Administration Center (NPAC) mooted the commission's jurisdictional objection to Neustar's previous challenge to the conditional order. Neustar said it didn't intend to raise any additional legal issues in its new petition for review and would move to consolidate the court proceedings on its challenges. Noting the FCC didn't ask for the court's Sept. 13 oral argument on the first challenge to be delayed, Neustar said there would be no justification for a postponement as parties could make supplemental filings to apprise the court of any relevant developments. The FCC didn't comment Monday. Neustar made another filing Monday in FCC docket 09-109 asking to include in the record 18 pages of documents released by the commission due to a Communications Daily Freedom of Information Act request (see 1607250029). "The attached documents, comprising correspondence between the Commission and Ericsson's wholly owned subsidiary, Telcordia Technologies, Inc. d/b/a iconectiv, related to the use of non-U.S. citizens in the development of the NPAC, are directly relevant" to the FCC's July 25 order, the filing said.

The forward part of the FCC incentive auction starts Tuesday and one wild card is whether Dish Network will come in in a big way, Citi Research said in a Thursday note to investors. Investors are questioning whether the auction “will be tepid or robust,” wrote Citi analyst Michael Rollins. “DISH has a bigger war chest than expected, and we now see bidding capacity up to $47.5bn,” the note said. “We estimate economic value for the spectrum at $1.99/MHz-POP and believe the auction can reach $37-48bn using 60-80 MHz sold.” Citi expects the auction to close in early 2017, the note said. Citi still likes “Buy-rated T-Mobile given its strategic optionality and bidding flexibility,” the firm said. “DISH retains valuable spectrum that we believe Verizon should pursue after the auction ends.” Dish said recently it had raised a few billion dollars and could use it for spectrum (see 1608030045).

The FCC will host the first meeting of a new Robocall Strike Force, an industry-led group formed to develop comprehensive solutions to prevent, detect and filter unwanted robocalls, the agency said in a public notice. The meeting is to start at 10 a.m. at headquarters. “Robocalls and telemarketing calls are the number one source of consumer complaints received by the FCC,” the PN said. “Following a call to action by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, industry leaders moved to form the Strike Force to expeditiously address consumer concerns with robocalls and deploy anti-robocall solutions.” Only the first 30 minutes of the session are open to the public, with Wheeler and Commissioner Mignon Clyburn scheduled to speak, the PN said. Wheeler has been outspoken in pushing industry to do more to help consumers block unwanted robocalls (see 1509160016).

A methodology to measure AT&T's performance at internet interconnection points was approved by the FCC Office of General Counsel, said an agency public notice Friday in docket 14-90, the proceeding on the telco's 2015 takeover of DirecTV. Pursuant to a condition for the deal's approval, the commission selected the Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) to create a schedule and methodology for AT&T to report on performance of traffic exchanged at internet interconnection points, the PN said. It said CAIDA worked with AT&T and the FCC "to develop an acceptable measurement methodology," which is described in a first amended report approved by the OGC, in consultation with the Wireline Bureau and the FCC's chief technologist.

The Submarine Cable Coalition asked the FCC to revisit a recent order imposing undersea cable outage reporting requirements on industry (see 1606240040). The commission's "outage" definition is "too broad" and will spark hundreds of additional reports that provide little, if any, useful information, said a petition for reconsideration filed by the coalition Friday in docket 15-206. A 30-minute standard for connectivity loss "inevitably will capture a substantial amount of outages that are normally resolved quickly (e.g., shunt faults), but now will require burdensome and costly reports," it said. Reporting also will be required where traffic is rerouted and there's no service disruption, it said. The petition said the FCC didn't do a "fulsome cost-benefit analysis" to ensure its rules are the least-burdensome needed to meet its goals, as "required by Executive Order 13563 and the Paperwork Reduction Act." It also asked the FCC to give submarine cable operators 12-15 months for implementation, rather than six months -- after Office of Management and Budget review (see 1607120084).

Warring parties might be able to compromise on special access and Ethernet regulation, an industry consultant speculated Friday. There are rumors "ILECs and CLECs are negotiating an agreement to settle the bitter dispute over the FCC’s proposed regulations for the business data services (BDS) market," said a blog post by CCMI consultant Andy Regitsky, with clients in both camps. CenturyLink suggested an industry compromise would be desirable, but said it needed broad stakeholder participation. Others didn't comment. Major ILECs and cable companies have "in public been adamantly opposed" to an Incompas/Verizon BDS proposal (see 1608050055), "but we know that there have been discussions on whether this framework could actually be the basis for an industry-wide agreement," wrote Regitsky. With special access revenue "significantly declining each year," if ILECs determine it's not "worth fighting over a rapidly diminished special access pie they could support a deal, especially if the annual forced price reduction through a productivity factor is low enough to have a de minimis impact on their overall revenues," he said. "ILECs would much rather concentrate on their Ethernet offerings where they face much more competition than for special access. If as part of the deal their cable competitors face price regulation for the first time, so much the better." It's "a lot harder to see what benefits, if any a proposed deal would have for cable companies," wrote Regitsky. CenturyLink emailed: “In years past, the industry has had some remarkable successes in working out reasonable solutions for some highly complex regulatory issues. CenturyLink has played an active role in many of those discussions. We agree with the concept of negotiating to achieve a common goal. However, in the case of special access, to be truly representative and thorough, it is best that as many stakeholders as possible participate in those discussions to achieve a balanced outcome.” NCTA agrees with Regitsky's "assessment that it makes no economic sense to regulate cable operators," said a spokesman.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton campaigned on her broadband deployment plans again Thursday, speaking on the economy in Warren, Michigan. She said she wants to work with both parties starting on Day One of her administration on advancing an infrastructure investment package, a big-ticket item she floated last year that has increasingly dominated her speeches and campaign remarks in recent weeks. “I happen to think we should be ambitious,” Clinton said. “While we’re at it, let’s connect every household in America to broadband by the year 2020. It’s astonishing to me how many places in America -- not way, way far away from cities but in cities and near cities -- that don’t have access to broadband. And that disadvantages kids who are asked to do homework using the internet. Five million of them live in households without access to the internet. You talk about an achievement gap -- it starts right there.”