Securus opposed an FCC court motion to suspend review of an inmate calling service case while the agency considers proposed rate cap increases that could affect core challenges in the litigation. Instead, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit should extend briefing deadlines by 30 days while the commission decides whether to approve an ICS draft order tentatively scheduled for an Aug. 4 vote, said a Securus filing (in Pacer) to the court (Global Tel*Link, Securus Technologies, et al., v. FCC, No. 15-1461, 15-1498 and consolidated cases). The FCC is proposing to issue its third ICS order in less than three years (see 1607140087), even though petitioners challenging the two previous orders have yet to obtain court decisions on their merits, Securus said. "At some point, this game of moving the goal posts and forcing Petitioners to start over must end and the Court must ensure that its jurisdiction to review the Commission's final orders is not frustrated," it wrote. The FCC motion (see 1607200053) said the draft order could revise ICS rate caps "that are the central focus of this litigation," Securus wrote. "This is a vast overstatement. In fact, the new calling rate caps adopted in the Second Report and Order are only one of several key issues in this appeal. It said petitioners have challenged several FCC rules and conclusions, including that site commission payments aren't ICS "costs" and its intrastate rate jurisdiction, among others. Assuming the FCC issues a new order, parties should have a week to file motions to govern future proceedings, it said. Separately, Pay Tel Communications urged the FCC to modify its draft order (described in a fact sheet) to make clear "that a per-minute fee, not to exceed the additive, may be collected by ICS providers and remitted to facilities in lieu of other payments." The revisions "could be implemented through a regulatory directive or through a rebuttable presumption, but in either case the Commission has authority to regulate the payments made by ICS providers to confinement facilities," it said in a filing on one of two meetings with FCC officials posted Tuesday in docket 12-375 (other one here). "Pay Tel further emphasized the need to clarify whether and how site commission payments may be made by ICS providers to confinement facilities, especially in light of the differing interpretations of the applicable legal requirements." Attorney Michael Hamden, whose petition the FCC cited in proposing the draft order, this week called on the commission to ban or strictly limit site commissions (see 1607250027).

Consumer groups, led by the National Consumer Law Center, asked the FCC to reconsider a declaratory ruling (see 1607060013) providing an exception to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act for federal and federal contractor debt collection. The FCC clarified that the TCPA doesn't apply to calls made by or on behalf of the federal government as part of official business, except for calls made by contractors that don’t comply with the government’s instructions The groups said the FCC’s ruling is a “dangerous interpretation of the law.” Some 50 other national, state and local civil legal aid, civil rights and public interest groups signed the petition. “Robocalls have exploded in recent years and top the list of consumer complaints to the FCC,” said Maureen Mahoney, policy analyst for Consumers Union, which signed the petition. “The FCC shouldn't make the robocall epidemic even worse by exempting government contractors from the rules that protect consumers from unwanted calls.” The TCPA's text and structure make clear that “government contractors are subject to the law’s prohibitions, even when they are acting as agents of the government,” the petition asserts. “The Commission’s determination that federal contractors acting as agents of the government are not covered by the TCPA is incorrect,” the petition argues. “The Supreme Court case cited by the Commission as support for its ruling that contractors are not ‘person[s]’ covered by the TCPA, Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez, actually assumed the opposite -- that federal contractors are covered by the TCPA, subject to claims of qualified immunity.”

Educating people about data to make better decisions, investing in basic research and infrastructure and developing good spectrum policy are areas the next president should focus on, said panelists Tuesday during a Roll Call-sponsored IoT discussion live-streamed during the Democratic National Convention. Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., said research investments and an educated workforce are needed to help with short-term thinking and long-term innovation and growth. McKinsey partner Michael Chui said investing and educating people on the use of data is "incredibly important" so they can get insight from "dirty" or "imprecise" data whether it's created from IoT or the internet, generally. Earlier, he said less than 1 percent of data is used for decision-making and much is wasted due to technical issues like the lack of interoperability or the uncertainty of how to use data effectively. Jeff Campbell, Cisco vice president-government affairs, said spectrum is "among the most indispensable resources" and the need for it is only going to grow, so good spectrum policy, including sharing and repurposing it and making it more efficient, will make a huge difference. Former Department of Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater, now a Squire Patton attorney, said more investments are needed to develop IoT infrastructure to allow society to grow and get better connected. Chui said the economic impact from IoT is enormous to the gross domestic product and company profits, but also provides value to the individual user. Despite launching the congressional IoT caucus (see 1501130038) last year with Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., DelBene said that many members are still at the "foundational level" because they don't have a lot of experience with or understand technology. That's changing, but she said legislation doesn't move as fast because some are unsure how to move forward. But she said that isn't a partisan issue.

FCC deadlines for Friday were updated to Monday to make allowances for the FCC's closing early Friday due to a power outage, the agency said in a public notice. “All paper and electronic filings that were due on July 22 are now due on Monday, July 25, 2016,” the PN said.

AT&T wants to help stop robocalls and will do what it can to do so, Bob Quinn, AT&T senior vice president-federal regulatory, said in a Monday blog post. Quinn said AT&T already responded to last week’s letter from Chairman Tom Wheeler on robocalls (see 1607220061). AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson agreed to chair a new Robocalling Strike Force "to accelerate the development and adoption of new tools and solutions to abate the proliferation of robocalls and to make recommendations to the FCC on the role government can play in this battle," Quinn said. AT&T will “conform to emerging” Internet Engineering Task Force and Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions VoIP “caller ID verification standards as soon as they are available,” Quinn wrote. “AT&T will investigate and adopt, where viable, SS7 [Signaling System 7] solutions associated with VOIP calls, in accordance with adopted verification standards; AT&T will work together with the industry, the standards bodies and through the new task force on a ‘Do Not Originate’ list for the purpose of identifying suspicious calls originating outside of the United States; and AT&T will facilitate efforts by other carriers to adopt call blocking technologies on their networks.” "Since giving consumers meaningful control over the calls and texts they receive will require collective action by the industry; I am gratified that AT&T will lead an industry strike force to develop an action plan for providing consumers with robust robocall-blocking solutions," Wheeler said in a written statement. Meanwhile, oral argument was set for Oct. 19 on litigation over FCC decisions interpreting the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said in a clerk's order (in Pacer) Monday (ACA International v. FCC, No. 15-1211 and consolidated cases). The commission's 2015 declaratory ruling and order allow carriers to offer robocall blocking technology under the TCPA (see 1506180046). On what constitutes an autodialer for the purposes of the law, the FCC rejected most industry requests for an interpretation that companies said would curb TCPA abuse (see 1507130039). Petitioners are challenging aspects of the FCC decision, "including the definition of an automated telephone dialing system, the application of the prior-express consent exception to reassigned wireless numbers, and the rights of consumers to revoke consent," said a commission description of the case in a summary of pending agency litigation. The FCC's autodialer treatment was reasonable and consistent with the statute, the agency's brief argued.

The FCC Connect2Health Task Force plans to unveil a mapping tool for broadband healthcare Aug. 2, the agency said Friday. “The Mapping Broadband Health in America tool enables more efficient, data-driven decision making at the intersection of broadband and health and promotes stakeholder collaboration,” said a public notice. “By allowing users to ask and answer questions about broadband and health at the county and census block levels, the tool provides valuable data and insights to drive broadband health policies and connected health solutions for this critical space.” The FCC will release the new tool 10:30 a.m. Aug. 2 at Microsoft, 901 K St. NW, Washington.

Several ILEC rivals lobbied the FCC for business data service regulations in recent visits. To curb incumbent telco circuit-portability tactics to "lock up" wholesale BDS demand, EarthLink asked the FCC to (1) mandate ILEC cuts in BDS rates through lower DS1 and DS3 price caps, and (2) restrict the term of circuit-specific plans they can offer in areas deemed not competitive. The agency should also extend its prohibition on "all-or-nothing" tariff conditions to all ILEC BDS contracts in noncompetitive areas, said an EarthLink filing posted Friday in docket 16-143 on a meeting with Wireline Bureau officials. It said ILECs should be barred from doing what Verizon did to comply with a recent tariff order (see 1607150062), in which it modified all-or-nothing provisions to permit customers to designate circuits they want included in a discount plan by assigning them to a specific access customer name abbreviation. "Requiring customers to elect a discount plan at the ACNA level is overly burdensome because it is costly and difficult to switch circuits between ACNAs," EarthLink said. Instead, the FCC should require ILECs to permit customers to designate discounted circuits by using "Access Service Requests," and particularly the "Variable Term Agreement" field on the ASR form, which would be "easy to administer," EarthLink said. It also urged the FCC to require ILECs to allow customers to count Ethernet purchases toward TDM volume commitments, and to limit the term of volume plans to one year in noncompetitive areas. Level 3 urged the FCC to classify (1) all BDS offerings of 100 Mbps and below as noncompetitive, (2) all BDS offerings above 1 Gbps as competitive and (3) BDS offerings between 100 Mbps and 1 Gbps as competitive where criteria in a market competition test are met, including having four or more providers deploying connections in a census block. Sprint recommended the commission presume that BDS products providing 50 Mbps or below aren't competitive with a market test for offerings above that. TDS Metrocom said "AT&T’s price squeeze practices continue." TDS urged the FCC to adopt "a wholesale-retail rule" for Ethernet service to prevent telcos from charging CLECs more for wholesale access than they do business customers for retail service. The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission expressed concern about cable filings acknowledging undercounts of locations their BDS services could reach. The WUTC urged the FCC to incorporate the new information into updated market analysis before regulating. FCC staff and a consultant said recently the new cable data didn't change their basic analysis (see 1606290045).

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler appointed Tom Power, CTIA general counsel and a former Obama White House and NTIA official, to chair the commission’s advisory committee for the next World Radiocommunication Conference in 2019. Wheeler appointed Christopher Murphy, associate general counsel-regulatory affairs at ViaSat, as vice chairman. The committee helps develop an industry position on spectrum issues going into the WRC. Work already is getting started. The advisory committee scheduled its opening meeting Aug. 2 at the FCC (see 1607110020).

Sprint said the FCC should suspend its phasedown of E-rate voice support at the current 40 percent reduced level, as called for by Funds for Learning (see 1607050066) and backed by AdTec (see 1607200033). "Applicants still need voice service to meet the educational needs of students and library patrons. Unfortunately, it appears that the reduction in E-rate support for voice services has forced many schools and libraries to reduce their use of this critical, basic service, or to divert their resources from other endeavors to pay for basic voice services," Sprint said in reply comments posted Thursday in docket 13-184 on the agency's proposed E-rate eligible service list (ESL) for funding year 2017 starting next July 1. Sprint said the Wireline Bureau is evaluating the phasedown's impact and is to report to the FCC by Oct. 1, 2017, but it urged the agency not to wait until FY 2018 to suspend it. Opposing an Illinois Department of Innovation and Technology proposal, CenturyLink filed a reply that disagreed "that leased dark fiber or indefeasible rights of use ('IRU') should be re-classified as 'special construction' if the applicant or the provider chooses to substitute them in the midst of a project." CenturyLink continues to believe the FCC was wrong to fund dark fiber or self-construction when the statute authorizes "discounts" on "carrier" telecom services, and it urged particular caution on self-provisioning: "There can be no back door exceptions to program rules that require competitive procurement and responsible estimation of project costs. Giving parties the advance option -- mid-project -- of substituting leased dark fiber or IRUs for special construction could undermine the program by enabling parties to bypass or give short shrift to Commission rules requiring cost-effectiveness showing fair and competitive procurement for these self-provisioned services." In its reply, the Wisconsin Department of Public Education supported a petition of Microsoft and others seeking E-rate support of off-campus home Internet access for students using TV white spaces spectrum. The department acknowledged the petition wasn't filed specifically on the draft ESL, but it said the needs were so great that TV white spaces technology should be E-rate eligible. "Lack of home Internet access represents a serious inequity issue, especially for students in rural areas where as many as 50% of student households do not have reliable access to the Internet," it said.

Reply comments in the FCC business data service rulemaking are now due Aug. 9. The Wireline Bureau issued an order Thursday extending a July 26 deadline by 14 days. NCTA, USTelecom and ITTA had filed a motion seeking a 21-day BDS reply extension (see 1607190047). "Petitioners cite a number of factors in support of their request, including the voluminous record and a desire for more time to review and consider" a BDS framework proposed by Incompas and Verizon, the bureau order said. "A brief extension will allow parties to provide us with more thorough reply comments that will facilitate the compilation of a complete record in this proceeding, without causing undue delay to the Commission’s consideration of these issues." An NCTA spokesman emailed us: "We appreciate the Bureau's decision to grant this brief extension which will enable parties to participate more fully in this important proceeding." A USTelecom spokeswoman emailed: "We’re pleased the commission recognized the need to allow more time in this complex proceeding. This will give all parties a chance to better analyze the large volume of data, some only recently added to the record." ITTA, Incompas and Verizon had no comment on the extension. Most of the parties also didn't comment on whether there had been discussions to explore the possibility of a broader industry consensus plan -- something NCTA, USTelecom and ITTA had expressed interest in pursuing -- though one representative said he wasn't aware of any such talks.