Cable companies lobbied the FCC against regulating business data service rates offered by new entrants. Comcast officials believe "the marketplace is increasingly competitive, and that the strong evidence of continuing investment by new entrants, expanding output, and declining prices militates heavily against the imposition of wide-scale rate regulation," said a filing posted Thursday in docket 16-143 summarizing meetings with FCC commissioner aides, General Counsel Howard Symons, Wireline Bureau Chief Matt DelNero and other staffers. "In light of the Commission’s goal of promoting facilities-based competitive entry, it would be especially counterproductive to subject new entrants in the BDS marketplace to rate regulation. We noted that even parties like Level 3 and Public Knowledge -- both of which favor a significant expansion of rate regulation for incumbents -- recognize that such measures should apply only to providers with market power, and that Verizon and INCOMPAS recently appear to have acknowledged that competitive providers should be exempt (at least for some period of time) from rate regulation." Cox Communications also urged FCC officials not to impose rate regulation on new entrants. AT&T, CenturyLink and Windstream made additional filings in the docket on recent lobbying visits.

Sharpening proposed copper abandonment rules in the District of Columbia would make a bad idea worse, Verizon said. The Public Service Commission proposed rules requiring notification by any telco planning to abandon its copper facilities (docket RM27-2016). In comments last month, the Office of the People's Counsel and the Communications Workers of America suggested tweaks to strengthen the rules (see 1607260027). In replies Monday, Verizon said the recommendations of the OPC and CWA "could turn the copper retirement process into a lengthy approval proceeding for the District alone, negating federal and District policies encouraging fiber deployment.” The PSC “should reject these recommendations and not move forward with the proposed copper retirement rules,” it said. The Fiber-to-the-Home Council, with members including network equipment vendors, supported the telco. FCC rules mandating battery backup power and requiring retail customer notification for planned copper retirement ensure that a uniform set of rules applies to all providers, it said. "A state-by-state approach will only serve to confuse customers, be duplicative, and create a patchwork of rules."

Sprint said its cellular 911 service was back to normal in the Washington, D.C., area after being degraded Tuesday by a fire and power outages near a company switching site (see 1608160060). "All Sprint service has now been fully restored, including 911 service which was restored late yesterday. The safety and security of our customers is a top priority and we apologize to our customers," emailed a spokeswoman Wednesday morning. "The impact was across regions encompassing the DC metro area. And the impact to wireless/cellular service was with 911 calls only. Specifically, some callers might have received a busy signal if they called 911."

Paul de Sa is returning to the FCC as chief of the Office of Strategic Planning (OSP) and Policy Analysis starting later this month, the FCC said Tuesday. De Sa was chief of the office from 2009 to 2012, but was criticized, particularly by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, for championing a proposal under which LightSquared spectrum would be reallocated for terrestrial use (see 1201260051). LightSquared subsequently became Ligado. De Sa “has a rare combination of business insight, technical expertise, and policy experience that will make him an invaluable addition to our team,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in a news release. “Paul is the ideal person to lead OSP as we pursue our agenda of promoting innovation and competition and protecting consumers.” From 2012 until earlier this year, de Sa was a senior analyst covering telecom for Bernstein Research.

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).