The FCC didn't base recent regulatory efforts on economic reasoning and should be reined in by Congress, said a report Monday that called the commission "an agency in search of a mission" in the digital age. “We must get back to the practice of basing regulations on thorough analysis rather than populist rhetoric,” said a statement from Mike Montgomery, executive director of CALinnovates, which funded the report. CALinnovates describes itself as a coalition of tech leaders, startups and entrepreneurs that seeks to be a bridge from the tech community to California and federal policymakers; its partners include AT&T. Previous FCCs made "wise" decisions informed by economic principles that deregulated long-distance phone services, enabled enhanced internet data services and spurred wireless growth, said the report by Gerard Faulhaber, a professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School and law school, and Hal Singer, a senior fellow at George Washington University School of Public Policy. "The failure of the FCC to ground its regulations in economic reasoning in the last few years, however, has led to inefficient policies and proposals that threaten to eviscerate prior benefits," said their report. "The FCC has made no effort to subject its pending privacy or set-top-box proposals to cost-benefits analysis." They said the net neutrality order highlighted "the quagmire facing policymakers" as a federal appeals court deferred to the agency's policy expertise. "Given the FCC’s willingness to eschew econometric evidence and economic theory as it considers new regulations, the most direct way to re-inject economics into FCC policymaking is via a Congressional mandate for the agency to perform cost-benefit analysis, subject to OIRA [White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs] or judicial review," the report said. "There is no reason why the Department of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and a host of other agencies should be required to perform cost-benefit analysis, while the FCC is free to embrace populism as its guiding principle." The FCC didn't comment. The commission's recent business data service proposal did include a detailed market study by consultant Marc Rysman, a Boston University econometrician, which also was subjected to peer reviews that were recently released.

Correction: Nine tables of FCC regression results -- modifying regressions from consultant Marc Rysman's business data service study -- had suffered from a recent coding error and were corrected Friday in a Wireline Bureau document (see 1607080052).

Building flexibility into the rules is key as the FCC considers the transition from the text telephone (TTY) technology to real-time text (RTT), CTA said in comments in docket 16-145 on an April 28 NPRM (see 1604280055). The agency “should avoid adopting overbroad regulations that could limit the development of assistive technologies like RTT or inadvertently extend requirements to products that are not intended for voice communications,” CTA said. “The Commission should modify its proposal so that manufacturers have the flexibility to bring the most innovative and effective communications solutions to users who are deaf or have hearing or speech impairments.” NCTA said the FCC should move forward on RTT rules for wireless networks, but defer addressing wireline. “Wireline voice networks and devices have a rapidly declining user base, they generally are not designed to support text-based communications and, except for TTY services, are not used to provide text-based communications,” NCTA said. “Operational challenges of implementing RTT on VoIP systems are potentially significant.” The FCC proposal “poses significant jurisdictional questions” for the California Public Utilities Commission, said CPUC staff in a memo to be considered at the state commission’s Thursday meeting. The staff urged the CPUC to comment on the FCC NPRM. “Because the existing TTY program is analog-based, it falls squarely within the CPUC’s jurisdiction over services that are not IP based or that are purely intrastate,” the CPUC staff said. But the CPUC lacks authority over IP services, except when required or expressly delegated by federal law, it said. “If the FCC determines that RTT is a purely interstate service, the CPUC would be barred from regulating it because the FCC has exclusive jurisdiction over interstate telecommunications services.” If barred from regulating RTT, the CPUC’s Deaf and Disabled Telecommunications Program (DDTP) relay service “likely would have to be terminated at some point in the future,” it said. Also, RTT should be interoperable with analog-based TTY, the CPUC staff said. “Because the DDTP’s relay service is analog-based, and its equipment is imperfectly compatible with IP-based service, existing users of the DDTP’s TTY equipment will be significantly degraded in the event of an abrupt shift to real-time text technology.” The staff objected to a sunset date for TTYs because it said the number of existing TTY customers participating in the DDTP is declining. Instead, the compatibility requirement should remain as long the analog phone system is in place, it said. Comments are due July 11 -- before the CPUC meeting -- but the CPUC can file replies by July 25.

The FCC gave NCTA and other supporters of the pay-TV backed set-top proposal (see 1607010066) a list of questions seeking more detail on the plan’s specifics, a cable industry official told us. The document seeks more information about the future of HTML5 and how the pay-TV plan would work, and said “we agree that a licensing model is a viable option to ensure a variety of protections.” The FCC also indicated support for the HTML5 standard, which is what that alternative set-top plan is based on: “We agree that HTML5 may be an appropriate platform for app developers to provide access to content.” Both the licensing concept and the HTML5 standard were targeted in comments from proponents of the original FCC set-top plan, such as Public Knowledge. The questions also show the agency is trying to get specific answers to questions raised by critics of the pay-TV plan, such as whether third-party boxes running pay-TV apps will be able to use DVR functionality. There are also signs of contention, such as FCC comments that “innovation and competition in user interfaces has the potential to lead to consumer friendly features.” The pay-TV proposal’s apps would each use the multichannel video programming distributor interface. The FCC had no comment. In an ex parte filing posted Monday in docket 16-42, Roku expressed concern about the pay-TV compromise plan’s use of HTML5. The MVPD proposal “would, as a practical matter, establish HTML5 as the de facto standard in the video distribution marketplace,” Roku said. “Such an approach would be ill advised given that consumers have clearly demonstrated their preference for an array of devices with diverse user experiences at various price points, which has spurred competition and innovation in the marketplace.” HTML5 is a “bulky and expensive architecture” that would require third-party device manufacturers to “include additional processing power and memory to support it, even in their lowest-priced devices,” the company said.

Overbuild requirements on Charter Communications' broadband network will use company resources better used for improving service to existing customers or expanding service to unserved potential ones, NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield told Commissioner Mike O'Rielly and Commissioner Ajit Pai's chief of staff, Matthew Berry, in separate meetings, said an ex parte filing Friday in docket 15-149. NTCA, the American Cable Association and Competitive Enterprise Institute petitioned the FCC to reconsider the overbuild conditions (see 1606100043). Bloomfield said overbuilding in areas that can't support competition or even a sole broadband network could lead to services being pared in those markets or to companies exiting altogether. If Charter is the sole provider in a market, she said, it's under no obligation to ensure quality or affordability, just "to build," she said.

The FCC corrected regression analysis in consultant Marc Rysman's white paper on the business data service market, a modified version of which was recently released along with other documents to factor in updated cable BDS competition data and peer reviews of the study (see 1606290045 and 1607070006). Nine tables and some associated text in Attachment 3 titled "Competitive Effect of Cable Network Infrastructure" suffered from an inadvertent coding error and were revised, but the revisions don't change the findings in Attachment 3, said a Wireline Bureau public notice in docket 16-143. It noted all of the documents are on the commission's BDS peer review webpage.

Part of Ligado's LTE network plans -- specifically its use of 1627.5-1637.5 MHz -- should come with license conditions to reduce potential interference to Iridium's satellite downlinks, Iridium said in an FCC ex parte filing posted Wednesday in docket 11-109. Iridium's proposed conditions include reduced out-of-band emissions from Ligado's mobile terminals into Iridium's adjacent spectrum at 1617.775-1626.5 MHz, and exclusion zones around airport facilities to prohibit Ligado user terminals near aeronautical mobile-satellite route service communications. Iridium said its interference worries involve unwanted emissions within its band, not receiver overload from Ligado's in-band emissions -- which was the source of GPS industry conflicts with Ligado. The filing recapped a meeting between Iridium representatives including Chief Legal Officer Thomas Hickey and FCC staffers from the Wireless and International bureaus and the offices of General Counsel and of Engineering and Technology. A Harris Corp. engineer also participated. Ligado didn't comment Thursday.

Local number portability administrator Neustar detailed its major concerns with the FCC proceeding to shift LNPA duties to Ericsson-owned Telcordia Technologies. "At every phase, Neustar has been disadvantaged by arbitrary decisions behind closed doors that tipped the scales in favor" of Telcordia, said a Neustar letter posted Thursday in docket 09-109. "The Commission is now poised to embrace a decision with all of the transition risk but none of the 'cost savings over the existing contract,'” it said, citing a 2015 LNPA selection order. "One option available to the Commission in March 2015 would have been to retain Neustar as the LNPA at its best offer price, which would have resulted in significant cost savings over Neustar’s existing contract, but with none of the transition risk. Given the extraordinary transition delays and security violations, however, the FCC now appears committed to choosing a result in which the American people realize no cost savings over Neustar’s existing contract but accept all of the transition risk." The FCC LNPA transition is a "raw deal for consumers -- a decision that carries significant national security questions and transition risk to critical telecommunications infrastructure that Americans depend upon every day for reliable communications," the company said. Neustar said it would be "arbitrary and capricious" for the FCC to approve a proposed Telcordia master services agreement as LNPA without addressing its concerns.

Five telcos announced an alliance on business data services (BDS) to "preserve critical network infrastructure and competition in the business broadband market." CenturyLink, Cincinnati Bell, Consolidated Communications, FairPoint Communications and Frontier Communications are forming the Invest in Broadband for America coalition, in light of the FCC's "recently proposed sweeping and questionable new regulations on the special access market and incumbent providers," said a joint release Thursday. The carriers noted they joined with AT&T recently on a motion to the FCC "to strike the 'irretrievably flawed' data framework underlying" the regulatory proposals, after updated data showed greater cable competition than the agency believed. “First and foremost, it is crucial that the FCC get the data right on competition in the marketplace before flying blindly into a major policy decision,” said CenturyLink Senior Vice President-Policy and Government Relations John Jones.

More satellite operators are saying amen to ViaSat's contention that the draft FCC spectrum frontiers proposal is seemingly "upending" the rules under which satellite service long has been deployed in the 28 GHz band. In a filing posted Thursday in docket 14-177, Lockheed Martin said it backed the ViaSat's main points. Pointing to its own earlier argument about the spectrum frontiers proceeding not going far enough into the international implications of aggregate interference from upper microwave flexible use (UMFU) service to satellite receivers (see 1606240026), Lockheed Martin said any FCC action "that impinges upon established FSS (fixed satellite service) rights here and abroad [would be] both arbitrary and capricious." Lockheed Martin also said multiple technical and policy matters need to be debated before FCC action on UMFU and satellite operations in the 28 GHz band. And in a separate filing posted Thursday, SES and O3b jointly applauded ViaSat's letter and argument that terrestrial wireless interests "have blatantly and repeatedly mischaracterized [FCC] decisions on which FSS operators have reasonably depended in developing and deploying satellite networks." They said an aggregate interference limit on skyward emissions from mobile terrestrial networks would give UMFU licensees more flexibility than specific operational parameters, but "one approach or the other must be employed" to forestall space station receiver interference. They also called "unnecessary and unwarranted" the CTIA-pushed idea of backdating the grandfathering of existing earth stations to the release of the Spectrum Frontiers NPRM (see 1607060046). In its filing, ViaSat said the agency for decades has given satellite co-primary allocation in the 28 GHz band under the U.S. table of frequency allocations, that it has held licensing priority over mobile wireless in the band for nearly as long, and the proposed mobile wireless plan for 28 GHz "would undermine the settled expectations and legal rights of 28 GHz satellite operators." ViaSat said the spectrum frontiers NPRM could mean roving mobile devices operating near satellite earth stations claiming interference protection from the station and trying to require it to cease operating in the 28 GHz band, while mobile operators wouldn't have any incentive to prevent radiofrequency energy from their base stations or user terminals away from orbital arcs, causing satellite receiver interference. ViaSat said any FCC order should let satellite operators complete deployment of their authorized 28 GHz networks and "reasonably ... deploy" additional 28 GHz networks in the future while guaranteeing network operation is protected from introduction of new mobile wireless services in the band.