The FCC's new Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) will launch June 20, after going offline for the preceding weekend, said a public notice released Wednesday. The old system will cease being accessible at the same time, the PN said. “All documents in the legacy system will be accessible in the new system, and saved links (bookmarks or favorites) to documents and proceedings should not need to be adjusted,” the PN said. The new system “is expected to significantly improve the resiliency and performance of ECFS,” the PN said. Tutorials for the new system are scheduled for Thursday, Tuesday and June 16, the PN said. The current ECFS will go down for the upgrade at 11:59 p.m. EDT June 17, and the new system will come online at 8 a.m. EDT June 20. The FCC will release a PN on the front page of FCC.gov if unforeseen delays occur, the PN said. “Given that ECFS is expected to be fully operational during all FCC business hours, the agency does not plan any changes to any deadlines.”

Upfront payments for bidding in the TV incentive auction are due at the FCC by July 1, the Wireless Bureau and Incentive Auction Task Force said Wednesday in a public notice. To become qualified to bid in Auction 1002, an applicant must have an application that has been deemed complete and must make a timely and sufficient upfront payment, the notice said. The FCC provides guidance on how to calculate the amount of an upfront payment, detailed wire transfer instructions and instructions on completing and faxing Form 159 for each upfront payment. The FCC advised potential bidders to pay close attention. A second document provided information on upfront payments and minimum opening bids for every market. The highest numbers, not surprisingly, are for New York City, with an upfront payment of $67.5 million and opening bid of $135 million. That's followed by Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Baltimore/Washington, D.C. For America Samoa, the upfront payment is $2,500, the minimum opening bid $5,000. The IATF also announced a new accelerated bidding schedule for the ongoing reverse auction, moving to three rounds a day from two. The new bid schedule will begin Monday. Starting Wednesday, the IATF also changed the dollar amount that can be entered as a proxy bidding instruction. Previously the dollar amount for proxy bids couldn't be less than 75 percent of the price offer for the station's currently held option, but now it can't be less than 50 percent, the IATF said.

A draft FCC order circulating among commissioners would adjust application fees based on changes in the Consumer Price Index, an agency spokesman told us Tuesday. The item was on the FCC's circulation list, which is updated every Friday.

FCC authority to review a proposed Telcordia contract to be the next local number portability administrator (LNPA) isn't limited to issues of neutrality and national security, said the LNP Alliance and New America's Open Technology Institute. The commission has broad authority to oversee the master services agreement (MSA) negotiated by Telcordia (iconectiv) and North American Portability Management (NAPM) "at every stage and to review every aspect of the MSA prior to approving it," said the LNP Alliance and OTI's Wireless Future Program in a filing posted Tuesday in docket 09-109 summarizing a meeting with staffers of FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and the Wireline Bureau. The groups urged the FCC to address "the shortcomings of the LNPA Transition and to make improvements to all aspects" of the MSA. They noted their suggestions to: ensure the LNPA transition from Neustar to iconectiv incorporates and doesn't delay industry's IP transition; maintain a "neutral, independent and mandatory" Number Portability Center Administration Center (NPAC) for routing telecom services and porting numbers; alter NAPM's large-carrier membership; increase the transparency of the LNPA transition and its timeline; and make specific changes to the MSA, including by removing NAPM as the final arbiter of NPAC disputes. In a filing on a meeting with Commissioner Michael O'Rielly and an aide, the two groups cited concerns about a process that has left them "in a position where the MSA could be approved at any time" -- though LNP Alliance's counsel said recently some commissioner offices still had questions and didn't seem to be in a hurry (see 1606020050). The groups sought new MSA language to reinforce NPAC's mandate and "ensure third-party 'ENUM' [electronic number mapping] registries don't supplant the current neutral number porting system." They attached a draft national number portability report by an Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions committee that they said suggested number portability could be handled by multiple registries rather than a single entity. Telcordia didn't comment.

North American Portability Management filed to "correct" LNP Alliance "misstatements" about the proposed master services agreement (MSA) that NAPM signed with Telcordia to be the next local number portability administrator. Among the alleged misstatements was that the new MSA restricts the use of the Number Portability Administration Center (NPAC) to telecom carriers offering telecom services, said an NAPM filing Friday in FCC docket 09-109. Parties, such as interconnected VoIP providers, can use NPAC services if they have obtained phone numbers directly or are eligible to obtain North American Numbering Plan resources for a region, it said. "The LNP Alliance has not identified any issues that could justify [FCC] delay in approving the New MSA ... . Moreover, the issues that the LNP Alliance is now raising constitute untimely petitions for reconsideration that must be denied." NAPM said it was commenting on the LNP Alliance's May 17 filing, which posted in the docket May 18 (see 1605180046). LNP Alliance attorney James Falvey told us Monday that NAPM and Telcordia had created "their own definition of telecommunications services -- that’s a statutory term; so it’s a little strange for them to be redefining that term." More broadly, he said various NAPM/Telcordia definitions "are vague, at times incoherent and unmoored from statutory definitions.”

Comments are due June 20 on FCC-proposed FY 2016 regulatory fees, with replies in docket 16-166 due July 5, said a notice in Friday's Federal Register. It said the proposed rule (see 1605190063) would increase direct broadcast satellite regulatory fees to 27 cents per subscriber per year, from the 12 cent DBS fee instituted in FY 2015, and divide AM/FM broadcasters that serve 3,000,001-6 million markets from those that have higher population coverage. It also seeks comment on allocating some wireline direct full-time equivalents who work on universal service or numbering issues to other fee categories as indirect FTEs, and on the idea of different fee categories for different types of satellite earth stations.

Correction: The FTC, not the FCC, doesn't have the ability to issue regulations to protect privacy, except for children (see 1606020062).

The White House is attributing sluggish jobs numbers from May in part to the recent Verizon worker strike (see 1605310032). “The economy added 38,000 jobs in May, considerably below both expectations and the pace of growth in recent months, with volatility in monthly data and a temporary strike in the telecommunications industry contributing to the disappointingly low number,” said Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Jason Furman in a blog post Friday. “The decline of 37,200 jobs in the telecommunications industry in May in part reflects the effects of this strike. In the past, strikes in this industry coinciding with the survey reference period had a noticeable negative effect on monthly estimates of changes in industry employment ... . However, these downturns reversed once the strikes were resolved, leading to a jump in employment that almost perfectly offset the apparent job loss.” Furman said a “portion of the slowdown in job growth in May” is “likely to reverse in June” due to the strike’s end.

NARUC challenged the FCC Lifeline decision to bypass state regulators in setting up a national process for designating providers eligible for new broadband low-income USF support (see 1603310056). "Congress specifies that the FCC simply has no role in the [eligible telecom carrier] designation process unless the State cannot act as a result of State Law," said the state regulatory association in a petition for review Friday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (NARUC v. FCC, No. 16-1170). It said if upheld on review, the FCC's "flawed view of the power of an Agency vs. the power of Congress to specify the scope of ... agency powers will break new ground transferring yet another substantial swath of authority from Congress to agencies." The NARUC challenge isn't a surprise (see 1604010042).

The industry USF contribution factor for Q3 will stay at 17.9 percent of carrier interstate and international telecom end-user revenue, industry consultant Billy Jack Gregg said in an email update Wednesday. He said the Universal Service Administrative Co. projected industry long-distance telecom revenue for Q3 at $14.56 billion, about $181 million less than in the current quarter. The revenue drop is part of a downward trend that is putting upward pressure on the contribution factor over time, he said, but USF demand for Q3 also is projected to edge down to $2.18 billion, providing an offset.