The FCC's planned local number portability administrator transition from Neustar to Telcordia/iconectiv is tentatively scheduled to last through 3Q 2017, said officials for PwC, the transition oversight manager, on a webinar Wednesday. They outlined the current projected timelines for various phases of the transition: the hardware and software build of iconectiv's systems would run into 2Q 2017; "onboarding" (in which telecom LNP users register, connect to and use the systems) would last through 2Q 2017; testing of the systems would begin in 4Q 2016 and continue through 2Q 2017; and "data migration and go-live" would occur in 3Q 2017, starting with one "regional cutover" and, once successful, continuing with others. The timetable is contingent on contracts being finalized, including the proposed master service agreement between Telcordia/iconectiv and North American Portability Management, which is under FCC review (see 1604010062 and 1604080062). Neustar has asked that the confidential agreement be made public (see 1604120038) and recently lobbied FCC officials on the request (see 1604190045). PwC officials will be available to meet with stakeholders May 4 in Miami following an LNPA working group meeting, they said. No registration or appointment is needed. The next PwC webinar is tentatively scheduled for May 25, but that could change, they said.

Neustar pressed the FCC to make public the proposed master service agreement (MSA) for Ericsson's Telcordia (iconectiv) as the next local number portability administrator (LNPA). The proposal was submitted recently by North American Portability Management (see 1604010062) and is the subject of a draft FCC approval order (see 1604080062). Under a protective order, "essentially the only people who can gain access to the proposed MSA are lawyers and outside consultants -- not the technical and managerial personnel who are in the best position to understand the document and its implications," said a Neustar filing Monday in 09-109 summarizing meetings it held last week with Commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O'Rielly, their aides and aides to Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel. Neustar said the confidentiality protections create "unnecessary risk of a prolonged or failed transition," deprive the FCC of Neustar's technical expertise and prevent broader public scrutiny. "Neustar emphasized that its concerns have nothing to do with any objections to the Commission's decision to select Ericsson as the next LNPA," it said. "On the contrary, since the Commission made its selection determination in March 2015, Neustar has cooperated with the efforts of the NAPM and the Transition Oversight Manager to plan for an effective transition. Nevertheless, Neustar has been excluded from negotiations related to the transition."

AT&T said the FCC should remove the nondiscrimination condition on telecom services between the U.S. and Cuba. “This proposed new policy approach will provide optimal benefits to consumers,” AT&T said in reply comments to the FCC proposal on the condition. AT&T was the only company that filed reply comments by our deadline. “As AT&T has described, consistent with the framework that the FCC applies to all other routes, removing the last vestige of traditional regulation to allow development of market-based arrangements would best encourage lower rates that would benefit users in both the United States and Cuba,” it said. Verizon disagreed with AT&T in the initial comment round (see 1604050042). “Verizon, which is among those U.S. carriers that have established direct links to Cuba, fails to show otherwise,” AT&T said. Reply comments were due at the FCC Monday in docket 11-80.

The North American Submarine Cable Association criticized the FCC's course in a rulemaking proposing undersea cable outage reporting rules (see 1509170047), days after the agency circulated a draft order to require such reporting (see 1604080062). "NASCA remains concerned that the NPRM is premised on an erroneous assumption that there is a hidden submarine cable outage problem," said a Monday filing in docket 15-206 on discussions the group's representatives, including from AT&T and Verizon, had last week with aides to Commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O'Rielly. "The lack of outage reports under the existing voluntary system is due to a lack of reportable events." NASCA said data show an average of just "two faults" (events needing fixes) per year in U.S. territorial sea (within 12 nautical miles of shore) and exclusive economic zone waters (extending 200 nautical miles out) in the Atlantic Ocean and one such fault per year in U.S. Pacific Ocean areas. A Northern Mariana outage resulted from a lack of redundancy, but most U.S. undersea cable providers have "ring infrastructure systems with multiple segments serving the same route" and some have satellite backup, the group said. "The purposes of the new reporting requirements remain insufficiently defined and lack a clear statutory basis," it said. The NPRM's proposals "would require significant revision to make them workable," said NASCA. An "outage definition's '30-minutes-or-greater' loss-criterion would capture mundane events" and a "loss of 50 percent or more of a cable's capacity" standard couldn't "be meaningfully applied," it said. The FCC underestimated the costs of its reporting proposals, said the group, which proposed a more targeted framework, with an "outage" defined in terms of traffic loss and customer impact, undersea cable operators not required to submit initial notifications until 48 hours after a fault is discovered, and licensees able to determine their own reporting duties. Operators should be given at least one year to implement changes, it said. NASCA strongly backed the FCC's proposed information clearinghouse on submarine cable landings in the U.S.

The FCC should revisit its deregulation of incumbent telco special access rates, said the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates and Maryland Office of People's Counsel in a Tuesday filing in docket 05-25. They cited recent submissions by the Consumer Federation of America and Sprint that point to ILEC dominance in the market for dedicated services. The advocates urged the FCC to "reform special access based on the record already before it" without further delay, though they appreciated the commission planned to consider a draft Further NPRM and tariff order April 28 (see 1604080011). A Sprint filing the day before summarized recent meetings its representatives held with FCC General Counsel Jonathan Sallet and aides to all five commissioners. Sprint said in a presentation there was inadequate competition to discipline business data service prices, terms and conditions. The appropriate geographic market was individual buildings and cell sites, but even using the data for census blocks, as preferred by ILECs, showed a lack of competition, Sprint said. A telecom industry official told us Tuesday that stakeholders are still focused on "information gathering" regarding the draft FCC item. "Until people understand what they’re proposing, it’s very hard to comment," the official said. "Obviously cable is upset because they think they’re getting thrown under the bus," but it's still not clear how cable would be regulated, the official said. Much will hinge on a white paper by an FCC consultant that is expected to be attached to the FNPRM, the official said.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is planning a nationwide emergency alert system test on Sept. 28, said a letter to FCC Public Safety Bureau Chief David Simpson filed Monday in docket 15-94. A previous nationwide test in 2011 had numerous glitches (see 1111180055). FEMA didn't comment Monday.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai asked Universal Service Administrative Co. for help in fighting waste, fraud and abuse in the Lifeline USF support program since wireless resellers started participating heavily in 2009. The commission's investigation of Total Call Mobile "revealed much about the dubious practices of the industry," he said in a Monday letter to USAC CEO Chris Henderson. The FCC recently proposed a $51 million fine against Total Call in a notice of apparent liability (see 1604080032). Pai said the investigation showed, for example, that Total Call's sales agents "repeatedly registered duplicate subscribers to the addresses of local homeless shelters and used fake Social Security numbers to register duplicate subscribers." The FCC learned Total Call "was not alone" in some of the practices, he said. Pai asked USAC to give his office by May 2 certain pieces of information on each of the four Lifeline wireless resellers named by Total Call sales agents, along with USAC actions, among other things.

The Phoenix Center released a study Monday challenging conclusions in a recent Consumer Federation of America study that special access "overcharges" by major carriers have cost consumers more than $150 billion in macroeconomic losses since 2010 (see 1604050031). The center said the paper by CFA Research Director Mark Cooper draws heavily on a 2011 report by economist Stephen Siwek of consulting firm Economists Inc. “There are both significant conceptual and technical problems with the Siwek-Cooper Method,” said the paper by Phoenix Center economist George Ford. “The conceptual underpinning of the method is logically inconsistent and leads to ridiculous policy prescriptions. Also, making relatively minor but valid adjustments to Siwek['s] and Cooper’s assumptions turns an alleged multi-billion-dollar benefit from a special access price reduction into a multi-billion-dollar bust for the U.S. economy.” Cooper’s description of his calculation of the $150 billion in alleged benefits is “characteristically a muddled mess,” but Siwek’s analysis is more clear, Ford said. Among its flaws, Siwek and Cooper assume that elasticity is a constant -1.6 across the entire demand curve, he said. “This is an implausible assumption, well known to economists, but ensures that the computed quantity change for a large price reduction is enormous (thus, ensuring a large revenue increase),” Ford wrote. “If you expect your research to influence policies that could impact billions of dollars of investment, you should put in the effort to do the work properly,” Ford said in a news release. “CFA’s claim is based on a method that is internally inconsistent, economically unsound, and computationally flimsy.” Special access reform is before the FCC. Chairman Tom Wheeler recently circulated a Further NPRM and tariff order for a vote at the commission’s April 28 open meeting (see 1604110065). Cooper fired back. “There is no data in George’s paper, he never has any data, it’s just this vacuous theory,” he told us. Verizon and Incompas made a joint proposal at the FCC for revamping special access services (see 1604070069) because the telco now recognizes “that the jig is up,” he said. “The existence of market power and the use of market power are overwhelmingly clear. … The reality has finally caught up with the special access services of the local phone companies.” Cooper also said the price reduction data isn't based on Spiwak but on analysis by Susan Gately and “my own extensive analysis … over the past two decades.”

AT&T and EchoStar took their case for sharing the 28, 37 and 39 GHz bands to the FCC, said an ex parte filing Friday in docket 14-177 on a meeting among AT&T Vice President-Regulatory Stacey Black, EchoStar Vice President-Regulatory Affairs Jennifer Manner and Commissioner Michael O'Rielly wireless adviser Erin McGrath. EchoStar said they discussed the framework of the companies' joint sharing proposal (see 1604070059): protection of existing fixed satellite service (FSS) licensees and providing them co-primary status with new upper microwave flexible use (UMFU) licensees, establishment of protection zones in urban cores to protect UMFU systems from new FSS installations and creation of coordination guidelines for FSS/UMFU sharing outside those zones. The companies also said coordination, safe harbor and aggregate interference guidelines still are being worked out.

The federal government's renewed application to force Apple to open a locked iPhone seized in a New York drug investigation is trying to "obscure" an "inconvenient fact" that Magistrate Judge James Orenstein in New York's Eastern District has already "soundly rejected" DOJ's previous legal argument in the case, the company said in a filing (in Pacer) Friday. In February, Orenstein denied the government's motion to get Apple's help with the device, saying the "government's interpretation of the breadth of authority the [All Writs Act] confers on courts of limited jurisdiction thus raises serious doubts about how such a statute could withstand constitutional scrutiny under the separation-of-powers doctrine" (see 1603010013). The government appealed and resubmitted its application (see 1604080064). Apple said it's unclear whether the evidence in the iPhone has any value and the defendant in the case already pleaded guilty. Apple also questioned whether its assistance is necessary since the DOJ withdrew a similar motion in a case involving an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino, California, mass shooters. "As a preliminary matter, the government has utterly failed to satisfy its burden to demonstrate that Apple's assistance in this case is necessary -- a prerequisite to compelling third party assistance under the All Writs Act," Apple said in the motion. The company asked the court to reject DOJ's "overarching and unsupported" interpretation of the act and deny the application.