Microsoft received 537 requests from July to December "to remove links to revenge porn photos or videos from Bing search results, or to remove access to the content itself when shared on OneDrive or Xbox Live," the company said in a blog post Friday. Citing its latest content removal request report, Steve Lippman, corporate responsibility director, said the company took action on 338 requests that met the criteria for removal. In the other cases, Microsoft needed more information or the content didn't contain nudity or didn't generally meet the accepted definitions of revenge porn, he said. It's the first time the report contained information on requests for removing nude or sexually explicit photos or videos of people published online without their permission. Citing its latest law enforcement requests and U.S. national security orders reports, Lippman said Microsoft received 39,083 legal requests for customer information from law enforcement agencies in the second half of 2015 -- 3,855 more than in the first half. Just over 2 percent of the requests resulted in the disclosure of content that customers created, shared or stored, based on court orders or warrants. On the latest Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requests, Microsoft received 0 to 499 FISA orders, seeking disclosure of content in 15,500 to 15,999 accounts. In the previous period, it received 0 to 999 orders for content affecting 18,000 to 18,999 accounts, Lippman said. Microsoft also got 0 to 499 national security letters in the latest period, compared with 0 to 999 in the prior period. "Requests from law enforcement agencies in five countries -- United States, United Kingdom, Turkey, France and Germany -- represent 76.8 percent of total requests in the second half of 2015," he wrote.

The second of the FCC Media Bureau's two daylong workshops on video market issues will be April 25, the agency said in a public notice Friday. The workshop -- 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at FCC headquarters -- will cover programming diversity issues. Its March 21 workshop focused on multichannel video programming and over-the-top competition (see 1603210044).

The Pacific Northwest has narrowed the digital divide, but much work remains, NTIA wrote Friday on its blog after wrapping up a broadband workshop in Seattle. Agency officials were there last week for a regional broadband summit Monday (see 1603210049), a workshop Tuesday and a webinar Thursday. The workshop was the sixth in a series of regional workshops organized by NTIA as part of its BroadbandUSA program, which provides technical assistance, guidance and resources to communities seeking to expand broadband. The workshop included about 250 people, including local, state and federal officials, tribal leaders, industry representatives and community activists. “From urban centers such as Seattle and Portland, Ore., to rural towns such as Toledo, Wash., civic leaders, industry officials and community activists are making progress in narrowing the digital divide,” NTIA wrote. “But the job is not done.” NTIA estimated 2.5 million people across the states of Idaho, Oregon and Washington didn’t use the Internet in 2015. In Seattle, 15 percent don’t subscribe to the Internet, the agency said. Many rural areas lack adequate broadband, with the problem “particularly acute for many Native American communities,” it said.

The Univision blackout on AT&T's U-verse ended, The companies said in a statement Thursday that they're finalizing a new carriage agreement. Numerous short-term extensions in the retransmission consent dispute kept access to the flagship Univision network and some other stations on U-verse (see 1603180053, 1603170045, 1603160051 and 1603170045).

AT&T's goal on special access is to delay FCC action that would "check monopolistic tendencies" of incumbent telcos, Incompas CEO Chip Pickering said Thursday. "In an act of desperation, AT&T is claiming that the FCC doesn’t have sufficient information to act  --  even though it has just completed the largest data collection ever undertaken by the FCC in any proceeding," he said in a blog post. "With data in hand, now is the time for the Commission to act promptly to address this broken market. Finally ending monopoly pricing, and eliminating punishing terms and conditions, which are locking up customers and locking out competition." The FCC could issue a Further NPRM in April or May in its broad special access rulemaking and an order in its ILEC tariff investigation (see 1603210048). Pickering said AT&T "likes to take a helicopter view of the market" that looks at competition by census block. "But let me ask you, when was the last time someone said, 'I work in a census block?' Never," he said. "That is because real people work in buildings  --  school buildings, hospital buildings, and fire station buildings." Pickering said ILECs have connections to virtually every commercial location in their monopoly-derived territories. "They are the only provider of special access services to the vast majority of these locations. That’s market power," he said. Pickering dismissed AT&T's suggestion that competitors don't need reasonably priced last-mile access to ILEC special access facilities. "If building to locations was as easy as the incumbents claim, why haven’t they (with hundreds of billions more resources than any competitor) built much, if at all, outside their incumbent regions?" he said. Pickering questioned AT&T arguments that cable provides "fierce competition" to ILEC special access services. "In reality, most cable services are not special access services (i.e., dedicated services)," he said. "Nonetheless, NCTA’s special access filing only demonstrates the ineffectiveness of a duopoly. It asserts more competition would be bad because it would force providers to improve service and lower prices ….um, YES, that is exactly what competitive market forces are intended to do." He called on the FCC to "address the abuse of market power," including over ethernet services, and voiced hope it would do so under Chairman Tom Wheeler, "who's been consistent in his efforts to promote and preserve competition."

Commissioner Ajit Pai seemed to welcome a court stay temporarily blocking the FCC's attempted application of interim rate caps to intrastate inmate calling services (see 1603230058), which he suggested sent a broader message. "The ruling comes on the heels of the latest judicial reversal of the FCC in this proceeding," Pai said in a statement Thursday. "Just two weeks ago, that same court stayed the rate regulations that the agency sought to impose on inmate calling services. Nonetheless, the Commission issued a Public Notice claiming that these regulations -- and specifically, their application to intrastate rates -- would take effect anyway. The court’s decision yesterday cut this end-run short." The PN had said that interim 2013 rate caps applied to intrastate ICS because the court in its previous stay had not blocked the FCC's 2015 removal of the word "interstate" from the ICS definition. But a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit stayed the cap's application to intrastate ICS rates, with two Republican appointees -- Judges Karen Henderson and Brett Kavanaugh -- in support and Democratic appointee Judge Patricia Millett in opposition. Pai also said the stay was part of a broader pattern of legal and political reversals the commission should take to heart. "Over the past three weeks alone, the FCC’s decisions have been rebuffed three times in court; rejected in extraordinary fashion by a large, bipartisan group of Senators; and rebuked sharply by Members of the House from both parties," he said. "At some point, even this agency has to acknowledge that the law isn't an invitation to semantic chicanery and good government isn’t discretionary."

Only 691 of the 4,487 buildings served by XO Communications that Verizon would gain new access to will be in the Bell's remaining ILEC footprint (after it completes a three-state system sale to Frontier Communications), the companies told the FCC Tuesday, supplementing their application to transfer XO licenses to Verizon (see 1603070041). "The proposed transaction will benefit the public interest without any material adverse harm to customers or competition," they said in a filing responding to questions from commission staff. Of the 691 buildings, 537 are served by at least one other CLEC or cable company, based on available information, they said, noting there could be other buildings served by telco and cable competitors whose information isn't readily available. Of the 154 other XO on-net buildings in Verizon's remaining ILEC footprint, 136 are within one-tenth of a mile of the fiber of another CLEC or a cable-lit building, they said, noting other providers include Cablevision, Cogent, Comcast, Level 3 and Zayo. Almost 85 percent of the XO on-net buildings aren't in Verizon's remaining ILEC footprint, and of those 3,796 buildings, 3,303 don't have Verizon plant in them, the companies said. Of the 493 with Verizon plant, 440 are lit by another CLEC or cable company and 41 are within one-tenth of a mile of another CLEC's fiber, they said. Frost and Sullivan analysts estimated Verizon's national market share of the business/enterprise ethernet market declined from 22.5 percent in 2013 to 19.6 percent in 2014, while XO's market share was "between 0.5 and 2 percent," the companies said. Frost and Sullivan estimated Verizon has about 28.3 percent of the wholesale ethernet market and XO has about 3.9 percent. They said XO Holdings' subsidiary NextLink Wireless isn't being transferred with XO Communications to Verizon and will remain an independent wireless-based provider.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seemingly deviated from the guidelines it set in its 1988 Coghlan v. Starkey decision for finding of frivolousness, as well as the summary judgment guidelines the Supreme Court established in its Anderson v. Liberty Lobby decision in 1986, in shooting down his appeal in his lawsuit against Dish Network, said Texas lawyer/plaintiff Larry Polsky in a petition for rehearing en banc Tuesday. The 5th Circuit earlier this month upheld a previous U.S. District Court in Houston summary judgment tossing out Polsky's consumer complaint against Dish, calling his claims frivolous (see 1603030026). In his petition, Polsky said his complaint "involves an important question of law that is of first impression in this Circuit and to every other state and federal court in the United States of America" -- namely, whether an ISP has a duty to disclose to consumers that their Internet service is split among two periods of the day, and usage in one of those periods is not monitored. The 5th Circuit panel in its March decision ignored arguments on Dish's supposed fraud by omission and that its supposedly being "too busy" to monitor gigabyte usage from 2 to 8 a.m., which was cited in the initial summary judgment, isn't something Dish ever asserted, Polsky said.

The FCC shouldn't simply award subsidies to the lowest bid in a reverse auction for broadband-oriented Connect America Fund Phase II support, said nine southwestern Michigan state legislators in a letter Tuesday in docket 10-90. The commission should encourage "prudent investments that stand the test of time" not "investments in substandard technologies with a short shelf life," they said. A "tiered or weighted auction" is needed to help ensure the best technologies are advanced, they said. "By focusing on future proof technologies, the FCC could advance beyond ongoing subsidies and instead invest once in scalable networks. This would free up capital for projects across America that ensure speeds and capabilities that stretch far beyond the modest rural standard of 10 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload." The legislators said CAF II could stimulate competition from rural electric cooperatives and other nontraditional providers, which are deploying gigabit-capable networks. Officials from Midwest Energy Cooperative, Ozarks Electric Cooperative and the Utilities Telecom Council suggested the FCC adopt certain auction criteria, according to a UTC filing on a meeting they had with an aide to Commissioner Mike O'Rielly. "We explained that we support minimum eligibility requirements and that the criteria for the reverse auction should set the bar high so that the Commission is funding future-proof broadband networks that would promote economic growth, better education and improved health care in rural unserved communities," said the filing. It also urged the FCC to fund broadband networks that promote E-rate school and library support, mobile wireless and other commission priorities. UTC, joined by the National Rural Electric Cooperative and NTCA, recently urged the FCC to adopt a minimum initial speed requirement of 25/3 Mbps (down/up), with networks capable of providing 100/25 Mbps, having no more than 100 milliseconds of latency and at least a 100 GB monthly usage allowance. They said they were concerned that criteria proposed by Hughes Network Systems and others "would water down the minimum requirements," leaving rural consumers with broadband access that's not reasonably comparable to urban broadband, a statutory mandate.

Gigi Sohn, counselor to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, attempted to address concerns that have been expressed about the commission's Lifeline USF proposals to extend low-income support to broadband service and streamline program administration. Mobile voice would continue to be a Lifeline-supported service, but under a draft order it would have to be bundled with broadband after Dec. 1, 2019, she said Wednesday at New America's Open Technology Institute. "To give Lifeline providers time to adjust, we will phase down support for stand-alone mobile voice over a multi-year period. We plan to eliminate the subsidy for stand-alone mobile voice starting on December 1, 2019, although the Commission will examine the market in mid-2019 to determine whether there needs to be an adjustment," she said in prepared remarks. "We believe that three years will be enough time for the market to adapt and for promising technologies to develop, and that by the end of 2019, there will be affordable bundled mobile voice and data plans that meet, and hopefully exceed, Lifeline’s minimum service standards." But if the FCC is wrong, she said, it "has a safety valve by which it can examine how the market has evolved between now and 2019, and preserve a subsidy for stand-alone mobile voice if it’s deemed necessary." Minimum service standards for voice and data are needed to ensure Lifeline users aren't stuck with "second-class service," while ensuring service is still affordable, she said. Sohn also said state commissions will continue to play a "critical role" in Lifeline, despite an optional new path for broadband providers to be certified to receive support nationally. Providers would still be able to go to the states for Lifeline approval state by state. California approval will be necessary to receive a sizable state Lifeline subsidy there, she said. The FCC proposed a Lifeline budget of $2.25 billion, indexed to inflation, which is enough to allow some growth. While the agency expects some growth due to the broadband coverage, "we don't expect it to be precipitous," she said. Sohn said if Lifeline spending reaches 90 percent of the budget, the Wireline Bureau must notify the commission and prepare an analysis of the causes of the spending growth, "followed by Commission action within six months." That creates another "safety valve," Sohn said. Monday, other senior FCC officials used the agency's blog to defend the proposal amid criticism from some carriers and others (see 1603220044).