The FCC should "confirm the continued availability of unbundled DS1 and DS3 copper loops," Windstream said Tuesday (unbundled ILEC loops must be made available to competitors at wholesale discounts). In meetings and calls with FCC officials, "Windstream urged the Commission to grant Windstream’s declaratory ruling petition in order to help ensure that the current competition options available to small business, government, and nonprofit customers of dedicated services will be unaffected by a change in transmission protocol from TDM to IP or by the use of fiber," the company said in a filing in docket 13-5. "As Windstream had highlighted when it filed its petition, the availability of unbundled DS1 and DS3 capacity loops was a foundational premise and justification for the Commission’s prior grants of forbearance with respect to specified packet-based services. The time is ripe for the Commission to act on disputes regarding these loops." Windstream noted various state regulatory commissions had supported its petition, including the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission (see 1603140070). Meanwhile, Anna-Maria Kovacs, a visiting senior policy scholar at Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy, said in a study that CLECs and cable companies competing in the special access market are "in good financial health," while "ILECs' low cash flows reflect the continuously increasing cost of sustaining a ubiquitous network" serving just "a third of the lines for which it was engineered."

CenturyLink and Frontier said NCTA "misses the point" in objecting to their request that the FCC give price-cap ILECs $175 million a year in interim USF support for continuing to provide voice service in extremely remote areas so far unfunded by a new broadband-oriented subsidy mechanism. "The FCC determined last year that customers in these remote areas should continue to be offered voice service until that broadband solution is in place," the two incumbent telcos said in a joint email statement responding to NCTA opposition in docket 10-90 (see 1603140053). "Unfortunately, however, the FCC failed to continue the necessary USF support for that obligation. CenturyLink has joined AT&T and USTelecom in appealing this unfunded mandate." The ILECs said their proposed interim funding "would only be available in areas where there are no other competitive providers, such as cable companies, offering service and where the FCC has recognized that it is too costly to serve without support." They said they share NCTA's concern about devising a long-term solution and agreed the FCC should move swiftly to set up a Remote Areas Fund. "It is disappointing that NCTA is against our proposal as it surely would oppose any action to impose a comparable unfunded voice obligation on cable companies," they said. "More importantly, by adopting interim funding, the FCC will ensure that customers continue receiving critical voice services in these extremely rural, high-cost areas while the FCC moves as rapidly as possible to adopt the Remote Areas Fund."

The American Cable Association said 2011 FCC broadband transparency guidance worked well and should be applied to the 2015 net neutrality order's enhanced transparency requirements. The 2011 guidance clarified the approaches broadband ISPs could use to comply with the transparency rule's network performance disclosure requirements in a 2010 net neutrality order, ACA said in a Tuesday filing in docket 14-28 about its meeting with FCC staffers. The group said smaller providers particularly appreciated a clarification that a "broadband provider may disclose actual performance based on internal testing, consumer speed test data, or other data regarding network performance, including reliable, relevant data from third-party sources such as the broadband performance measurement project” (citing from the guidance). That allowed smaller ISPs to comply with the requirement to disclose network performance with greater certainty and without straining limited resources, it said. On the general network management practices of smaller cable ISPs, ACA said: "Since they understand that traffic is almost certain to continue to increase, ISPs will often engineer their networks to handle a traffic load that is significantly above 100% of advertised performance," noting providers will upgrade capacity if they see congestion emerging. The FCC should affirm the 2011 guidance applies to the 2015 enhanced transparency requirements, said the ACA, continuing to urge the agency to make permanent a temporary small provider exemption to those new rules. Among those meeting with Consumer and Governmental Affairs and Wireline bureau and Office of Strategic Policy staff were ACA Chairman Robert Gessner, Shentel Senior Vice President-Operations Tom Whitaker and Shurz Communications CEO Bryan Lynch.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake will open Monday's bureau workshop on the state of the video market (see 1603010051), starting at 10 a.m. in the Commission Meeting Room. Other speakers include Leichtman Research Group President Bruce Leichtman, University of Maryland economics professor Dan Vincent, BIA/Kelsey Senior Vice President Mark Fratrik, BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield, Columbia University finance and economics professor Eli Noam, Wells Fargo Securities analyst Marci Ryvicker, Analysis Group Managing Principal Tasneem Chipty, Sanford Bernstein analyst Todd Juenger, Stanford University Graduate School of Business associate professor Ali Yurukoglu, Indiana University business economics and public policy associate professor Jeffrey Prince, and University of Texas-Dallas managerial economics associate professor Alejandro Zentner. Topics include the state of the video market and challenges faced by online video distributors and by multichannel video programming distributors, said a bureau public notice in Monday's Daily Digest.

AT&T said FCC Lifeline USF modernization efforts seem "to be moving in the right direction" but will depend on the details. AT&T welcomed an FCC draft order's plan for a national entity to verify consumer eligibility for the low-income support program, which would be extended to cover broadband service (see 1603080054). The proposal to take eligibility out of the hands of Lifeline providers "has the potential to be a transformative change if properly implemented," said AT&T Senior Executive Vice President Jim Cicconi in a Monday blog post. "It could close the door on provider-initiated eligibility fraud and help re-focus the program on the consumers it was intended to serve." Cicconi said it's not clear how long it would take before Lifeline providers can stop performing the functions and whether the national eligibility verifier would take over other administrative functions providers currently perform. "Our fingers will remain crossed until we see all the details, and we may not uncross until we get further down the road to implementation. But Chairman [Tom] Wheeler and Commissioner [Mignon] Clyburn should be commended for championing this approach," he said. Cicconi said AT&T also appreciated the FCC's acknowledgement that existing Lifeline rules impose costs and burdens that discourage provider participation. He was disappointed, however, the FCC didn't propose to eliminate "eligible telecom carrier" requirements for Lifeline providers. He added, "It is also hard to imagine how the Commission can justify phasing out Lifeline support for standalone wireless voice but continue to support standalone wireline voice. Lifeline consumers overwhelmingly choose wireless voice over wireline. If any voice support is to be phased out it should be a technology neutral phase-out of support for all standalone voice. "In a filing Monday in docket 11-42 summarizing a meeting with aides to Wheeler, NCTA lauded the FCC proposal to create a streamlined national ETC process for designating Lifeline broadband providers.

The repacking process after the TV incentive auction will be complicated, require “significant resources” and should be the subject of a detailed plan by the FCC, AT&T warned in a letter to the FCC Monday. Joan Marsh, vice president-federal regulatory, said in the letter AT&T isn't commenting on how long the process should or might take. “Execution of large scale projects with complicated requirements like those contemplated by a robust broadcaster repacking plan contain inherent challenges and risks,” Marsh wrote. “We’ve seen this play out time and again, including with the DTV transition -- which took well over a decade to complete and merited three Congressional extensions of time -- and with the 800 MHz rebanding effort,” which started June 27, 2005, with a proposed 36-month time frame, but still isn't complete, she said. “Risks and challenges will abound, including: limits on the availability of necessary equipment; scarcity of skilled personnel necessary for planning, engineering analysis and construction; localized delays driven by weather, local regulations or other external events; and challenges repacking border markets that will rely on predicate action by Canadian and Mexican broadcasters,” Marsh wrote. There's not a “one-size solution” that “will fit all stations or all markets,” she said. Delays or the failure to properly plan or execute a plan could cause “significant” problems, particularly for the wireless industry, which “having spent billions for the spectrum,” will be eager to deploy licenses “as quickly as possible,” she said. “Failure to obtain timely access to the spectrum will have significant impact on the wireless industry, the products and services we provide, our customers and on the broader U.S. economy at large.” Broadcasters and some wireless carriers, particularly T-Mobile, have been at odds over whether the FCC should rethink the current 39-month repacking deadline for broadcasters (see 1602250038). NAB asked the FCC to impose a deadline only after it becomes clear how many licenses will change hands as a result of the auction.

A federal court reviewing an FCC order pre-empting North Carolina and Tennessee laws restricting municipal broadband efforts signaled interest in related legislation pending in both states. With oral argument scheduled for Thursday in Cincinnati, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote litigants in the North Carolina and Tennessee challenges to the FCC pre-emption order (Tennessee v. FCC, No. 15-3291, North Carolina v. FCC, No. 15-3555). “The panel directs counsel for the parties in this case that, in addition to addressing the arguments in the briefs, they should be prepared to answer questions about the significance, if any, of the pending legislation in both states that would amend the statutes to remove the barriers preempted by the FCC (Tenn. -- HB2133/SB2200 and NC HB349),” the clerk of the court wrote in a brief letter Friday. The only reason for the court to ask about the pending bills is if it suspects they might be enacted in the near future and moot aspects of the case, said Brad Ramsay, general counsel for NARUC, which intervened in support of the two states. But the odds of both bills being enacted are “very slim,” he told us Monday. “The legislation hasn’t passed, so you have a live case and controversy.” The court’s query is a bit “odd,” said Andrew Schwartzman, senior counselor at the Georgetown Institute for Public Representation, who filed an amicus brief supporting the FCC order on behalf of the Benton Foundation and other public-interest groups. “It is not unusual for some courts to notify the parties to be prepared to address particular questions, and that’s really helpful,” he told us. “But the questions here would be best done by letter because they’re completely speculative.” Nobody knows whether the bills will pass and in what form, he said. The FCC and North Carolina and Tennessee litigants had no comment.

FCC proposals to streamline rules for foreign ownership of stations will “facilitate investment in the broadcast sector” and improve transparency for broadcasters and investors, said a joint filing by CBS, Disney, 21st Century Fox and Univision posted in docket 15-236 Thursday. The proposals (see 1601220045) are universally supported, the programmers said. The “modest changes” will give broadcasters “greater predictability and reduced regulatory burdens and costs without in any way diminishing the government’s substantive oversight of foreign investment in the broadcast sector,” the programmers said.

President Barack Obama wants to ensure his administration and future White House administrations stay engaged with the tech industry, he said Friday during a conversation at the South by Southwest festival in Austin. “The reason I’m here really is to recruit all of you,” Obama said. He brought up the broadband stimulus funds and talked about the “enormous progress in extending more and more Internet access, high-speed Internet access, to communities across the country.” The administration is “on track” to meet its ConnectED goals, Obama said. He said the initiatives involve federal spending but also private industry stepping up. He said the initiative requires more than simply infrastructure but also efforts of community adoption, such as in schools. Obama said he couldn't comment on the ongoing Apple/FBI fight over unlocking a terrorist attacker's iPhone. But he cited the history of probable causes and warrants to investigate. "I am of the view that there are very real reasons why we want to make sure that government cannot just willy-nilly get into everyone's iPhones, or smartphones, that are full of very personal information," Obama said. Popular culture and the revelations of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden exacerbated this, he said. "What makes it more complicated is we also want really strong encryption," he added. "We've got two values, both of which are important. The question we now have to ask is, if technologically it is possible to make an impenetrable device or system where the encryption is so strong there's no key, there's no door at all, then how do we apprehend the child pornographer? How do we solve or disrupt a terrorist plot? What mechanisms do we have to do even simple things like tax enforcement?" Obama urged "some concession" to get to the information. He cited many ways the government interacts with tech officials, from civic participation in the voting booth to how government agencies use the Internet to how to confront terrorists online. "I am way on the civil liberties side of this thing," Obama insisted. "You cannot take an absolutist view on this," he said, and referred to engaging the tech industry aggressively on this issue. He foresees a future with strong encryption but one in which the key is available to a small subset of people on the right occasions. “Technology, globalization, our economy is changing so fast,” Obama said. “This gathering, South by Southwest, brings together people who are at the cutting edge of those changes. Those changes offer us enormous opportunities but also are very disruptive and unsettling. They empower individuals to do things they could have never dreamed of before, but they also empower folks who are very dangerous to spread dangerous messages.” Obama emphasized a desire to use big data and analytics to make civic participation easier. White House Chief Digital Officer Jason Goldman wrote a blog post outlining ways the administration has engaged with the tech industry.

A second report and order on recon circulated to the FCC Frida​y addresses the few remaining issues on the 3.5 GHz shared spectrum band, an FCC official said Friday. The item is likely a final step toward opening the band, the official said. The recon order largely leaves in place the framework adopted by the agency last April (see 1504170055), the official said. In its one tweak, the order increases the power level for nonrural Category B citizen broadband radio service devices, the official said. The report addresses how the FCC will define use for the priority access licenses (PALs) that will be auctioned by the FCC under the rules, the official said. The PAL spectrum is available for general use when not in use under a “use it or share it” regime. The order also addresses the issue of secondary markets for the PAL licenses and addresses fixed satellite service (FSS) protection, the official said. The order would use an engineering metric to provide geographic protection for in-band FSS sites, the official said. The order provides similar protections for a small number of FSS sites located out of band, at 3.7 GHz and above, used for tracking and control, the official said. The Wireless Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology circulated the item. The FCC approved the initial NPRM on the band in 2012 (see 1212130044). The order would establish a three-tiered access and sharing model made up of federal and nonfederal incumbents, PALs and general authorized access users.