First National Bank and Lyft were issued citations by the FCC Enforcement Bureau, putting the companies on notice of violations of rules to protect consumers against unwanted autodialed text messages, a commission release said Friday. "First National Bank requires its online banking and Apple Pay customers to agree to receive autodialed telemarketing texts in order to use its services," the release said. "Lyft purports to allow consumers who sign up for its ride-sharing service to opt out of receiving autodialed or prerecorded telemarketing calls and texts, but does not allow users to access the service if they do exercise their right to opt out of marketing calls and texts. Both of these companies' practices violate the Commission’s rules implementing the Telephone Consumer Protection Act." In its citations/orders (here and here), the bureau directed First National Bank (also known as F.N.B. Corp.) and Lyft to take immediate steps to comply with the rules or possibly be liable for significant penalties. First National Bank emailed a response: "Our policies generally allow all customers to opt out of marketing information; however, we are unfamiliar with the details since we were just made aware of the issue and have not yet received any formal communication from the FCC. We will immediately investigate the issue and are fully committed to ensuring that we continue to comply with the consumer rights laws and regulations." Lyft emailed: "This is the first we are seeing of the order and are in the process of reviewing it. We look forward to working with the FCC to resolve this issue." Commissioner Mike O'Rielly issued a statement that said the enforcement action "showcases once again the Commission’s complete cluelessness when it comes to the tech economy, missing the point about how these free, popular, and entirely optional services actually work. The Bureau is targeting two innovators who are putting power in consumers’ hands to pay for their groceries or locate a safe ride directly from their mobile phones, for communicating with their customers on mobile phones. These citations are sure to be just the first of many harmful real-life effects of the Commission’s march to drastically expand the scope of the TCPA. No one likes unwanted robocalls, but tech-savvy Americans are in for an unpleasant shock when they find the Commission’s action is slowly but surely eviscerating innovations they have come to rely on, and stopping future mobile breakthroughs in their tracks."

The FCC should accept a compromise proposal on when the new wireless owners of 600 MHz spectrum are considered to have commenced operations on their new spectrum, said CTIA and representatives of AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon and U.S. Cellular in a meeting Sept. 2 with staff from the Wireless Bureau, Incentive Auction Task Force, Media Bureau, Office of General Counsel and the Office of Engineering and Technology, according to an ex parte filing posted Thursday in docket 12-268. The FCC proposal to limit the "commence operations" definition to areas where a 600 MHz licensee has begun site activation, and commissioning tests using permanent equipment and antennas, “would unnecessarily preclude rapid deployment of the spectrum,” the wireless interests said. Under the CTIA compromise, low-power TV and unlicensed users would still be able to use the 600 MHZ spectrum until the wireless users started substantially using it, but the wireless licensees would have the right to do “market testing” of their new spectrum. The tests would take place “in only a fraction of the areas where full commercial launch would occur,” CTIA said. “LPTV stations and other secondary users could continue to utilize the mobile wireless band in the vast majority of areas beyond this stage.” By beginning market testing, the wireless company would have officially commenced operations, under the compromise proposal, CTIA said. Where market testing isn’t required, the definition of commencing operations would be as the FCC has proposed. “Inhibiting market testing in any fashion, and particularly in the limited window available after full power broadcast television stations are relocated, will greatly jeopardize wireless providers’ ability to meet the six-year interim build-out requirement,” CTIA said. “Under the compromise proposal, secondary services will not be impacted in the vast majority of markets and geography.”

The Department of Justice and FTC signed an antitrust memorandum of understanding with the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) Tuesday, an FTC news release said. The MOU was signed by FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez, Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer and KFTC Chairman Jeong Jae-Chan in Washington, and took effect immediately. The MOU with the Korea is the third antitrust cooperation agreement U.S. antitrust agencies have in East Asia, following an agreement with Japan signed in 1999 and one with China in 2011, the release said. It said the commission voted unanimously in favor of authorizing Ramirez to sign the Korea agreement.

A delay in the completion of the planned IT upgrades means many FCC systems are expected to remain offline until Thursday morning, two days later than expected, the commission said in a blog post and accompanying public notice Tuesday morning. The Electronic Document Management System and the Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) are the only two systems that went back online Tuesday. About 50 filings were posted in ECFS by Tuesday afternoon. “With a massive server move of this scale -- even with detailed planning, independent verification, and backup plans -- the opportunity always exists for surprises,” said FCC Chief Information Officer David Bray. The delay was caused by “the need for some additional cabling to be done by our commercial partners that took longer than expected,” Bray said. “This delayed completion of all of the system upgrades -- even with the FCC team working around the clock throughout the holiday weekend.” Systems that won’t be available until 8 a.m. Thursday include the Universal Licensing System, Equipment Authorization System, Consolidated Database System and the Commission Registration System. FCBA also sent to its members a notice Tuesday announcing the continuing outage.

Charging government agencies for the spectrum they use is a tool to free up spectrum for the private sector, said FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly in a blog post Tuesday. Agency spectrum fees (ASF) are “a more nuanced ‘stick’ approach” compared to statutorily forcing agencies to relinquish spectrum and “continually” generate spectrum efficiencies, he said. ASFs would give government agencies incentive to minimize their spectrum footprints, to minimize the impact on their annual budgets, O’Rielly said. “The days of reserving or warehousing spectrum on the infinitesimal chance that a particular band might be used in the rarest of occasions need to be brought to an end,” he said. “To argue that federal agencies cannot get 15 to 20 percent more spectrally efficient, with the use of modern technologies and sharing of services and spectrum within the government, is ludicrous.” NTIA could set the rates for ASFs, using private sector auctions as a base, O’Rielly said. Using the numbers generated by NTIA, agencies' annual budget appropriation would be reduced by the amount required “via a sequestration-like structure,” he said. “I would leave any funds generated by the fees to Appropriators to reallocate as they see fit, but I could see where some would want the money to lower the overall discretionary caps, and therefore the deficit.” ASFs aren’t a good tool for commercial spectrum users because they already paid for their spectrum, O’Rielly said: “The correct thing to do is to focus on the government users.”

A federal court asked net neutrality litigants to make suggestions by Oct. 23 on the format for the scheduled Dec. 4 oral argument on industry challenges to the FCC order. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit asked the parties to recommend which issues should be addressed, their sequence, the total amount of time for the argument and how much time each issue should receive, said a letter Tuesday from the office of the court's clerk. The letter also asked the litigants to provide the names of counsels for petitioners and respondents -- and for intervenors on both sides if they wish to cede them time -- who would argue and who they represent. The litigants were also urged to work out a unified oral argument format for the court's consideration. Meanwhile, various groups -- saying they had received consent or no objections from the parties to the case -- filed four more notices Friday of their intent to file amicus briefs supporting the FCC net neutrality order, which also reclassified broadband Internet access service under Title II of the Communications Act. The Computer & Communications Industry and Mozilla said they would coordinate their brief with other amicus parties. A second notice was filed by Web developer Automattic, A Medium Corp., reddit, Squarespace, Twitter and Yelp, which said they wouldn't be able to join other amicus parties. A third notice was filed by Engine Advocacy, joined by Dwolla, Foursquare Labs, General Assembly Space, GitHub, Imgur, Keen Labs, Mapbox, Our Film Festival (also known as Fandor) and Shapeways. A fourth notice was filed by the Broadband Institute of California, Broadband Regulatory Clinic and The Media Alliance. The case is USTelecom v. FCC, No. 15-1063.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai elaborated on his criticisms of the net neutrality order in the latest issue of the Federal Communications Law Journal. The 55-page piece with 330 footnotes is titled, The Story of the FCC's Net Neutrality Decision and Why It Won't Stand Up in Court. Pai said the Internet had been so successful in the U.S. because "the private sector took risks" and "government stayed out of the way," giving industry parties freedom from utility-style regulation. "Unfortunately, the FCC recently replaced that freedom with government control," he said. Pai detailed what he saw as the order's many procedural and substantive defects -- including its broadband reclassification under Title II of the Communications Act -- that he believes will lead it to be overturned in court. If he's wrong and the order survives judicial review, "American consumers will be worse off," Pai said. "For these will be the consequences: higher broadband prices, slower speeds, less broadband deployment, less innovation, and fewer options for American consumers. Indeed, we already have seen evidence that investment and innovation that fomented the digital revolution has slowed as a result of the agency's power grab." Separately, The Free State Foundation emailed a statement Tuesday saying, "We Told You So: Title II Regulation Harms Investment," which cited a recent Forbes piece by Hal Singer, an economist at the Progressive Policy Institute, as showing that the FCC order led to an 8 percent drop in broadband provider infrastructure investment in the first six months of 2015 compared to the first half of 2014, with wireline investment down 12 percent.

FCC reorganization of Enforcement Bureau field offices is to become effective Tuesday. That’s the date of an announcement slated to run in the Federal Register. In July, the FCC approved a plan for reorganizing Enforcement Bureau field offices, which includes shutting some of the offices (see 1507160036).

Three more groups plan to defend the FCC net neutrality and broadband reclassification order against challenges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (USTelecom v. FCC, No. 15-1063). The American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a notice Friday, saying no parties to the case objected to their plans to file an amicus brief. The ACLU and EFF said their brief would discuss the importance of "de facto neutrality principles to the growth of the Internet" and explain how the FCC order "will support continued growth of the Internet as a platform for expression and innovation." They also said they would dispute arguments the order violates First Amendment speech rights, but "in fact advances the values at its core by safeguarding the right of individuals to freely speak and be heard online." Thursday, the Open Internet Civil Rights Coalition also filed a notice, saying all the parties had consented to its plans to file an amicus brief in defense of the order. The coalition said all its members -- which included the Center for Media Justice, Common Cause and National Hispanic Media Coalition -- participated in the FCC net neutrality proceeding "to promote the values of diversity inherent in the public interest standard of the Communications Act of 1934 and the First Amendment."

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioner Mignon Clyburn will speak at events in Miami and Jacksonville, Florida, organized by the commission's Connect2Health Task Force to promote broadband-enabled health technologies, the FCC said in a public notice Wednesday. The FCC leadership also will visit two telehealth centers while in Florida, the PN said. The Consumer Spotlight event is scheduled in Miami Sept. 30 and will feature Univision Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Juan Rivera, while the Broadband Health Summit will be in Jacksonville Oct. 1, with executives from the Mayo Clinic, Microsoft, MDLive and other connected health services, the commission said.