Martha Wright “showed the power and ability of one person to make a difference,” FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said in a statement after Wright’s death Sunday. A 2012 petition to reform high inmate calling rates by Wright, a Washington, D.C., woman whose grandson was imprisoned (see 1209260042), set into motion interim interstate price caps approved by the commission last year (see 1308120049). She died as the commission is considering taking further steps in a rulemaking, including making the interstate caps permanent and adopting intrastate caps (see 1410170047). Wright “had the courage to stand up and petition the FCC to change an untenable and unreasonable rate structure for inmate calling services,” said Clyburn, who pledged to “continue the fight in her honor so that all grandmothers, family members and friends can afford to stay connected with loved ones behind prison walls.”

The father of the Texas woman who died after her young daughter was unable to reach 911 will speak at a Friday event in Marshall, Texas, organized by FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai (see 1501120026) on improvements being made to reaching emergency personnel, Pai’s office said in a Tuesday news release. Pai in January sent letters to the CEOs of major hotel chains, after a December 2013 incident in which the child tried to dial 911 when her mother, Kari Dunn, was being strangled by her estranged husband (see 1401210049). The child had not first dialed 9 for an outside line, so the call did not go through, Pai said. In addition to Dunn’s father, Hank Hunt, Rep. Louis Gohmert, R-Texas, and Marshall Police Chief Jesus Campa will speak at the event.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s proposal to raise the benchmark for judging the availability of broadband to 25 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream is facing opposition from Verizon. The proposal will be added to the commission’s Jan. 29 meeting for a vote, an agency official told us Friday. Increasing the standard in determining the adequacy of broadband deployment, from 4/1 to 25/3, would be a “large” shift, Maggie McCready, Verizon vice president-federal regulatory affairs, and William Johnson, associate general counsel, told Wheeler aide Renee Gregory and an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn in separate meetings Tuesday, said an ex parte filing. A draft FCC report on the progress of broadband deployment to be voted on at the meeting concludes that deployment, based on the higher standard, isn't occurring in a “just and reasonable fashion" (see 1501070046). Verizon officials disagreed. They said an assessment shouldn't discount the growth in mobile Internet access, “an important source of broadband connectivity that is being widely embraced by consumers, and, particularly with the widespread availability of 4G LTE,” the commission's report should reflect deployment of these services. The draft report calls the 4-year-old 4/1 standard “dated,” and said 53 percent of rural Americans, and 17 percent nationally, lack access to broadband at 25/3 Mbps speeds. A key consideration is the growth in streaming video and audio, which now comprises 63 percent of downstream traffic, an agency fact sheet about the proposal said. The commission also will vote on issuing a notice of inquiry on how to improve broadband deployment.

If the FCC takes a Communications Act Title II net neutrality approach and opts not to forbear from Sections 201 and 202, it should, at most, rely on the sections only to provide additional authority for transparency, no-blocking, and antidiscrimination rules, CEO Michael Powell and other NCTA officials told agency General Counsel Jonathan Sallet, Philip Verveer, senior counselor to Chairman Tom Wheeler, and other officials Monday, said an ex parte filing posted Wednesday in docket 14-28. Applying Sections 201 and 202 beyond what’s needed to enforce net neutrality rules “would expose broadband providers to the investment-reducing and innovation-chilling risks that have sparked vehement opposition to reclassification,” NCTA said. It’s “particularly important to forbear from enforcing Section 201(b),” the filing said, because “the directive to ensure that all ‘charges’ and ‘practices’ are ‘just and reasonable’ would subject every aspect of a broadband provider’s business to regulatory second guessing and micromanagement.” President Barack Obama’s call, while endorsing reclassification, to forbear from rate regulation “cannot be accomplished without forbearing from Section 201(b) -- as that provision is the primary source of statutory authority for the FCC to engage in rate regulation,” NCTA said. The association stressed it continues to oppose reclassification, and wants forbearance from all requirements if the commission adopts the Title II approach. Forbearance also should be done concurrent with any approval of reclassification, NCTA said. Calls by some to suspend sections of Title II, while the commission decides whether to forbear from them, “would deprive industry participants of much-needed regulatory certainty,” NCTA said. Also attending the meetings were James Assey, executive vice president; Rick Chessen, senior vice president-law and regulatory policy; Steven Morris, associate general counsel; Latham Watkins’ Matthew Murchison and Matthew Brill; and members of the commission’s general counsel’s office and the Wireline and Wireless bureaus. NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield urged Sallet Monday not to forbear from Section 254 because it could block the agency’s ability to require broadband customers to begin contributing to the USF (see 1501120039), said an ex parte filing. Brendan Kasper, Vonage senior regulatory counsel, and Morgan Lewis’ Joshua Bobeck and William Wilhelm urged an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn Monday not to forbear from Sections 201, 202 and 208, the company’s ex parte filing said. Vonage backed Google’s position to not forbear from Section 224, which gives broadband providers access to utility poles and other infrastructure needed for deployment (see 1412310041).

The FCC’s requirement that formal complaints under Section 208 of the Communications Act and Section 224 pole attachment complaints be filed electronically took effect Monday, an Enforcement Bureau public notice said. The commission’s order in November implemented a 2011 order requiring the docketing and electronic filing of all new Section 208 and Section 224 complaints (see 1410220045).

Edge companies’ stocks are “as vulnerable to being devalued by the FCC’s move to Title II” in a net neutrality order as broadband providers’ stocks, wrote Anna-Maria Kovacs, visiting senior policy scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Business and Public Policy, in a paper released Tuesday. “As the FCC engages in its Procrustean task of trying to fit [broadband Internet access providers] into Title II, it is unlikely to be able to keep the knife away from content delivery networks (CDNs), peering and transit providers, and providers of VOIP, texting, tweeting, social media, and content,” Kovacs wrote. “These entities, by equally arbitrary means, could also be sliced and diced into something they never intended to be. All parts of the Internet ecosystem are at risk of being forced to deconstruct their service offerings. ... No one will be safe.” Kovacs urged Congress to step in.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai will give a progress report Jan. 23 on his efforts to improve access to emergency personnel when dialing 911, a news release said. Pai in January sent letters to the CEOs of major hotel chains, after a December 2013 incident in which a child tried to dial 911 when her mother was being strangled by her estranged husband (see 1401210049). The child had not first dialed 9 for an outside line, so the call did not go through, Pai said at the time. Pai’s news conference will be at the Marshall (Texas) Police Department, where the child’s 911 call would have gone, Pai’s release said. It was unclear if the event will be webcast.

States “remain in the best position to oversee and investigate” intrastate inmate calling services rates and service, NARUC said in comments posted in docket 12-375 Monday. State authority “is clear,” NARUC said, and additional federal actions on ICS “are unlikely to survive judicial review and are likely to undermine existing State actions to address this issue.” NARUC supports FCC action to regulate interstate ICS calls, the group said. Fifty-one former state attorneys general urged the agency to regulate “high intrastate” ICS rates, a letter posted Friday said. They wrote that in their former positions, they “came to understand virtually all aspects of state government. Most of us were both criminal prosecutors while at the same time represented state departments of corrections. We fully understand the pressures on state budgets and how government often struggles to come up with enough funding to do even the simplest of things.” But they said they were “fully aware that 95 [percent] of the 2.2 million people held in prison and jails in the United States will one day be returned to society. We know that recidivism rates are high and that we as a society should do all that we can to lower that rate. Studies indicate that prisoners who maintain close connections with their families and children while incarcerated have lower recidivism rates.”

Google is right to argue in a Dec. 30 letter to the FCC that net neutrality rules shouldn’t interfere with cable companies’ pole attachment rights, NCTA said in its own letter to the commission Friday. Google, though, was wrong in arguing that the reclassification of broadband to Title II is necessary to preserve those rights. Google said Google Fiber “‘lacks federal access rights pursuant to Section 224 because it offers an Internet Protocol video service that is not traditional cable TV,’” NCTA said. But the “law is clear” that facilities-based providers of Internet Protocol television services “do qualify as cable operators under the Communications Act,” which defines a cable operator as “one who ‘provides cable service over a cable system,’ without any reference to the technology," NCTA said.

The FCC said it partially granted the Prison Policy Initiative’s request for additional time to comment on the commission’s inmate calling service overhaul Further NPRM. The deadline for filing comments is now Jan. 12, replies Jan. 27, the FCC said Friday in the Federal Register.