Building 10 Mbps broadband downstream under Connect America Fund Phase II would cost between $5 billion and $6 billion more than building 4 Mbps, “vastly more” than the CAF funding that would be made available over even seven years, CenturyLink officials told aides to FCC Commissioners Ajit Pai and Jessica Rosenworcel Dec. 1 and aides to commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Mike O’Rielly Dec. 2, according to an ex parte filing made available by the company. The filing hadn't been posted in docket 10-90 Friday. Industry sources have said the CAF draft order, scheduled to be taken up by the commission on Thursday, would raise the minimum broadband speeds required under CAF from 4 Mbps to 10 Mbps, but would increase the length of funding under the proposal from five years to six years, with the provider having an option for a seventh year (see 1411260040). Saying that’s not enough to offset the additional cost of providing higher speeds, CenturyLink Senior Vice President-Federal Regulatory Affairs Melissa Newman and Vice President-Federal Regulatory Affairs Jeffrey Lanning said CAF funding also doesn't include “any provision for operating expense or replacement capital expenditure in these sparsely-populated, high-cost areas.” As a result, “it is likely that CenturyLink would find that it could accept such statewide offers of support in some states but not in others,” the ex parte said. “CenturyLink recognizes that it may be appropriate to increase the CAF II obligation to 10 Mbps downstream, but only if the Commission also adopts commensurate changes in the construction period, after-tax funding, and deployment flexibility to meet the increased cost associated with the increased speed,” the filing said. Distributing Phase II funding through auctions instead of statewide offers of support would lead to “considerable delays in broadband deployment as it will take many months to adopt rules, conduct auctions, and issue certifications before construction can begin,” CenturyLink said. “In addition, by their nature, auctions will lead to ‘cherry picking’ by providers, leaving many areas behind without any CAF II provider,” the filing said.

Rural broadband experiment bidders provisionally selected to serve 26,867 census blocks in 25 states and Puerto Rico were announced by the FCC Wireline Bureau in a public notice Friday. The bureau must now determine whether each selected applicant has demonstrated it has the technical and financial qualifications to successfully complete the proposed project within the required time frames and is in compliance with all statutory and regulatory requirements, the notice said. The notice said 19 entities are seeking support to build networks capable of delivering 100 Mbps downstream and 25 Mbps upstream in census blocks in Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico and Texas. Another 12 entities are seeking support to build networks capable of delivering 10 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream in census blocks in Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Washington. Nine entities are seeking support to build networks capable of delivering 10 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream in selected census blocks that are extremely costly to serve in California, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, North Dakota, Kansas, South Dakota and Texas.

Granting Neustar’s petition to rebid the selection of the next local number portability administrator would "substantially delay or derail entirely the LNPA selection process, to the detriment of the public -- while only one party (Neustar) stands to gain,” CTIA said in a reply comment filed Wednesday to the FCC on the petitions. With the current contract due to end in June, CTIA said “further inaction will needlessly cost users of the LNP database, and ultimately all U.S. telephone consumers, scores or even hundreds of millions of dollars. Indeed, each day of delay in implementing a new LNPA contract beyond its ... expiration will impose more than $1 million of unnecessary costs on consumers." The group also said Neustar had not objected to the selection procedure previously: “Neustar is not ‘uncertain’ about the LNPA selection process and procedures it previously supported; instead, it ‘merely disagree[s] with them.’” Neustar's reply contested the cost of delay (see 1412030046). Telcordia, recommended to win the contract, pressed for a decision soon.

Comments are due Dec. 12 and replies on Dec. 19 on eight petitions seeking a retroactive waiver on a requirement fax ads include an opt-out notice, said the FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau in a public notice posted Monday in docket 02-278. The commission in October affirmed the requirement, but acknowledging confusion, granted several companies retroactive waivers. The commission said it would consider other petitions for waivers (see 1410300047). Comments are being sought on waivers requested by ACT Inc., Alma Lasers, AmericansourceBergen, Amicus Mediation & Arbitration Group, ASD Specialty, Emery Wilson Corp., Den-Mat Holdings and Howmedica Osteonics.

The next local number portability administrator should “retain the same level of functionality and service currently offered” without the need for investing in entirely new infrastructure, Kathleen Abernathy, Frontier Communications executive vice president-external affairs, wrote the FCC Wednesday, said an ex parte notice posted Friday in docket 09-109. The LNPA must be able to support disaster recovery and emergency preparedness, ecosystem monitoring and management and mass porting capabilities, Frontier said. Retrofitting the system to include those functions later “would be unacceptable," the filing said. The cost of providing LNPA services is a significant factor, Frontier said, but “should not be the deciding factor when so much is at stake.” The transition to a new LNPA “simply to maintain the status-quo -- a seamless porting process -- will be costly for all, and disproportionately more costly for smaller carriers,” the company said. The “disruption caused by a potentially poor transition and faulty LNP process will not only require additional funds, but runs the risk of causing significant damage to the system that enables a competitive market for voice services,” Frontier said. Telcordia, seeking to win the LNPA contract from Neustar, is "confident that the FCC will be keeping the best interests of consumers at the forefront as it finalizes the LNPA selection," Wiltshire Grannis telecom lawyer John Nakahata said on Friday. Frontier's comments "as well as the accumulation of comments from the public safety community, show the growing consensus that the botched LNPA vendor selection must be fixed by the FCC," Neustar said in a statement. "The only voices in support of Ericcson came from the same large companies that made the recommendation at the expense of small- and medium-sized companies, public safety interests, and industry competition."

Cisco supports increasing E-rate funding and believes it's “critical” to ensure funding for connections inside schools, CEO John Chambers told FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler in a phone call Monday, said an ex parte filing posted Wednesday in docket 13-184. Chambers also told Wheeler it’s important to find a “compromise” in the net neutrality debate “that will be good for all parts of industry as well as for consumers,” said the company. A regulatory structure “designed for monopoly telephone services is not appropriate for the vibrant Internet of today" and the FCC "should formulate balanced rules to protect the open Internet,” Cisco said. In a separate meeting Tuesday, Jeffrey Campbell, Cisco vice president-government affairs, told an aide to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel there’s still a “risk for insufficiently funding internal connections to the classroom because funds are only made available for internal connections after all requests for connections to the buildings are funded,” said an ex parte filing. Raising the E-rate cap would alleviate the problem in the short term, but “it is not clear that it will be solved for the future,” Cisco said. One possibility is to cap new funds for fiber construction, to ensure funding for internal connections, Cisco said. The commission is scheduled to take up Wheeler’s proposed $1.5 billion E-rate spending cap increase at its Dec. 11 meeting.

Three waivers of requirements on eligible telecom carriers to re-certify eligibility of Lifeline subscribers annually were granted by Ryan Palmer, chief of the FCC Wireline Bureau's Telecom Access Policy Division, said an order Tuesday, posted in docket 11-42. The ETCs’ certification processes were sufficient to ensure all Lifeline subscribers are eligible, the order said. The waivers were granted for a petition filed by Budget PrePay, another by SE Acquisitions, and a third by Cricket Communications and Leap Wireless International. A waiver also was granted to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, which sought an extension for the date of the uniform eligibility criteria for ETCs in the state. The PUC requested additional time to implement the requirement. Dismissed was NTCH’s petition seeking reconsideration of the bureau’s deadline for broadband pilot applications because the deadline has passed and the pilot program will be ending shortly, the order said.

The reply period for Neustar’s petitions to rebid the Local Number Portability Administrator contract was extended from Nov. 28 to Dec. 3, the FCC Wireline Bureau said in a public notice Tuesday in docket 09-109. “The extension will allow parties more time to reply to comments on Neustar’s petitions, and reflects the upcoming federal holiday.” Telcordia, which was nominated by the North American Numbering Council to win the contract, and telcos have been pushing the commission to award the contract this year (see 1411240055). The extension shouldn’t keep the agency from acting in 2014, said Wilshire Grannis telecom lawyer John Nakahata, who represents Telcordia. "This is like pardoning the Thanksgiving turkey. Everyone gets to enjoy the holiday weekend."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge were among more than 35 pro-net neutrality organizations from 19 countries to join to create a new joint website, an EFF news release said Wednesday. The site will contain details of net neutrality laws, policies and practices globally to be used by advocates, the release said. The group, called the Global Net Neutrality Coalition, also agreed on a common definition for net neutrality -- that it “requires that the Internet be maintained as an open platform, on which network providers treat all content, applications and services equally, without discrimination,” the release said. "We love the openness and accessibility of the [Internet], but we worry about it coming under threat from those who want to surround it with gates and toll booths,” said Jeremy Malcolm, EFF senior global policy analyst, in another release about the coalition from Access, one of the groups involved. “Net neutrality is important for all of the world's internet users, and it is just as essential for countries with robust internet infrastructure as it is for those still building infrastructure,” said Carolina Rossini, Public Knowledge vice president-international policy, in the Access release.

About three hours after FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said at the Nov. 21 commission meeting that the agency needs to be careful in adopting net neutrality rules because “the big dogs will sue," (see 1411210040), a Verizon executive emailed him to say there’s one way to avoid having ISPs barking in court: Communications Act Section 706, an ex parte filing said. Saying he’d seen reports of Wheeler’s “view of the inevitability of litigation challenging the Commission’s eventual Open Internet rules,” Randal Milch, Verizon general counsel, included a blog post he’d written. Milch’s post describes why “Open Internet rules based on Section 706, and which prohibit 'harmful paid prioritization,’ will not be the object of a successful court challenge -- by Verizon or anyone else,” said the email, posted as an ex parte filing Tuesday in docket 14-28. Under a Title II approach, “the ISPs, and perhaps some in the tech industry, will have no choice but to fight the sudden reversal of two decades of settled law,” Milch wrote in the Nov. 4 blog post. Title II proponents could also sue “if the FCC forbears from too many arcane common carrier rules for their taste (and to keep their fund raising pipeline flowing),” he wrote. Should the FCC take a Section 706 approach, Milch’s blog post said, “all of the major ISPs and their trade associations have conceded that the FCC can lawfully prohibit harmful paid prioritization on this basis -- effectively waiving their ability to challenge the FCC’s authority to do so and taking them out of the litigation path.” USTelecom has said it would be “compelled” (see 1410310050), and AT&T has said it would “expect” to challenge a Title II approach in court. Opinions varied among those involved in the debate about whether Wheeler’s comment revealed the path the agency is considering. AT&T, USTelecom and Verizon declined to comment. One Title II opponent said Wheeler’s concern about a court challenge indicated the agency is moving toward some form of a Title II approach because the prospects of an ISP legal challenge would be moot under a Section 706 approach. Free State Foundation President Randolph May disagreed in an email to us, but said “I am hopeful he's beginning to recognize that Title II, even in hybrid form, is just way too problematical.” Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld said he didn’t read much into the remark, describing it as a "'Washington poker face.’ Wheeler is well aware that any statement he makes will get scrutinized for clues. But he can't refrain from comment because people would try to figure out what his refusal to say anything means. So 'someone will sue, so we want the best Order possible' is about as safe as a prediction as possible,” Feld said. Free Press, in a letter to the FCC, posted Monday as an ex parte filing, again disputed the methodology used by economists Kevin Hassett and Robert Shapiro in a study submitted to the commission by USTelecom, saying capital investments by broadband providers could decline by as much as nearly a third over the next five years if the FCC takes a Title II approach. Hassett and Shapiro defended their study to us at the time (see 1411190035).