USTelecom Senior Vice President-Law and Policy Jonathan Banks expressed concern about the speed metric used in the FCC’s 2014 Measuring Broadband America Report on Fixed Broadband during a July 16 meeting that broadband providers, public interest groups and others had with commission staff, according to an ex parte report (http://bit.ly/1o0m8lW) posted Friday. Banks questioned using the metric of whether users experienced the advertised speed 80 percent of the time, the report said. The FCC felt comfortable with the measure but it could be discussed further at the next meeting of the group, said Walter Johnson, chief of the FCC’s Electromagnetic Compatibility Division, according to the filing. The FCC is putting in place a policy to release raw broadband speed data to the public every six months, to ensure that the release of data was not linked to the schedule for the report, Johnson said, according to the filing. The commission is also broadening its scope to include performance of video services, the filing quoted Johnson as saying.

The number of homes connected with fiber in North America grew from 9.7 million in May 2013 to 10.4 million this year, said a survey by RVA for the Fiber to the Home (FTTH) Council released Wednesday. Users reported spending five hours a day at home online, using 5.5 Internet-ready devices in the home, a council news release said. Broadband users under 35 report getting just more than half of their video content from online sources, said the release. The importance of broadband to consumers “increases with each passing year,” said RVA President Michael Render in the release. End-to-end fiber networks “are becoming more and more differentiated from other types of broadband in terms of performance, use, and perception,” he said. Speed testing during the survey found that FTTH residences have five times faster download speeds and 23 times faster upload speeds, the release said. FTTH users spend 49 fewer hours annually waiting for applications to load than do users with the slowest type of broadband.

The FCC should ban pay-to-play arrangements through a combination of Section 706 and, if necessary, Title II, AOL Chief Counsel for Global Public Policy Leigh Freund, Pantelis Michalopoulos of Steptoe & Johnson, and Andrew Guhr, counsel to AOL, told officials from FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s office, the Wireline Bureau, and the legislative affairs and media relations offices July 17, an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1nRY84x) posted Tuesday said. The agency should “adopt firmer and simpler rules,” including bans on pay-to-play when a broadband access provider is affiliated with an upstream edge provider, when the provider has market power, or is in the business of charging end-users, the filing said. All other pay-to-play arrangements would be subject to prior approval by the commission, AOL said. The rules would be sufficiently different from common carrier rules to pass muster, AOL said. Title II should be a last resort if Section 706 rules prove insufficient, the filing said.

Permanent rate caps on inmate calls should be the same for all inmate calling services (ICS) providers, Securus said in filing (http://bit.ly/1nNFavQ) a required cost study with the FCC posted in docket 12-375 on Friday. Rate caps should also be set at higher than the average costs or facilities with higher than average costs will not be served, Securus said. Commissions charged by local governments to ICS providers, which are passed on to callers, can raise rates by 40 percent, and any attempt to rein in rates should address the commissions, the filing said. That said, addressing commissions represents a public policy question of whether jail costs should be paid by the public or subsidized by the friends and family who pay for inmate calls, Securus said. Any elimination of commissions should include a transition period to allow facilities to find other revenue streams, the company said.

Title II common carriage is a highly deregulatory and flexible framework, designed to preserve core nondiscrimination principles even in competitive telecom markets, Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood told aides to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn Wednesday, said an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1mwluwk) posted in docket 14-28 Monday. Prior commissions “were wrong” in categorizing broadband as an information service, and the circumstances that led to the designation have since changed, Wood said at the meetings. Common Carrier status also had no negative impact on broadband deployment, “and Section 706 cannot serve as a basis for enforceable protections against broadband providers’ blocking, discrimination, or unreasonable terminating access fees,” Wood told the aides, according to the filing. Title II should be a last resort if Section 706 rules prove not viable or inadequate, said Tekedra Mawakana, Yahoo global head of public policy, and Margaret Nagle, Yahoo head of U.S. government affairs, in a meeting July 16 with an aide to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, and at a separate meeting the same day with aides to Chairman Tom Wheeler. Preserving a free and open Internet is particularly important as more users access online content on smartphones or tablets, Yahoo said at the meetings. Attorneys Andrew Guhr and Pantelis Michalopoulos, both of Steptoe & Johnson, also participated in the meeting with Wheeler’s aides. Guhr participated in the meeting with Rosenworcel’s aide.

Verizon has admitted it’s deliberately constraining capacity from network providers like Level 3 that chose “to deliver video content requested by Verizon’s own paying broadband consumers,” a Level 3 executive said last week in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1zRazaA). The post by Mark Taylor, vice president-content and media, responded to a Verizon blog post (http://vz.to/1mDnTcythat) that attributed congestion to Netflix’s interconnection with the telco’s border router (CD July 11 p18). Verizon’s post included a diagram of a network that has lots of unused capacity at the busiest time of day, Taylor said. The telco “freely admitted that it has the ability to deliver lots of Netflix streams to broadband customers requesting them, at no extra cost,” he said. But it has shown that it prefers not to deliver these streams, “even though its subscribers have paid it to do so,” he said. The utilization of all of those thousands of links across the Level 3 network is much the same as Verizon’s depiction of its own network, he said. “We have to maintain adequate headroom because that’s what we sell to customers.” The congestion occurs where Level 3 and Verizon networks interconnect, he said. Verizon confirmed that everything between the router in its network and its subscribers is uncongested, so it “in fact has plenty of capacity sitting there waiting to be used,” he said. The congestion can be fixed in about five minutes simply by connecting up more 10 Gbps ports on those routers, he said. Verizon has refused to do so, he said. “So Verizon, not Level 3 or Netflix, causes the congestion."

The future of phone numbers isn’t getting enough attention during the IP transition, panelists said at an Information Technology and Innovation Foundation discussion Wednesday. An early sign of the issues that could arise is that VoIP has proved to be an attractive way to make robocalls, using spoof numbers that show up on caller ID, said FCC Chief Technology Officer Henning Schulzrinne. “We'll be swamped by spoofing” if the issue of validating phone calls isn’t dealt with, he said. Whether machines that, like traffic signals now, use phone numbers to operate should be assigned numbers after the transition is another issue, he said. If not, local governments with traffic light systems that use numbers will have to adapt, said Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld. Issues will be resolved, but transitions often carry problems, said Tom McGarry, a vice president in Neustar’s Advanced Technology Group. Making wireless numbers portable was initially “somewhat of a disaster,” he said. “People’s numbers were being lost, service was being turned off.” Most people assume the nation’s phone number system will always work and pay little heed, but not paying attention to the technical issues involved during the transition could lead to problems gradually popping up “like potholes in the road,” Schulzrinne said.

Phone company Net One International could be fined $1.6 million for allegedly billing consumers for unauthorized charges and late fees even though the customers had already closed their accounts and paid their final bills, the FCC said in a news release (http://fcc.us/Wfpa0n) Tuesday. The FCC issued a notice of apparent liability (NAL) to the company (http://bit.ly/1wrdoL4). “Shaking down consumers by billing them for unwanted charges on closed accounts is intolerable,” said Enforcement Bureau Acting Chief Travis LeBlanc. “When a consumer says ‘I am done, cancel my account,’ they mean it. Period.” Based on its review of over 100 consumer complaints, the FCC found that over several years, Net One repeatedly billed consumers long after the consumers had canceled service, paid their final bills, and switched to other carriers, the release said. In some instances, the company still tried to negotiate additional fees and charges after customers paid final bills, and Net One threatened customers with debt collection if consumers failed to pay charges they had not authorized, the FCC said. The conduct was “egregious,” the FCC said. In January, the Enforcement Bureau affirmed a $25,000 fine issued to Net One in 2011 for failing to fully respond to the bureau’s inquiries about cramming allegations, according to the release. Monday, the FCC issued a $7.2 million NAL to Optic Internet Protocol over allegations similar to what Net One faces (CD July 15 p13). A phone call and an email to Net One were not immediately returned.

Optic Internet Protocol faces a potential $7.62 million FCC fine for allegedly switching consumers’ long-distance phone services without authorization, billing customers for unauthorized charges and submitting falsified evidence to regulatory officials as “proof” of consumers’ authorizations, said an agency news release Monday (http://bit.ly/1oY2jhC). “Cheating and lying to consumers are unacceptable, predatory business practices,” said Travis LeBlanc, Enforcement Bureau acting chief. The FCC issued a notice of apparent liability to the company (http://bit.ly/1js1pfv). Optic provides 1+ dialing long-distance service, the release said. Consumers’ long-distance service was switched to Optic so long-distance calls are carried over Optic’s network and billed by Optic, the FCC said. Optic allegedly switched complainants’ preferred long-distance carriers and billed the consumers for long-distance service by placing charges for its set-up fee and recurring monthly fee on their local phone bills, the agency said. Optic typically charged customers a $3.95 or $4.95 one-time set-up fee and a monthly service fee of $4.95, $8.95 or $29.95, said the FCC. It said the agency reviewed more than 150 complaints against Optic that consumers filed with the agency, the FTC, state regulatory agencies and the Better Business Bureau. Optic wasn’t immediately available for comment.

FCC approval of the E-rate order (CD July 14 p1) is “a big win for students and teachers everywhere,” EducationSuperHighway said in a statement Friday. “By connecting our nation’s students through Wi-Fi, this order offers a whole new world of educational opportunities in the classroom and beyond.” The group of nonprofits, foundations, associations, state education departments and others said it works to ensure U.S. primary and secondary schools have sufficient Internet infrastructure.