A key presentation at a May 30 closed-door FCC workshop examined whether and how ISPs “can satisfy consumers’ interest in their operation as open and nondiscriminatory conduits, while also ensuring the timely and high quality transmission of video content,” said an ex parte filing Monday by Jonathan Levy, deputy chief economist at the FCC. The filing in docket 14-57 (http://bit.ly/1o9uGsH) offers a few details from the workshop, also hosted by the Institute for Information Policy at Pennsylvania State University. Robert Frieden, a professor at the school, made the presentation and offered “a legal analysis confirming that ISPs can provide higher quality of service to promote the likelihood for speedy delivery of video content bitstreams without degradation caused by congestion and other factors,” Levy said. The opening part of the workshop was open to the public (CD May 30 p9).

Parties have to Aug. 14 to challenge the inclusion or exclusion of Census blocks (http://bit.ly/1rTxPzs) initially deemed eligible for Connect America Fund Phase II support, said the FCC Wireline Bureau in a public notice. The blocks were chosen because they're unserved by an unsubsidized competitor; “high cost” according to the adopted CAF cost model; and are located in price-cap territories, said the notice (http://bit.ly/1rcjErI) in Tuesday’s FCC Daily Digest. It said challenges may be based only on the first criterion: Whether the block is served by an unsubsidized competitor.

The FCC should clarify the process for discontinuing telecom services before the next hurricane season, Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld told an aide to Commissioner Mike O'Rielly June 25, said an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1lOtxc5) posted to docket 12-353 Monday. Feld expressed concern the commission has not ruled on a Communications Act Section 214(a) process for Verizon’s request to discontinue telecom services in Mantoloking, New Jersey, after Superstorm Sandy. “This has become increasingly important due to reports about copper in certain areas that is no longer being repaired, and that carriers are (a) shifting customers to wireless service, or (b) moving customers to copper while it’s continuing Title II TDM service and requiring customers to take “digital voice” service which is not yet classified, wrote Feld. He said “these reports combined with commission inaction have the potential to leave an increasing number of residents without access to basic phone service."

Frontier Communications’ landline business phone customers can get text messages, the company said in a Tuesday news release (http://bit.ly/TAmvMB). It said messages are sent simultaneously “to the business’ Internet-connected devices” and users can reply from any device using the telco’s texting app run by Zipwhip, a cloud technology company.

AT&T’s IP trials “are not what they purport to be” and are “an effort to cast aside a significant number of people and render poorer service to many others,” NASUCA commented (http://bit.ly/1pGUxh9) Monday in FCC docket 14-28. AT&T’s plans should be rejected until it addresses the concerns, NASUCA said. “What AT&T is seeking is a post-transition network in which it can jettison the customers in higher-cost, lower-revenue areas within exchanges.” Four percent of the 4,388 occupied units in Carbon Hill, Alabama, where AT&T Is testing the IP transition, will be “abandoned,” and 41 percent of Carbon Hill customers will be migrated to AT&T wireless, said the group. “In the parts of the wire centers where AT&T plans to withdraw wireline service, it will simply abandon the copper wire that is located there, after trying to sell it to the CLECs.” NASUCA “appears to be ill-informed about our trials, as their letter contains a number of inaccuracies,” an AT&T spokesman said. “For example, we are on the record saying that we are responsible for ensuring customers are connected before discontinuing existing TDM services. AT&T will continue to work constructively with the FCC and other policy makers to understand the dynamics of the IP transition and how they will impact consumers."

Waivers of minimum standards for telecommunications relay services (TRS) have been extended until the FCC completes a pending rulemaking into whether the rules are still needed, a Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau and Wireline Bureau order said (http://bit.ly/1m34dP8). The waivers were set to expire July 1, said the order posted Friday in docket 03-123. Waivers were also extended until July 1, 2015, of certain TRS mandatory minimum standards for certain video relay service and IP Relay providers.

The deadline to file comments on the North American Numbering Council’s recommendation for a local number portability administrator vendor was extended to July 25, the FCC Wireline Bureau said in a notice (http://bit.ly/1m34dP8). The deadline to file reply comments was extended to Aug. 8, said the notice posted Friday in docket 09-109.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel will make opening remarks at a July 9 agency workshop on Inmate Calling Services, the Wireline Bureau said in a public notice posted to docket 12-375 Friday (http://bit.ly/1z2Jf8K). Panels will explore the impacts of the 2013 overhaul, cost drivers at different types of correctional facilities, ancillary charges and new technologies. The session is planned to for 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the commission meeting room.

Mescalero Apache Telecom officials expressed concerns that the $250 per line monthly USF cap could stifle the development of basic and advanced services on the Mescalero Apache Reservation, during a June 25 meeting with officials from the telco, tribe and the Office of Native Affairs and Policy, said an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1wRC69k) in docket 10-90. The parties also discussed the IP transition and the possibility of appropriating $50 million of unused Connect America Funds for the Tribal Broadband Fund, said the filing posted Thursday. A draft FCC order would start tests of CAF Phase II funds for broadband experiments. (See separate report above in this issue.)

Smaller companies have little market power for interconnection with larger networks or exchange of data controlled by larger content providers, NTCA said in an ex parte filing posted last week in dockets 05-337, 12-353 and 14-28 (http://bit.ly/1sKQXny). The lack of transparency in the markets can undermine their effectiveness and often appears to result in a paradigm where “biggest always wins with costs and transport burdens being pushed ‘downward’ onto smaller entities,” it said. Solving rural transport and interconnection cost issues through carefully constructed rules for traffic exchange and refined universal service support mechanisms “must be seen as an essential component of a 21st century broadband-focused universal service policy,” it said. The filing recounted a meeting with Matthew DelNero, Wireline Bureau deputy chief.