The FCC teed up a Global Tel*Link waiver petition seeking an extra 90 days to implement a "no minimum balance requirement" for prisons so it corresponds with the implementation deadline for jails -- duties that were imposed in the agency's inmate calling service order (see 1510220059). The current ICS provider deadline for implementing the requirement for prisons is March 17. "If the waiver were granted, GTL would have until June 20, 2016, to comply with rule 64.6100(a) for both prisons and jails," the Wireline Bureau said in a public notice Wednesday in docket 12-375. Initial comments on the petition are due Jan. 25, replies Feb. 1. The rule says "no provider shall institute a minimum balance requirement for a Consumer to use Debit or Prepaid calling."

AT&T compared FCC partial relief for telcos to a kid shoveling only half a sidewalk after a snowstorm. In a blog post Wednesday, Vice President-Federal Regulatory Hank Hultquist noted the FCC in December partially denied a USTelecom petition that the agency forbear from applying various regulations, including a request that price-cap ILECs be relieved of universal service obligations where they no longer receive USF support (see 1512170052). “In explaining this denial, the FCC sounds an awful lot like a kid explaining why he shoveled only part of the sidewalk,” he said. “Of course, the FCC knows that it has not provided sufficient universal service support for these high-cost and extremely high-cost areas. But it hopes to escape its responsibility by invoking the farcical claim that price cap ILECs continue to be 'eligible' for other universal service support (e.g., Lifeline) in these areas.” Hultquist termed “ridiculous” FCC arguments that USTelecom didn't make the case for USF relief and that AT&T data was lacking because the agency didn’t adopt a related cost model. "If the FCC doesn’t want to fund universal service obligations in these areas, it should just get rid of them, as USTelecom asked it to do,” he said. “Unfortunately, the FCC appears determined to try to maintain the obligations without taking responsibility for them. I think it’s time for someone -- like an appellate court or Congress -- to tell them to pick up the shovel and do the job right.” AT&T has challenged the order and a related previous order in court (see 1601110036). The FCC had no comment Wednesday. Chairman Tom Wheeler had proposed some extra USF voice support for carriers, but Commissioner Ajit Pai said it was inadequate and an agency majority didn't vote for it.

The FCC Wireline Bureau approved Hawaiian Telcom's compliance plan, said a public notice posted Tuesday in docket 12-61. Hawaiian Telcom's plan appropriately addressed the conditions that are required for the requested forbearance, the bureau said. The telco has been granted forbearance from cost assignment rules, effective immediately. The one exception is the condition involving the affiliate transaction rule, the PN said.

NTCA said many rural carriers can't estimate their company-specific impact of the FCC’s “potential bifurcated approach” to updating rate-of-return USF mechanisms for broadband coverage. Reform details remain unsettled, the RLEC group said, and “average schedule” carriers have access only to “industrywide aggregate ‘price-outs’ that” are unlikely to reflect their particular results, and to their own spreadsheets consisting of “hundreds, if not thousands, of inputs,” which also remain works in progress. “We encouraged the Commission to remain open to simpler, more straightforward ways of achieving the same goals of reform via 'modules' (e.g., new limits or policy changes) that could be applied to any distributional mechanism rather than creating substantial new complexity by remaking the underlying distribution calculations,” NTCA said in a filing on an FCC meeting it had that was posted Monday in docket 10-90. It backed “sensible transitions” to how the costs of prior investments would be treated -- such as operating expense limits -- under an overhaul, including the proposed bifurcated approach, which would generally treat old investments under old rules and new investments under new rules. It's unclear how new limits or caps on prior investments, most of all sunk costs, would be consistent with the bifurcated approach, the group said, but if they're instituted, carriers would need time to adjust.

The FCC should require industry to do more to ensure emergency communications, consumer groups said, responding to critics of their petition to reconsider tech transition backup power rules (see 1601040056). “The public safety is very much at stake. Back-up power requirements are necessary,” said the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates and others in a filing Tuesday in docket 14-174. The FCC rules require fixed providers to give consumers the option of purchasing eight hours -- and 24 hours within three years -- of backup power capability (see 1508100041). The groups said it wasn’t surprising that industry parties opposed the petition, which seeks to require landline carriers to provide greater backup power guarantees. The opponents believe a stronger mandate would be too burdensome and 911 service should be optional and customers should pay for that reliability, the consumer groups said. “But access to 911 is mandated by regulation, and the costs of that access were spread throughout the industry and consumers … just as the cost of back-up power would be,” they said. “The decision was made years ago that the public safety embodied in 911 should not be optional." The groups compared backup power to having seat belts in cars, which is not optional. The opponents stress that many consumers rely solely on wireless voice services, the consumer groups said, but many others use IP-based voice services over cable, fiber and other landline networks. “Many consumers are thus forced to turn to the IP-based services for replacing legacy services,” they said. “The question is whether these IP-based services, like the legacy services they replace, should be designed and engineered to work in times of emergency. If the enduring values are to be preserved, the answer must be affirmative.” Wireless isn’t always available and where it is, it often isn’t reliable and can become overloaded in emergencies, they said.

FCC “asymmetric regulations” are impeding wireline broadband competition by constraining the ability of telcos to invest in new fiber networks, said a study released by the American Consumer Institute Center for Citizen Research. ACI said ILECs aren't the dominant providers of voice, data or video services, but they're subject to stricter regulation. That's “stifling” their broadband deployment, said an ACI release Monday, criticizing the commission's broadband reclassification under Title II of the Communications Act. While an AT&T request to do IP transition trials offered an opportunity to provide ILECs relief and level the playing field, "the FCC embraced its new Title II power over broadband services by expanding its regulations," the study said, citing the commission's August tech transition rules (see 1508100019). ILECs that build all-fiber networks “must keep their copper networks running” for some time, creating duplicative costs that discourage new deployment, the release said. “With these new rules in place, ILECs have sustained back-to-back declines in the total number of broadband subscribers, despite continued growth in the overall broadband market,” said Steve Pociask, ACI president and co-author of the study. “This study shows that imposing asymmetric regulations affects broadband competition, reduces broadband investment and innovation, increases wireline concentration and reduces consumer choice.” ACI is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational and research institute that's "100% supported by public donations and a few public (not private) foundations," emailed Pociask Tuesday. "Donations are tax deductible and, according to IRS rules, this means that no one 'pays for' or sponsors a study. We are also not an advocacy group (501c4)," he said.

AT&T asked a federal court to consolidate and set briefing on its legal challenges to two FCC orders affecting price-cap telco USF obligations. The request came in a petition Monday to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that AT&T said wasn't opposed by the Department of Justice or the FCC. AT&T noted the FCC in December adopted and released an order that partially granted and partially denied a USTelecom forbearance petition seeking price-cap ILEC relief from various obligations (see 1512170052 and 1512280037). The recent order "discussed, but did not resolve in AT&T's favor, the same issues addressed" in a 2014 FCC USF order challenged by the telco earlier in 2015 (AT&T v. FCC, No. 15-1038). In the previous case, AT&T had argued the FCC should have given price-cap ILECs greater relief, including from eligible telecom carrier (ETC) voice USF obligations where they don't elect to receive new broadband-oriented Connect America Fund subsidies. The D.C. Circuit had put the previous case on hold pending commission resolution of the U.S. Telecom forbearance review and related issues in other proceedings (see 1507160032 and 1509030042). AT&T Wednesday filed a petition for review challenging the FCC's December 2015 USTelecom forbearance decision, which again denied price-cap telcos USF ETC voice relief (AT&T v. FCC, No. 16-1002). Given the "overlap of issues" in its two challenges, AT&T asked the D.C. Circuit to consolidate the cases and issue a restarted briefing schedule that would allow DOJ and the FCC at least 45 days to respond to the company's renewed opening brief.

AT&T applied to discontinue offering operating services such as collect calling, person-to-person calling, billed to third party and busy-line interruption, said an FCC filing posted Thursday. Demand for the services AT&T wishes to discontinue has been declining about 18 percent per year over the past several years, it said: "If an end user wishes to continue to use these services, they can obtain alternative services from other wireline interexchange carriers." The company plans to discontinue the services to retail customers after March 18 and to wholesale customers June 4, it said.

If the FCC accepts recommendations to switch to a voucher system or give only households on the federal Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) access to the Lifeline program, it would sharply reduce the number of low-income Americans who would be eligible for reduced services, said Consumer Action in a filing in docket 11-42 posted Thursday. The filing included signatures of more than 2,580 people that echo these concerns. A voucher system would be complicated and possibly require consumers to incur ATM or other charges, it said. Limiting eligibility to households on SNAP would mean millions of households that qualify through other benefit programs or by income no longer would qualify, Consumer Action said.

Broadband providers are delivering both faster speeds and on advertising promises, but the end-user experience is subject to other variables, said Richard Bennett, network architect and founder of the High Tech Forum, commenting on the FCC’s recent Measuring Broadband America report on fixed services (see 1512300037). He said cable/telco ISPs had been basically delivering on the advertised speeds for several years. “So if MBA was intended to embarrass US ISPs (as many believe), it’s a failure," he said in a recent blog post. Bennett compared the FCC report with an Akamai State of the Internet report, the “only other data set” on U.S. broadband speed: “Akamai says speed increased by 2.9 times between Q1 2011 and Q3 2014, and the FCC says the average rose by 3.6 times. Akamai says the baseline in 2011 was 17 Mbps, while the FCC says it was 9 Mbps. And Akamai says the average download speed rose to 48.8 Mbps by Q3 2014, vs 32 Mbps for the FCC. The measurement techniques are different, the sampling criteria are different, but we see the same general trend line, a tripling in speed over a 3.5 year period.” Bennett said the FCC did a good job of explaining how Internet applications have different network needs, which affects performance. The report focused on three performance metrics: speed, latency and packet loss. He cited a “very interesting finding” in the report: “Web surfing hits its sweet spot at 15 Mbps and doesn’t improve much at higher speeds.” He noted the last MBA report found Web speeds didn’t improve much with broadband pipes offering above 10 Mbps. “So it appears that web servers are getting faster, even though they lag broadband networks by a staggering degree. If we want faster web surfing, we need web servers that can keep up with broadband networks, which they obviously aren’t doing today. This is not something we can blame on the ISPs.”