The FCC Wireline Bureau sought comment Monday on Corn Belt Telephone’s application to buy Templeton Telephone’s assets and customers. Comments are due Aug. 11, replies Aug. 18 in docket 25-163, the notice said. Templeton Telephone provides local, long-distance and other services in the Templeton local exchange in Iowa and has been designated as an eligible telecommunications carrier, the bureau said.
Representatives of Communication Service for the Deaf met last week with aides to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr on the potential benefits of direct video calling (DVC). “DVC allows individuals who use American Sign Language to communicate directly in real-time with businesses and government agency customer service agents who are also fluent in ASL and have been trained by their respective enterprises to provide call center assistance,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 03-123. “DVC can provide the most effective, accurate and cost efficient way to provide telephone access to customer call centers, crisis and health assistance hotlines, and 911 public safety answering points for over 1.5 million ASL users.”
Lumen's and Commnet Four Corners' former Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) census block groups in numerous states are open to other funding programs, said a Wireline Bureau public notice Tuesday. Lumen and Commnet both defaulted on their RDOF obligations and could face penalties, it said. The states with open census block groups are Colorado, Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Oregon and Washington.
The FCC is launching an effort to encourage operators of multiline telephone systems (MLTS) to bring their systems into compliance with agency rules for calls to 911, Zenji Nakazawa, acting chief of the Public Safety Bureau, said in a Monday blog post. In 2019, the FCC adopted rules to ensure that MLTS users can call 911 and obtain assistance from first responders (see 1908050045).
Major trade associations met with staff from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s office and the Office of General Counsel on a January declaratory ruling and NPRM addressing the Salt Typhoon cyberattacks (see 2501160041). The item was released during the final days of the last administration over the protest of then-commissioner Carr. CTIA, NCTA and USTelecom raised concerns during the meetings.
The FCC released on Friday the pole attachment item approved by commissioners 3-0 on Thursday (see 2507240048). The final item includes written statements by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and Commissioner Olivia Trusty.
Executives from Transaction Network Services spoke with an aide to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr on call analytics technologies, call labeling and branded calling systems used to combat robocalls. “TNS described how its analytics work, the types of inputs that power it, and its accuracy,” said a filing posted Thursday in docket 17-59. The executives explained “that the TNS algorithm which drives blocking and labeling is highly sophisticated, self-correcting, and relies on nearly two dozen features (some static and some dynamic) to determine scores and labels.” The algorithm is also “constantly being evaluated against the ‘ground truth’ and updated or adjusted on a regular basis,” the filing said.
The Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the United States Telecommunications Services Sector has no objections to Google's proposed Taihai submarine cable system as long as it meets various national security commitments, NTIA told the FCC Wednesday. Taihai is a 7,000-km line to run between the Ibaraki Prefecture in Japan and the Hawaiian island of Oahu. The committee is also called Team Telecom.
Lumos representatives spoke with FCC Wireline Bureau staff about a waiver the company is seeking to avoid a penalty after encountering difficulties attempting to “properly upload and certify performance testing data” for Q1 2023. Lumos sought a waiver in May. “Representatives explained that Lumos has been a ‘model citizen,’ with the lone exception of not certifying performance testing data for the first quarter of 2023,” said a filing posted Thursday in docket 10-90. Lumos partially uploaded data for that quarter “and timely uploaded and certified data” for all other quarters starting in 2021, the filing said.
Landline telephony "is not going away anytime soon," but the trend toward VoIP "is inexorable," TeleGeography analyst Pete Bell wrote Tuesday. Public switched telephone networks peaked in 2006, with 1.22 billion lines in service globally, and has averaged declines of 6% annually since then, Bell said. Last year saw the PSTN subscription total dropping 16%, ending the year at 407 million, he said. By 2031, PSTN should shrink to fewer than 250 million lines in service globally, according to Bell. Mobile substitution and VoIP subscriptions have driven the waning of PSTN voice telephony, he added. Last year saw IP-based voice subscriptions surpass those connected by PSTN for the first time, Bell said, adding that VoIP lines will outnumber PSTN by almost 300 million by the end of 2031.