The FCC Wireline Bureau granted BARConnects eligible telecom carrier (ETC) status in 64 Census blocks in Virginia, clearing a hurdle to the company's participation in a rural broadband experiment funded by USF support. In an order released Friday, the bureau said it would "shortly release a public notice announcing its readiness to authorize rural broadband experiment support for BARConnects as a provisionally selected bidder." The bureau also granted BARConnects a waiver and request for extension of time to file proof of its ETC designation. BARConnects committed to deploying a fiber broadband network with voice service and data speeds of up to 100/25 Mbps, including at least one service plan that offers 25/5 Mbps to all eligible locations, the order said. Monday, the bureau issued an order giving Northeast Rural Services an extension to submit as timely filed a letter-of-credit commitment letter after a May 4 deadline. Due to banking complexities, CoBank didn't issue the commitment letter until June 12, the bureau indicated. The bureau recently authorized NRS to receive about $884,000 to carry out four rural broadband experiments reaching 335 "covered locations" in Oklahoma.

Comments are due Oct. 26, replies Nov. 24, in the FCC's latest IP transition rulemaking, the Wireline Bureau said in a public notice posted Friday in docket 13-5. The Federal Register published a summary of the agency's Further NPRM Friday, triggering 30-day and 60-day comment and reply deadlines. The commission adopted the further notice and an accompanying IP/fiber transition order Aug. 6, and it released the 179-page text of the item Aug. 7 in which it proposed to codify general telecom service discontinuance standards under Section 214 of the Communications Act (see 1508060044 and 1508100019). The FCC specifically sought comment on its tentative conclusions that the criteria should include, among other things: “(1) network capacity and reliability; (2) service quality; (3) device and service interoperability, including interoperability with vital third-party services (through existing or new devices); (4) service for individuals with disabilities, including compatibility with assistive technologies; (5) PSAP and 9-1-1 service; (6) cybersecurity; (7) service functionality; and (8) coverage.”

Rural telco groups offered feedback on, without endorsing, a possible "bifurcated approach" to ILEC cost recovery as part of a potential FCC overhaul of rate-of-return USF support mechanisms. In a letter posted Monday in docket 10-90, USTelecom joined by ITTA, NTCA and WTA said the FCC raised the possibility of a bifurcated approach in its June 2014 Further NPRM under which USF support for investments prior to a selected date would be based on old rules and USF support for investments after that date would be based on new rules. "Over time as companies depreciate and retire assets in the old mechanisms and invest in new assets, costs would organically shift from the old to the new mechanism," the groups said. "Companies who have more recently completed construction initiatives with greater debt obligations will transition more slowly than companies who have not made those investments since new assets will have longer remaining lives and the need for subsequent investment is lower." The groups said none of them was yet ready to endorse such an approach generally, or the specific ideas in their submission, but were submitting the comments to further discussion and analysis.

An Alabama Public Service Commission official said he was working solo and "in a hurry" when he mishandled proprietary company data in the inmate calling service proceeding, but he denied the ICS breach would benefit competitors. Darrell Baker, director of the Alabama PSC Utility Services Division, said he had labeled the proprietary version of a filing as proprietary but submitted it “through the wrong channel,” resulting in its brief, inadvertent release through the FCC’s electronic comment filing system. “To be frank, I am the only one here that has provided any input into this proceeding. Additionally, we have zero clerical staff. Everything I did was on my own. I did all the writing,” Baker said in an email posted in docket 12-375 Friday, responding to a Sept. 21 email from an FCC Wireline Bureau official noting a bureau order that barred Baker from participating in the ICS proceeding until further notice (see 1509220007). “I got into a hurry, assumed I knew the correct filing procedures which I should have researched before submitting. I learned the hard way and submitted the follow up proprietary Ex Parte using the correct procedures.” Baker said the proprietary data itself wasn't released in his filing, only averaged and aggregated data. “I realize it is still proprietary data and was handled incorrectly but there was nothing in that Ex Parte that could benefit a competitor,” he said. Responding in July to Global Tel*Link's request that the FCC sanction him and the PSC for the breach, Baker had previously pleaded ignorance of the rules and apologized for his mistake (see 1507200030).

Fiber Technologies Networks and Duke Energy resolved a pole-attachment dispute, they said in asking the FCC to dismiss FTN's associated complaint against Duke. Their joint motion was posted Friday in docket 14-227.

The FCC has given itself 90 more days to review a USTelecom forbearance petition seeking regulatory relief the ILEC group says would promote next-generation networks, the Wireline Bureau said in a Friday order in docket 14-192. The new due date for deciding the petition is Jan. 4, the bureau said in exercising the agency's discretion to extend forbearance deadlines one time. USTelecom describes the relief it wants from Communications Act and FCC rules as "addressing section 271/272 and equal access obligations, rule 64.1903 structural separation requirements, the requirement to provide a 64 kbps voice channel where a copper loop has been retired, section 214(c) obligations where a price cap carrier does not receive high cost universal service support, Computer Inquiry rules, the requirement to provide access to newly deployed entrance conduit at regulated rates, and the prohibition against using contract tariffs for business data services in all regions," the bureau said. Granite Telecom, a CLEC, opposed USTelecom's proposed relief from Section 271 Bell long-distance entry duties and the 64 kbps requirement. Granite said it needs those provisions to gain Bell wholesale access to provide voice service to retail business customers. "Absent the § 271 and the 64 Kbps requirements, the [Bells] would have the incentives and ability to re-monopolize the portion of the business market served by Granite and other competitive carriers," the CLEC said in a filing posted Wednesday. "The [Bells] could accomplish this by imposing substantial wholesale price increase[s] or by simply refusing to renew current wholesale agreements."

USTelecom disputed CLEC assertions that the FCC has broad latitude to reimpose regulation on ILEC special-access business services (see 1509100050). A recent letter from Birch Communications, BT Americas and Level 3 "distorts the scope of the agency's discretion, which is constrained by the Communications Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the Commission's own decisions, and mischaracterizes the level of deference that courts typically afford agencies under Chevron," USTelecom said in a filing posted Friday in docket 05-25. The CLECs seek reregulation "of enterprise broadband services such as Ethernet and increased regulation of ILEC special access" services given pricing flexibility some time ago, USTelecom said. The commission "cannot upend forbearance and other deregulatory decisions with little or no data analysis" and must address ILEC deregulatory "reliance interests" built up over the years, the ILEC trade group said. "The FCC cannot step in and set prices without a fact-specific, full and fair analysis of the competitive landscape," USTelecom said. "Nor would the FCC be entitled to deference from the courts if it takes the procedural shortcuts suggested [by CLECs]." USTelecom said that the record doesn't support the CLEC relief, and it added: "The Joint CLEC Letter, at bottom, suggests that the FCC can aim low, that close enough for government work will survive court review. But the standard is higher, and the FCC must take into account the full record in the special access proceeding, including the data collection to the extent that it is sufficient and reliable. It must also take into account more recent information that further demonstrates robust competition in the marketplace." Separately, TDS Telecom said its CLEC subsidiaries are struggling to deliver retail services to business customers. "These difficulties are due in large part to challenges in obtaining competitive wholesale pricing for last mile access facilities," TDS said in a filing that attached confidential cost data. And TransWorld Network objected to FCC release of its confidential business data subject to a protective order, noting it still had concerns about the specific purposes that parties might have in seeking to review its data.

The FCC is promoting "phony competition" through wholesale regulation efforts, said Fred Campbell, executive director of the Center for Boundless Innovation in Technology. "The FCC’s plan to impose monopoly regulation on new fiber deployments to businesses indicates the agency has forgotten what 'competition' actually means," said Campbell, in a Forbes online commentary Thursday. Regulating the wholesale rates that large telcos charge competitors for business special-access services to create "synthetic competition" may have made sense in the previous "natural monopoly market," he said, but that approach was "discredited" by the emergence of "real competition" in the late 20th century. Giving upstarts the "legal right to piggyback" on incumbent networks robs them of the motivation to deploy their own facilities to compete more robustly, he said: "The alleged need for wholesale access regulation to remedy natural monopoly thus becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once the FCC imposes wholesale access regulation, it creates perverse incentives for the formation and maintenance of an infrastructure monopoly that would otherwise not exist." While the FCC lifted wholesale regulation of fiber more than a decade ago, Campbell said, Europeans embraced such regulation, only to reverse course recently after finding their network investment lagged in the U.S. and parts of Asia." The FCC is now proposing to take the U.S. back in the opposite direction," he said, noting the agency's recent IP transition actions requiring incumbents to offer competitors wholesale fiber access on an interim basis.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler named Stephanie Weiner senior legal adviser in charge of wireline issues, replacing Daniel Alvarez, who is departing after serving as adviser for wireline, public safety and homeland security issues since 2013, an agency release said Thursday. Weiner has been FCC associate general counsel and special adviser to Wheeler on Internet law and policy, and before that had served in senior legal positions with Neustar, the Department of Energy, the FCC Wireline Bureau and as an associate at Harris Wiltshire.

Frontier Communications’ Frontier Secure added Nest’s IP camera and smoke detector to its Nest lineup that also includes the third-generation Nest Learning thermostat. Frontier has been offering the Nest thermostat, valued at $249, for $99 to customers who upgrade their high-speed Internet package, said the telco in a Tuesday news release. Bringing the trio of Nest products into the Frontier portfolio adds value to the broadband experience “by offering products that work wonderfully on their own and seamlessly together,” said Kelly Morgan, Frontier Secure general manager.