A pair of submarine cable repair ships should arrive at the Point Barrow repair site in the next few days to deal with a damaged subsea fiber line, Alaska's Quintillion said Wednesday. The company said in January that the damaged line could result in "prolonged" outage of its service to North Slope and northwest Alaskan communities (see 2501220001). When the ships, the IT Integrity and the CanPac Valkyrie, arrive at the repair site, crews will start locating and recovering the damaged cable, Wednesday's update said. Repair and testing could take up to a week, with cable burial extending potentially for an additional two weeks, it added.
NTCA representatives spoke with an aide to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr about small providers' need for greater clarity as they move away from time-division multiplexing-based interconnection. They discussed how to “facilitate and expedite the voluntary migration of small rural providers from legacy voice services to cloud-based and hosted VoIP services,” said a filing posted Thursday in docket 17-97.
Comments are due Sept. 22, replies Oct. 21, on the questions raised in the pole attachments NPRM adopted by the FCC at its July meeting (see 2507280053), said a notice for Friday's Federal Register. The docket is 17-84. Among the questions asked in the NRPM is whether Section 224 of the Communications Act, which governs pole attachments, also covers light poles.
The FCC should minimize foreign ownership reporting burdens on regulatees without reportable foreign ownership, said USTelecom in a reply comment filing posted Wednesday in docket 25-166. “To the extent the Commission can streamline the certification process for entities with multiple licenses, such as allowing bulk submissions, it should do so.”
Transaction Network Services (TNS) told the FCC that publishing call identification information in a public call placement service (CPS) raises the risk that it will be “intercepted and abused by bad actors.” TNS weighed in this week in the FCC proceeding closing a “gap” in the commission’s Stir/Shaken authentication rules (see 2508180029).
The FCC Wireline Bureau Tuesday rejected a petition by Mercury Broadband seeking a waiver of Rural Deployment Opportunity Fund rules. Mercury said in May (see 2505200063) a potential $25.1 million in fines for the surrender of multiple RDOF census block groups was "neither reasonable nor proportionate.”
Northstar has agreed to pay $15,000 and implement a compliance plan as part of a settlement with the FCC Enforcement Bureau over allowing its license to operate a submarine cable system to expire and failing to maintain current information in the FCC’s records, said a consent decree Monday. Northstar’s license expired Oct. 1, and the company continued to operate it without FCC authorization before requesting at the end of that month special temporary authority to operate without a license. Northstar’s STA grant expires Aug. 25. Under the compliance plan, Northstar has to create a compliance manual and training program and file compliance reports with the FCC for three years.
AT&T sought permission from the FCC to stop accepting applications for special access DS3 services wherever they’re still offered to new customers throughout the company’s 21-state legacy wireline footprint. AT&T “previously applied for and received authority to grandfather the Affected Services in certain wire centers within its footprint,” said a filing posted by the FCC Monday.
An NTIA policy change to make it easier for internet service providers to obtain bank letters of credit so they can participate in the BEAD program will take effect Aug. 24, mimicking a similar policy change at the FCC. The FCC adopted an order in December (see 2412110050) dropping the requirement that banks qualified to issue such letters of credit have a minimum safety rating under the Weiss rating system, requiring only that they be “well capitalized.” An NTIA waiver update released late last month mirrors the FCC policy for the BEAD program, and takes effect at the same time as the FCC rule change. In addition, NTIA will allow financial institutions rated as safe by ratings organizations recognized by the SEC to issue letters of credit for the BEAD program, the update said.
The subsea cable license order adopted at the FCC's August meeting (see 2508070037) differs materially from the draft order regarding presumptions that disqualify an applicant from receiving a license. The 214-page, finalized version of the order was released Wednesday.