Proposed FCC undersea cable outage reporting rules should be revised "to reflect the practical concerns unique to submarine cable systems," AT&T and the North American Submarine Cable Association (NASCA) said in a filing Thursday in docket 15-206 on a meeting with an aide to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. Operators need a transition period of at least one year to implement new requirements; anything less would be "unrealistic," they said. Many undersea cable systems are consortium-owned, requiring "complex negotiations and coordination among members to implement technology and procedures for reporting," and many belong to multiple consortia, further complicating changes, they said. Because older undersea cable systems may not be able to detect all outages, "affected operators will need to incorporate new technology and coordinate with other consortium members to ensure they receive notification of reportable outages," they said. On another issue, NASCA said it's more realistic to give operators a 24-hour window to report outages than a proposal that they report within hours. Many smaller operators have fewer than 10 employees and they will be focused on repairing service when disruptions occur, the filing said, also noting that outages on the other side of the world could occur when employees are sleeping. AT&T and NASCA urged the FCC to scrap a proposed interim report duty that "adds an extra burden on operators without any material benefit" to the agency. "Between the time of an initial outage notification and the time of scheduling a repair, when the interim report would be due, operators would not have additional material information about the outage or its cause. The cause -- if discoverable at all -- could likely only be determined during the course of the repair," they said. Unlike terrestrial counterparts, undersea operators can't gain immediate access to trouble spots that are often "thousands of kilometers offshore" and deep in the sea, they said.

The FCC issued a protective order in its review of Verizon's roughly $1.8 billion buy of XO Communications (see 1602220071). Safeguards for confidential and highly confidential information were established under the Wireline Bureau order in docket 16-70 listed in Friday's Daily Digest.

GoDaddy sought FCC approval to transfer FreedomVoice's international Communications Act Section 214 authorization to the domain name registrar as part of GoDaddy's purchase of the cloud-based communications company. GoDaddy said Tuesday it was buying FreedomVoice for $42 million in cash and up to $5 million in “future milestones” payments. FreedomVoice currently holds Section 214 authorization to provide international telecom services between the U.S. and “international points on a facilities and resold basis,” GoDaddy said in Thursday's filing. GoDaddy/FreedomVoice “will serve the public interest by further facilitating the provision of cloud-based communications and other services to small businesses,” GoDaddy said. “This transaction will not impact FreedomVoice's customers, and will be virtually transparent to customers in terms of the service they now receive.”

The FTC OK’d Mitel’s $1.96 billion buy of Polycom, Mitel said in a news release Thursday. The Canadian telco announced the deal last month (see 1604150056). It's expected to close in Q3, subject to shareholder approval and regulatory OKs from Russia and Germany.

The DOJ wants access to sensitive information in certain FCC proceedings to assist the department's antitrust review of Verizon's proposed buy of XO Communications, the commission said in a public notice Wednesday. The DOJ Antitrust Division seeks access to the confidential and highly confidential information in the FCC's review of the planned deal and in its business data service proceedings, said the PN, which asked for comments by May 28 on the request.

A U.S. District Judge in San Francisco is delaying a Thursday hearing in which the Electronic Frontier Foundation was going to urge the federal court to make public a large, decades-old drug enforcement database that contains Americans' telephone metadata (see 1605170006). EFF said in a Wednesday update that the judge issued an order Tuesday asking for "supplemental briefing from the parties" and another hearing date may be set once that briefing is complete. EFF had planned to argue that the government "stop misusing public records law to hide information" about the Hemisphere Project, which was created by the Drug Enforcement Administration, local drug enforcement officials and AT&T.

The FCC admonished New Century Telecom and Zoom-i-Net Communications for failing to comply with commission subpoenas to produce information and documents for slamming and cramming investigations. In two orders (here and here) Tuesday, the Enforcement Bureau also gave the companies 30 days to explain why the FCC should not (1) determine they aren't qualified to hold regulatory authorizations, (2) initiate proceedings to revoke their authorizations, or (3) issue orders declaring their authorizations have terminated. The companies couldn't be reached for comment.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation said it will press the U.S. District Court in San Francisco at a Thursday hearing to make public a "massive" drug enforcement database that contains several decades' worth of of telephone metadata. The Drug Enforcement Administration and local drug enforcement officials partnered with AT&T to develop "the Hemisphere Project," with funding from the DEA and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. The New York Times revealed the database in a 2013 story, reporting that embedded AT&T employees in drug-fighting units across the U.S. supplied agents and local detectives with Americans' phone data dating back to 1987. EFF filed a Freedom of Information Act request for more information about the program, but said it was given "only a small amount of heavily redacted records in response." At the hearing, EFF Senior Staff Attorney Adam Schwartz plans to argue that the government "must stop misusing public records law to hide information about Hemisphere."

Comedian John Oliver featured the lack of funding for 911 on an episode of HBO's Last Week Tonight that aired Sunday. FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel cited the episode at the APCO Summit in a keynote Monday about how to upgrade 911 (see 1605160052). “We have a lot of faith in 911, but the system can break down more than you think,” Oliver said in the clip, which can can be viewed free on YouTube. “Depending on where you live, [911 centers] may also be underfunded, understaffed and full of outdated technology, which is fine if you’re describing a RadioShack, but it’s a little scary when you’re describing a place that handles life-and-death situations.” Also, Oliver called unacceptable an FCC mandate that wireless carriers must be able to provide a usable location for 80 percent of people calling 911 by 2021. “That’s not good enough,” he said. “The sentence, ‘In six years, I might not be able to find one out of five of you,’ is only acceptable if you’re speaking to the members of One Direction.”

The Satellite Industry Association urged technological and competitive neutrality in the FCC's planned Connect America Fund reverse auction of broadband-oriented support. SIA "reiterates its support for a CAF framework that does not favor any one technology over others," the group said in a Thursday filing in docket 10-90. "SIA strongly supports the FCC’s longstanding policy of technology neutrality," it said, with a draft CAF Phase II auction order on the tentative agenda for the commission's May 25 meeting (see 1605050036). "Innovations in the satellite industry, including high-throughput satellites, present important potential solutions for the problems that the CAF seeks to address," said SIA, which also backed continued FCC "commitment to the longstanding policy of competitive neutrality." Hughes Network Systems and ViaSat recently made similar arguments (see 1605120029 and 1604150040).