Comments are due July 3 on the FCC illegal robocalls NPRM and notice of inquiry, the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau said Thursday after the item appeared in Wednesday’s Federal Register. Replies are due July 31, said a public notice. The FCC released the robocall items in March (see 1703240046).

Telcordia/iconectiv asked the FCC to approve changes to its code of conduct and voting trust, and if necessary, transfer of control, without waiting for replies due Tuesday. Telcordia/iconectiv, the incoming local number portability administrator (LNPA), said it didn't plan to reply. "Prompt approval would allow the parties to move forward to diversify Telcordia’s ownership and to bring about the other public interest benefits of the transaction," said a Telcordia/iconectiv counsel filing Wednesday in docket 09-109 on a conversation with Wireline Bureau officials. The trust holds the voting stock in iconectiv owned by its only current shareholder, Ericsson Holdings II. The trust and the code are intended to ensure Ericsson won't exert undue influence on iconectiv -- which is taking over LNPA duties from Neustar -- in favor of any telecom service provider, said the approval request of Telcordia/iconectiv and FP Investors, which plans to acquire a minority stake in iconectiv (see 1704030034). They said the transaction will bolster "iconectiv's neutrality" and eliminate a possible legal dispute under Delaware corporate law.

In response to a 2015 petition by various groups asking for a repeal of the FCC rule requiring telcos to retain toll-call data for 18 months, the agency is taking comments, said a public notice Wednesday. Comments in docket 17-130 are due June 16, replies July 3. The petition was brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center's advisory board and 26 consumer rights, human rights and civil liberties organizations (see 1508040027).

Two hundred more "startups" endorsed a call for the FCC to keep net neutrality rules, adding to the 800 signers of an April 26 open letter, a policy group said. "The success of America’s startup ecosystem depends on an open internet with enforceable net neutrality rules, ensuring that small companies can compete on a level playing field without the threat that their services will be discriminated against by big cable and wireless companies," an Engine post said.

The Perkins School for the Blind was certified to administer the National Deaf-Blind Equipment Distribution Program (NDBEDP) for Arizona, Arkansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, said the FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau in a public notice Friday. It said Access Technologies was certified to administer the NDBEDP for Oregon, and the South Dakota Department of Human Services to administer the NDBEDP for South Dakota. The certifications are effective July 1, it said.

The "Title II-reversal story" that helped cable stocks rally "has begun to unravel," said analyst Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson Thursday. He noted he upgraded cable stocks after the Republican election victory on the expectation that Title II would be reversed, preferably through legislation to mandate net neutrality principles and clarify agency authority. But Republicans used the "nuclear option" and pushed through a Congressional Review Act resolution to repeal the FCC's broadband privacy rules, he said. "Unfortunately, that scorched-Earth strategy appears now to have been a terrible miscalculation," Moffett wrote. "Predictably, ramming the ISP Privacy reversal down the throats of the Democrats poisoned the well for any cooperation on telecom matters, let alone something as politically volatile as Net Neutrality or Title II." He noted the FCC has proposed to reverse the Title II reclassification and return to Title I broadband, but whether it will "have the stomach to follow through in the face of what is likely to be absolutely withering opposition is unclear." Even if the FCC does roll back Title II, "it would be a temporary solution at best," given legal questions about net neutrality under Title I, and the possibility that a return to Title II "would simply be one Democratic FCC away," he wrote.

A civil rights coalition pressed FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and an aide on its three top priorities: "strong support for stand-alone broadband as a component of the Lifeline program, limits on media concentration, and caps on predatory prison phone rates." The advocates urged Pai to "commit to implementing the [2016 Lifeline] modernization order on schedule and to support a robust program in his remarks and policy proposals," said a filing on a meeting posted Wednesday by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Media and Telecom Task Force in docket 11-42. The conference "believes that media concentration leads to fewer owners, fewer entrepreneurial opportunities and fewer jobs, whereas actions to tighten the media ownership rules will lead to more owners, more jobs, and more opportunities for people of color and women." The coalition cited "the importance of capping prison phone rates" and urged Pai to address inmate calling once an appellate court acts on current litigation.

Linksys added a bridge mode and parental controls to app-enabled routers, it announced Tuesday. Router users can configure the company’s Velop mesh Wi-Fi networking so they can keep their existing ISP-supplied router or gateway in place for other services such as IPTV, said the company. Other features that will work by enabling bridge mode: dynamic tri-band selection for the best Wi-Fi connection, a guest network, Amazon Alexa support and automatic firmware updates.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit's decision overturning the FCC's junk fax rule (see 1703310018) "radically conflicts with decades of the Supreme Court's and this Court's Chevron step one precedent," a group of intervenors said in a petition (in Pacer) for rehearing en banc filed Friday with the court. The 2-1 decision was wrong in saying the FCC didn't have authority to issue a rule requiring senders of junk faxes to include notices on those faxed advertisements of how recipients can opt out, the intervenors said. The court's reasoning ignores the general conferral of rulemaking authority Congress gave the FCC through the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the intervenors said. They also said the court's relying on the idea that a statute with a requirement in one specific situation is intended to preclude an agency from imposing that requirement in other situations ignores court precedent.

Entities seeking state oversight of the FCC's deaf-blind equipment distribution program were listed by the Consumer and Governmental Affairs bureau in a public notice in docket 10-210 in Wednesday's Daily Digest. There were competing applications for certification as the program's administrative entity in only three states: Georgia, Montana and Pennsylvania. The commission on Aug. 4 converted the $10 million annual pilot program, also called "iCanConnect," to a permanent program. The Perkins School for the Blind submitted the most applications, covering 22 states and territories; the Helen Keller National Center for Deaf-Blind Youth and Adults was second with eight applications.