Commissioners OK Enhanced Competition Program, Other Items in Unanimous Votes

FCC commissioners approved 4-0 a new enhanced competition incentive program, with only minor changes, as expected. Some industry observers questioned how much good ECIP will do, but commissioners expressed hope the program will help promote wireless deployment (see 2207110036). The monthly meeting Thursday was the first to be opened to the public since February 2020.

The meeting was also the first in the agency's new headquarters at 45 L St. NW. Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel confirmed after the meeting that the agency plans to have a similar in-person setup for the August meeting. For the first time since early 2020, the meeting also concluded with in-person news conferences, where Rosenworcel and Commissioner Brendan Carr answered questions from about a dozen reporters. Commissioners Geoffrey Starks and Nathan Simington haven't held news conferences since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. "I'm so glad that we have been able to welcome people back publicly to the FCC," Rosenworcel said.

The only change of note to the ECIP item was the addition of questions to an accompanying Further NPRM on how to configure FCC buildout rules to match how private wireless networks are deployed, officials said after the meeting. Starks sought that change.

The FCC needs to use all the tools it has available to close the digital divide, Rosenworcel said of ECIP. “The economics of deployment in rural areas can be tough,” Rosenworcel said: “Networks are costly to build and maintain in places where the population is sparse. Private investment can lead the way, but there are going to be places where it may not be enough. We need to fix this so that rural communities are not forever consigned to the wrong side of the digital divide and shut off from the economic opportunities of the internet age.”

Carr said he spends a lot of time on the road and has seen firsthand the lack of wireless connectivity in remote areas. “There are these vast parts of the country where I look down at my phone and there’s literally no bars,” he said. “We’re in parts of the country where we know there’s spectrum available” and “we’ve licensed this spectrum to a provider to build out,” he said. But the FCC’s buildout rules don’t require licensees to deploy in 100% of a license area, he said. “This is an item that is … full of carrots” and hopefully will promote more use of spectrum, he said.

“The program will extend license terms and construction deadlines for eligible participants, removing regulatory barriers that can discourage efficient, win-win secondary-market spectrum transactions,” Starks said. “Rural-focused entities also would benefit from substantive construction requirements that better fit their business plans, and every licensee would have the ability to re-aggregate spectrum on the backend, which should make it easier for them to parcel off spectrum to smaller providers on the front end.”

Starks said, for example, shortly before ECIP was proposed he met with officials from the Red Cliff tribe. The tribe couldn’t attract a provider willing to build a network and couldn’t find the spectrum to build one on its own, he said: “We need to make it easier for Tribal nations like Red Cliff to access unused airwaves, and for smaller carriers and other companies focused on rural deployment to do the same.”

"The new program encourages licensees to partition, disaggregate, or lease spectrum to better match available spectrum resources with entities that seek to provide needed services to under-connected communities,” said a news release.

“Eliminating regulatory barriers and creating incentives for secondary market transactions, including allowing license re-aggregation, will help providers put scarce spectrum to its highest-valued use and promote wireless deployment, facilitating the goal of closing the digital divide,” said CTIA Senior Vice President-Regulatory Affairs Scott Bergmann.

Robocall Fine

The FCC approved 4-0 a $116 million fine against ChariTel and owner Thomas Dorsher for apparently making nearly 10 million prerecorded calls to generate toll-free dialing fees. An Enforcement Bureau investigation showed Dorsher’s company made calls to toll-free numbers from January to March 2021 through an entity called “ScammerBlaster.” It also found Dorsher’s OnTel company used telephony denial of service (TDoS) tools to “debilitate the telecommunication systems of entities he suspected of making illegal robocalls while employing inadequate verification methods to confirm that was the case.”

Commissioners adopted 4-0 a Further NPRM that seeks comment on proposals to curb efforts by some carriers that may be evading the commission’s access stimulation rules by including IP enabled services into the call flow (see 2207130033). The proposed rules follow a 2019 access arbitrage order that aimed to curb excessive access charges from LECs and intermediate access providers. The FNPRM proposes requiring IP-enabled services providers to report their ratio of terminating to originating traffic. The final item included USTelecom-sought language about “other network arrangements,” Wireline Bureau Chief Trent Harkrader told reporters.

Some companies “game” the system by “inflating traffic to grab revenues that were originally designed to support service in remote areas,” Rosenworcel said: "This rulemaking is designed to shut down the loopholes these companies are exploiting.” The arbitrage costs ratepayers "millions and millions of dollars,” Carr said, and the item is a "concrete step of seeing how people responded to the 2019 decision and look to close off some of those avenues."

Also adopted 4-0 was a notice of inquiry seeking comment on ways to improve access to the Lifeline and affordable connectivity program for survivors of domestic or sexual violence (see 2207110048). The NOI also asks how to ensure survivors’ privacy when contacting a hotline or other resources. The final adopted version had no changes from the draft, Wireline Bureau staff told reporters.

“Empowering survivors to reach out when and how they see fit is a key part to supporting them as they look for a fresh start,” Starks said. Lifeline and ACP “provide essential connections that offer a meaningful way to reach out for help,” Rosenworcel said: “For this reason, we explore how to provide temporary enrollment and how to protect call logs from showing efforts to reach domestic violence hotlines in order to ensure that survivors have the ability to seek the help they need safely and securely.”

Nielsen NOI?

The FCC should study whether there are viable alternatives to Nielsen for broadcast station analytics, said Simington in remarks before unanimous approval of an FCC NPRM on using a specific Nielsen publication to determine station carriage (see 2207110051). The item before the FCC was narrowly focused on a proposal to replace references in FCC carriage rules to Nielsen’s now defunct Station Index Directory with the company’s Local TV Report, and doesn’t seek comment on the FCC’s general use of Nielsen. “This is about updating the data report behind our policies,” said Rosenworcel.

The FCC’s “obligation to act in the public interest” could be seen to require the agency to encourage alternative options “so we avoid subjecting American media to this single point of failure in our broadcast regulatory scheme,” Simington said of Nielsen. He urged the agency to open an NOI into the agency’s dependence on Nielsen, which Simington said is referenced in nearly two dozen FCC rules. “If our ties to Nielsen ultimately represent a structural impediment to the public interest, necessity, and convenience -- we should break them,” Simington said. Carr said it's “fair game” to ask questions about the agency’s reliance on the analytics company.

Nielsen’s accreditation as a TV ratings agency was suspended in August by the Media Ratings Council, and the company is undergoing an audit process toward reaccreditation, said a footnote in the final NPRM. “There does not appear to be any service currently accredited by MRC that would allow market participants to determine the local market area of a broadcast television station,” the footnote said. Nielsen didn’t comment.

Notebook

Rosenworcel said she's weighing the Supreme Court’s ruling in West Virginia v. EPA, and the potential implications on how much deference courts give expert agencies like the FCC (see 2206300066). “We’re taking a look at that ruling, as we are an administrative agency, but I have confidence that we have broad authorities under the Communications Act,” she said. “EPA is at core a decision about respecting the power and authority of Congress,” Carr said. “When they have very clearly delegated authority to an agency, then the agency obviously has room within that delegation to regulate.” The decision, which stressed a “major questions” doctrine in evaluating agency actions, “ultimately underscores that it’s Congress’s prerogative to delineate the outlines of agency’s authority and issues they can address and that courts are going to enforce to make sure that we as an agency stay with our lane,” he said.