Windstream will pay $2.5 million to resolve an FCC investigation into its rural call completion practices, the agency said in a news release Thursday. The telco will also implement a three-year plan to help combat “the serious problem of long-distance calls failing to complete in rural areas,” the agency said. According to the consent decree (http://fcc.us/1mwGucc), Windstream will designate a senior officer to serve as a compliance officer; help the FCC establish a testing program to evaluate call completion performance; and stop using intermediate providers that keep having problems connecting calls. Windstream “cooperated fully” with the agency’s investigation, the consent decree said. “We appreciate the careful, deliberate approach the FCC took in this matter,” said John Fletcher, executive vice president and general counsel. “While we disagree with the agency’s conclusion that our call completion practices were not adequate, we believe this is the best way to resolve the inquiry and enable us to continue providing great service to rural customers."

If a company gets consent for autodialing its customers’ numbers, and those numbers are subsequently reassigned unbeknownst to the company, that company should not be liable for violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, Comcast told FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau officials Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1bPyH4T). Comcast was supporting a similar petition filed by United Healthcare Services in CG docket 02-278. “In this situation, it is unfair and inappropriate for it to be subject to TCPA liability,” Comcast said, explaining it has faced lawsuits in these kinds of situations.

The “fundamental problem” with E-rate is “the perennial under-funding of networks within schools due to the existing system of prioritizing services,” Cisco told FCC officials Tuesday, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/1fkKGpT). “Broadband connections to the school are only useful to the extent that students and teachers can access them in the classroom, particularly as educators move towards a one-to-one ratio of students to connected devices,” Cisco said. The networking provider suggested a “whole network” approach to E-rate funding, which would eliminate the distinction between priority one and priority two services. That approach should also recognize that “internal networks require basic maintenance” to perform properly, and schools and libraries should have the funding to purchase such contracts.

Provider Securus wants the same relief from interim inmate calling service (ICS) rate caps as Pay-Tel got, Securus said in a petition to the FCC filed Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1ffVeIv). The FCC approved a nine-month waiver of its caps for Pay-Tel after that ICS provider said it couldn’t recover its costs on a holding company level if it were required to charge such low rates, because of rate restrictions in several states that require Pay-Tel to provide service at below-average-cost rates (CD Feb 13 p14). The waiver “should apply to all ICS providers operating at jails in Pay Tel’s territory,” Securus said. “All of those carriers are subject to the same ‘below-average-cost intrastate rate constraints’ as Pay Tel, and they all face the same challenges in serving city and county jails.” Securus asked that the commission let all ICS providers serving jails in Pay-Tel’s 13-state service territory get the relief Pay-Tel got: being able to charge up to 46 cents per minute for interstate calls. Securus also asked for permission to add a 2 cent-per-minute fee to its interstate calls in order to cover the cost of providing “voice biometric technology” required for secure inmate calling (http://bit.ly/1fD4Oju).

The American Cable Association doesn’t oppose collection of data to examine special access markets, but certain aspects of the proposed data collection “are excessive for smaller cable operators” and violate the Paperwork Reduction Act, ACA told an aide to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Thursday, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/MBf8Br). ACA proposed that the collection only require those operators to provide data they collect in the normal course of business. On Phase II of the Connect America Fund, ACA said the program shouldn’t provide support to price-cap LECs in areas where unsupported competitive providers have built qualifying broadband service. Competitive providers should also “be given the opportunity to receive support in eligible areas in states where price cap LECs refuse support since competitive providers often can deploy broadband service more efficiently and effectively than the price cap LECs,” ACA said.

Rural telco Nex-Tech met with FCC Commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O'Rielly and an aide to Chairman Tom Wheeler to discuss the need for stand-alone broadband support (http://bit.ly/1cn2ks0). “Providing support for loops that are used to provide standalone broadband services would promote and accelerate the ongoing IP evolution,” it said Wednesday. Nex-Tech also discussed “continuing concerns” with regression analysis-based caps on high-cost loop support, and urged the commissioners “to ensure that greater visibility and predictability can be obtained as soon as possible.”

CLECs opposed a CenturyLink petition for forbearance of dominant carrier and Computer Inquiry tariffing requirements on enterprise broadband services. In comments filed Thursday in WC docket 14-9, the competitive providers said CenturyLink’s petition only confirmed the importance of wholesale last-mile access policies to provide choice for business consumers. The telco had sought forbearance from dominant carrier regulation of packet-based special access services offered by legacy CenturyTel and legacy Embarq. It’s the second time in a year CenturyLink has asked for such forbearance, and the commission “must put a stop to this wasteful gamesmanship,” said tw telecom, Level 3, Integra, EarthLink and Cbeyond (http://bit.ly/1cmV0fO). The competitive providers urged the commission to use the “traditional market power framework” to evaluate CenturyLink’s petition. Under that framework, or any other “reasonable standard,” the ILEC has failed to demonstrate sufficient competition in the relevant markets to justify forbearance, they said. The correct policy response to CenturyLink’s petition is to reform last-mile access policies for all providers, Comptel said (http://bit.ly/1cmXfjp). Commission forbearance grants have generally put “next generation competition at risk,” the association of CLECs said. Reforming last-mile access will promote investment, and CenturyLink’s claim that no advantages come from “incumbency in fiber deployment” is false, Comptel said. Sprint also opposed the petition. “Nothing has changed since the last time CenturyLink requested forbearance,” the carrier said (http://bit.ly/1cmXQSb). “It retains market power in the provision of enterprise broadband services because of its control of critical last-mile facilities in its service areas, and it has failed to demonstrate that its requested relief is justified.” CenturyLink had asked to be treated like other major providers of enterprise broadband service, which it said are uniformly regulated as nondominant. The widely varying regulation that applies to CenturyLink services undermines its ability to compete, the ILEC said in its December petition: “About the worst mistake a regulatory agency can make is to treat similarly situated competitors unequally” (http://bit.ly/1cnb01r).

More than 25 percent of Windstream’s Lifeline customers have not been accepted by the National Lifeline Accountability Database, the telco told FCC Wireline Bureau officials Wednesday, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/1cmZDXq). That’s about 15,000 customers, most of whom are rejected because of problems with addresses, the carrier said. Frequently, however, the error messages “do not guide Windstream to the actual reason for the rejection,” and the addresses often come up valid when put into the U.S. Postal Service database, it said. Windstream asked the bureau to delay the deadline for migration of Lifeline customers into the national database “so companies have time to begin address reconciliation.” Windstream also asked the bureau to work with Universal Service Administrative Co. “to develop more specific and accurate error messages” for the national database, and to delay Lifeline audits until after migration is complete.

Vonage has been seeking to negotiate direct IP interconnection agreements with ILECs, but “those agreements have been hampered by AT&T’s misinterpretation of the Commission’s VoIP access charge rules,” Vonage told FCC Wireline Bureau officials Feb. 11, said an ex parte filing posted online Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1cn0YNP). “Vonage seeks IP interconnection agreements because the exchange of traffic in IP delivers substantial public interest benefits including cost reduction, improved service quality, and the ability to deliver advanced services such as HD voice.” But “at least one incumbent LEC is unwilling to enter into a direct IP interconnection arrangement unless that arrangement imports the asymmetrical compensation structure that AT&T has argued, incorrectly, was adopted by the Commission” in its 2011 USF/intercarrier compensation order, Vonage said. It said it generally prefers to seek bill and keep arrangements when signing direct interconnection agreements with other IP providers. Vonage urged the bureau to take “swift action to enforce the symmetrical compensation provisions” adopted by the FCC, lest an “asymmetrical approach to VoIP intercarrier compensation” give ILECs “perverse incentives to perpetuate legacy TDM technology."

The FCC’s proposed reduction in USF rate-of-return support “would negatively impact Big Bend’s operations at a time when the impacts of USF-[intercarrier compensation] reforms are still being implemented and the full impacts are not known,” the Texas telco told officials from several commissioners’ offices and the Wireline Bureau last week, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/1ghtkKO). The bureau’s May staff report recommended reducing the rate of return to between 8.06 and 8.72 percent; that would be “a threat to financial stability” and would harm Big Bend’s ability to get new loans to build out broadband, the telco said. “Service and customers in rural, remote, and high-cost areas like Big Bend’s service area will suffer due to lack of ability to maintain and invest in new network.”