In light of mandates in the Communications Act, the FCC must ensure that only properly designated eligible telecom carriers (ETCs) may participate in any potential IP transition rural broadband experiment that uses USF resources, NTCA told an aide to Chairman Tom Wheeler Friday, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/1eTgu2D). Those ETCs must be common carriers that offer supported services throughout designated areas, and must be required to offer voice telephony that is reasonably comparable in price and quality to service in urban areas, NTCA said. To the extent that those ETCs would also presumably be required to offer broadband as a condition of receiving such USF support, such broadband must be reasonably comparable in price and quality to broadband in urban areas, the association said. “Failure to design any experiment rules in accordance with these mandates could call into question the legal underpinnings of the program, and could relegate consumers in the affected areas to substandard services as a matter of price, quality, or both,” it said.

Vonage seeks a 30-day extension of time to comply with the FCC’s new rules banning false ringing tones, it said in a petition Friday (http://bit.ly/1c3z0Hd). Despite “significant efforts,” Vonage requires more time to test and deploy its systems to ensure services are not disrupted, it said. Installing a new system to comply with the rules is a “fundamental modification of Vonage’s network architecture” that “touches all calls made on Vonage’s network, and requires careful design, testing, and implementation,” the VoIP provider said.

AT&T opposes a petition by Public Knowledge and other public interest groups that the FCC declare all major U.S. wireless carriers’ privacy policies violate Section 222 of the Communications Act because they might disclose “rigorously anonymized” information, said the company in comments posted Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1c3yaKA). “Petitioners’ interpretation of Section 222 is plainly incorrect” and “ignores” the operative statutory language, AT&T said. “Petitioners rely solely on a tortured construction that they claim to discern in the ’structure’ of the Act.” CTIA, Verizon, Sprint and CenturyLink also opposed the petition (CD Jan 22 p3).

As the FCC facilitates the transition to IP networks, it should take steps to preserve competition where ILECs often have the only last-mile connection to the customer, Granite Telecommunications told aides to Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioners Mike O'Rielly and Ajit Pai last week, ex parte filings said (http://bit.ly/1c3x9Sy). The CLEC, which provides more than 1.3 million business lines nationally, said regional bell operating companies “typically deny CLECs access to circuits provisioned to technology other than copper”; the competition Granite provides “would not be possible if copper were removed without any requirement that CLECs be given access to the replacement medium,” it said. Other technologies, like wireless or cable, would not be adequate substitutes for ILEC service, Granite said. Granite expressed concern over wire center trials proposed by AT&T, which could interfere with Granite’s services. “There is no apparent provision in AT&T’s proposal to ensure that wholesale customers such as Granite can continue to purchase wholesale service from the ILEC during or after the trial,” it said.

The data hosting division of CenturyLink will now “deliver its services under the name CenturyLink Technology Solutions effective immediately,” said a Tuesday release (http://on.wsj.com/1eaS3fb). “Aligning our brand with CenturyLink demonstrates the deeper ties to the broad portfolio of IT solutions that we collectively deliver for businesses,” said CenturyLink Technology Solutions President Jeff Von Deylen, in a statement. It said the company “will remain the distinct data hosting operating segment within CenturyLink."

The American Cable Association wrote to “commend” the FCC and its Wireline Bureau “for the recent decision establishing ‘eligible’ areas” for the use of Connect America Fund Phase I support. A “key principle” of the CAF program is to ensure support is “not provided in areas served by unsubsidized providers that compete” with ILECs, it said. “ACA believes that in addressing the many thousands of challenges” received during Phase I, the bureau “held true” to that principle. The Phase II challenge process will be “much more complex,” and it will again be important to ensure “CAF support is not provided where cable operators and others have already expended private capital to build broadband plant,” ACA said.

Making a flash-cut switch to a new number portability administrator “would mean a total reset of this complex system,” and could cost the industry more than half a billion dollars, The Standish Group said in a report funded by Neustar (http://bit.ly/KDDPfa). “The Standish Group does not see any real value in replacing Neustar with a new NPAC vendor except for possible cost savings,” it said. “Cost savings usually is not a good reason to replace a specialized mission-critical service. Cost savings is more fruitful for commodity services and products. It is our opinion that a change in vendors will be more likely to cause increased costs and no savings.” Neustar publicized the report on its blog Tuesday (http://bit.ly/KDDUzh).

Comptel filed a petition for reconsideration Thursday in the FCC’s rural call completion proceeding, asking the commission to “reconsider the contours” of the small carrier exemption in its November order. The FCC should restore the original version of the exemption in its rulemaking, which would exempt any telco with 100,000 subscribers or fewer from complying with the order’s reporting, data retention and record-keeping requirements, Compel said in its petition. The version the FCC included in the order exempted only telcos with 100,000 or fewer subscriber lines (http://bit.ly/19xkkke). That revision will increase the number of telcos that must abide by the order by 150 percent, Comptel said in a news release. The FCC should reconsider the exemption language because it failed to provide adequate notice and time for public comment on the narrower definition in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, Comptel said. The FCC “acted arbitrarily and capriciously in adopting the revised definition of small carrier without explaining the reasoning behind it,” the telco said. The FCC did not comment.

The FCC must implement Phase II of its Connect America Fund program in 2014 if it wants to accomplish its goal of ensuring rural America is connected to modern broadband networks, officials from USTelecom, AT&T, CenturyLink, FairPoint and Alaska Communication Systems told an aide to Chairman Tom Wheeler Jan. 9, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/1cqh0lP). The commission’s current cost model, “as a result of substantial public input through workshops and multiple rounds of comments, appears to produce generally reliable results,” the groups said. The commission should quickly finalize the cost model and begin a challenge process to determine where support will be allocated, they said. The groups also asked the commission to resolve other “key” issues early this year, such as redefining eligible telecom carrier obligations to reflect CAF Phase II’s targeting of support to “discrete geographic areas” rather than on a broad study area basis. They also asked the FCC to specify the “precise nature of any obligation to provide levels of broadband service other than at the 4/1 Mbps level."

New Comptel CEO Chip Pickering at a press conference Tuesday praised FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s principles. The principles Wheeler has laid out regarding the IP transition and spectrum auctions are consistent and compatible with CompTel’s values, Pickering said: “We are building coalitions around competitive policies so that we can help influence decisions at the FCC.” Ahead of any potential rewrite of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Comptel plans to continue educating those on the Hill about how the Telecom Act framework has worked, the importance of preserving “the enduring principles of interconnection,” and the importance of breaking bottlenecks to allow for access to customers, he said. The Telecom Act, along with breaking up AT&T in 1984 and deciding in 1993 to have a competitive spectrum auction, have created more economic growth than any other actions in the past few decades, Pickering said.