Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai advances Lisa Fowlkes (see 1706130059) to chief-Public Safety Bureau, where she was acting chief ... Wilkinson Barker hires Anne Swanson, ex-Cooley, as partner; she has worked on drone, tech and communications issues ... NAB hires Josh Pollack, ex-White House aide under President Barack Obama, as vice president-government relations, effective July 10 ... With Verizon completing (see 1706130048) purchase of the operating business of Yahoo, the assets are combined with its existing AOL business to create a new subsidiary, Oath; ex-AOL CEO Tim Armstrong is CEO of Oath, which is part of Verizon's Media and Telematics organization; Marni Walden is Verizon president-media and telematics; Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer resigns from Yahoo.

The California Public Utilities Commission may oppose the FCC on wireline and wireless infrastructure NPRMs and notices of inquiry. California commissioners plan to vote Thursday on proposed staff comments to the FCC, said an agenda. Staff asked permission to comment that the FCC is “reading its authority more broadly than the statutory language warrants,” said the draft comments released Friday. “Plain language of §253(d) does not give the FCC the power to promulgate rules to preempt state and local regulations.” The FCC “must act through case-by-case adjudication, not a blanket peremptory rulemaking,” it said. Staff disagreed that the FCC should remove or reduce copper notice requirements. The federal regulator shouldn’t reduce from 180 days the waiting period for a certificate to terminate service, and should keep a prohibition on disclosing network change information until after public notice, the draft said. “Absent this rule[,] an ILEC planning to retire copper could notify an affiliate which could lay fiber where a competitor already has a wholesale agreement, potentially putting that competitor out of business.” The FCC should maintain protections ensuring that disabled customers can continue to communicate on IP networks, and shouldn’t remove 2015 standards for discontinuance of legacy services and replacement services, it said. “Customers might lose free access to 911, or service functionality or coverage, or access to relay service.” Also on the agenda for Thursday’s CPUC meeting, commissioners will vote on opening a rulemaking to consider whether text messaging is a telecom service that must pay into state USF and other programs (see 1705150040). And commissioners will vote on whether to extend until Aug. 23 the deadline to align state LifeLine with changes to the federal low-income program.

Building and real-estate groups backed a bid for FCC pre-emption of a San Francisco code that requires multi-tenant buildings to allow occupants to request access to competing communications service providers (see 1612150006). Initial comments "overwhelmingly support" the petition of the Multifamily Broadband Council to pre-empt Article 52 of the San Francisco Police Code, which "conflicts with federal law, will impede broadband deployment and infrastructure investment in multiple dwelling units ('MDUs') and will increase prices and reduce service quality for MDU residents," replied the National Multifamily Housing Council. Most replies were posted Friday and Monday in docket 17-91. Initial comments (see 1705190040) showed Article 52 "will harm competition, MDU residents, and building owners in San Francisco" by stripping "providers of the ability to secure financing for broadband deployment," replied MBC. Others filing replies backing the petition were: Alliance Residential; Camden Property Trust, Essex Property Trust; InfoSmart Partners and Converged Service Partners; Mill Creek Residential Trust; Sares Regis Group, Sequoia Equities and RealtyCom Partners; and a group of 24 apartment owners. San Francisco replied that the advocates of the petition largely ignored that it concerns whether federal law and FCC regulations pre-empt Article 52: "While many of the proponents ask the Commission to find that Article 52 'conflicts' with federal law and Commission policy, they provide scant legal analysis and nothing supporting such a finding. Rather, they urge the Commission to find that the policy reasons for adopting Article 52 are misguided and that San Francisco’s law, while intended to foster competition, 'discourages competition' and 'infrastructure investment' in [MDUs]. ... What is clear from the proponents’ comments is that they like the status quo." Industry providers and property owners backing the petition want the FCC "to allow them to continue to operate under the exclusive access agreements they have enjoyed," San Francisco said. Also filing replies in opposition to the petition were Boston, Fiber Broadband Association and Incompas. Article 52 is a "pro-competitive, barrier-removing local ordinance, with a now-proven track record for helping providers gain access" to MDUs, Incompas replied. FCC members tentatively plan to vote June 22 on a notice of inquiry that would seek comment on ways to improve competitive broadband access in multi-tenant buildings (see 1706010049).

The FCC Technological Advisory Council met for the first time Thursday under Chairman Ajit Pai, with a new focus on types of issues Pai has emphasized, including cutting regulation and broadband deployment. TAC was a favorite of then-FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, who chaired the group before he was a commissioner. Pai, meanwhile, is visiting Plains states (see 1706080041). Although some complained afterward of a possible tilt toward deregulation under the TAC, others defended its tack under Pai.

The FCC’s newly reconfigured Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council will meet June 23, starting at 1 p.m.. in the Commission Meeting Room, said a notice in Wednesday's Federal Register. The last CSRIC met the final time in March (see 1703150058). The FCC rechartered the group in April for a new two-year term, though with no focus on cybersecurity issues (see 1704100059).

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission will appeal a federal district court opinion that Charter VoIP is an information service that may not be regulated. The commission informed U.S. District Court in St. Paul of its appeal to the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a Wednesday notice (in Pacer). With the FCC never ruling definitively on how to classify interconnected VoIP, observers see the case as having big implications for whether states also may regulate internet-based voice communications.

Incumbent telcos lobbied FCC General Counsel Brendan Carr and others on the companies' position that interexchange carriers can't use tariffed access services and then seek refunds on grounds they routed intra-major trading area wireless traffic using such services to LECs. CenturyLink, Cox Communications, Frontier Communications and Windstream representatives noted in the ex parte filing posted Monday to docket 01-92 that a federal judge granted an LEC motion to dismiss Sprint and Verizon's federal claims in an intercarrier compensation fight between LECs and interexchange carriers over such wireline-wireless traffic (see 1511200070). The commission shouldn't take any action inconsistent with the ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, said the members of the LEC Coalition. The LECs also met with Wireline Bureau staff. Sprint and Level 3 asked the FCC to reiterate that long-distance companies (inter-exchange carriers) don't owe local phone access charges for wireline-wireless traffic (see 1605110056).

Local authorities feel underrepresented on the FCC Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee and fear they won’t be able to support industry-dominated BDAC's recommendations, local officials said in interviews this week. “The deck is stacked and it’s not in local government’s favor,” said local government attorney Ken Fellman, a member of the FCC Intergovernmental Advisory Committee (IAC), which represents local, state and tribal interests but has no members on BDAC. Industry disagreed the BDAC is balanced against local voices.

Regulating broadband providers under Title II of the Communications Act is more anachronistic than most argue, said Tad Lipsky, acting director of the FTC Competition Bureau, at the Free State Foundation conference Wednesday. Many in industry say reclassifying saddled broadband providers with a regulatory approach from 1934 when the Communications Act was passed, Lipsky said. In reality, the regulation is modeled on the Interstate Commerce Act, signed by President Grover Cleveland in 1887, he said. The act “has been the model for all of the economic regulatory agencies at the federal level in our history,” he said. “I’m a cheerleader for the light regulation approach,” Lipsky said. “I endorse the philosophy that the temptation to look at the problems of a dynamic and quickly developing industry, and to immediately apply the structure of economic regulation” to guard against future problems “has been a fail.” The Interstate Commerce Commission was eliminated in 1996 and the Civil Aeronautics Board was terminated earlier, he said. “It is in many respects a dubious and highly questionable … system of regulation.” Tom Pahl, acting director of the FTC Consumer Protection Bureau, remembers an era when people had party-line phones, his parents had to visit travel agencies to plan family trips, and there were no YouTube videos on performing simple household repairs. “My teenage son cannot even imagine living under those circumstances.” Pahl said. The internet transformed daily life, he said. “In large part, a free-market, limited-regulatory approach has fostered this transformation while protecting consumers from harm.” The FTC is protecting data security, bringing hundreds of privacy and data security cases, Pahl said. The cases “involved offline and online information and companies large and small,” he said. “They covered all parts of the internet ecosystem, including social networks, search engines, ad networks, online retailers, mobile apps and mobile handsets.” If the FCC returns broadband to a Title I regime, the FTC is “ready, willing and able to protect the data security and privacy of broadband subscribers,” Pahl said. “We have a wealth of consumer protection and competition experience and expertise, which we will bring to bear on online data security and privacy laws.” The standards would then apply to all internet companies, not just ISPs, he said. “Our approach would ensure that the standards the government applies are comprehensive, consistent and pro-competitive.” Companies would be held responsible for the promises they make to consumers and accountable for the misuse of information, he said. “We hold companies responsible for not having reasonable data security practices.”

FCC Commissioners Michael O'Rielly and Mignon Clyburn backed means-testing USF support for broadband/telecom service in high-cost areas. It's "time to fix a fundamental structural defect" in the program, which is the subsidization of communications access for people "who don't need or deserve governmental assistance," they said in a rare joint blog post Wednesday. They sought comment on various questions and hope to bring the issue before the commission "in the very near future." O'Rielly recently said he and Clyburn were working on a draft item (see 1705180061). Representatives of Chairman Ajit Pai, USTelecom and NTCA declined comment.