Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

The House Rules Committee appears likely to clear at least some of 17 amendments to the Save the Internet Act net neutrality bill for floor consideration this week, said communications sector lobbyists and officials in interviews. A final vote on HR-1644 is expected Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning.

As frustrated stakeholders watch an FCC drafting process that they want to be more transparent for an NPRM circulating on USF budgets, concerns about the document's details (see 1903270042) are mounting (see 1903280050). All stakeholders we interviewed this week and last wish the rulemaking had been set for consideration at a monthly commissioners' meeting, so it would be public three weeks beforehand. Or, they wanted it released another way in advance.

An FCC order on the upper 37 GHz band, teed up for the April 12 commissioners' meeting, shows the length the agency will go to clear spectrum for 5G, as an ongoing auction tops $1 billion. The FCC proposes rules for coordinating with DOD on future use of the upper 37 GHz band beyond current DOD sites located there. The plan “strikes a reasonable balance,” said the draft order posted Friday. Chairman Ajit Pai unveiled the agenda Thursday (see 1903210062).

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said the April 12 commissioners’ meeting will focus on 5G for a second straight month. It includes the public notice for the auction of the 37, 39 and 47 GHz bands and a plan for sharing the 37 GHz band between industry and DOD. 5G is “the next big thing in wireless,” Pai blogged. He plans votes on nixing a rural telco USF rate floor and granting part of a USTelecom forbearance petition seeking ILEC relief from certain structural-separation and reporting duties. And there's a media modernization item, among others in the pipeline (see 1903210072).

A USTelecom initiative aims to improve broadband data and mapping, starting with a pilot in Virginia and Missouri. It will use "modern-data analytics" to develop a "comprehensive database of all broadband serviceable locations in our two pilot states -- and a road map for a collaborative government-led effort to expand the system nationwide," said CEO Jonathan Spalter at an event Thursday. He said ITTA, the Wireless ISP Association, USTelecom members and others will participate. The coalition hopes the mapping effort will be "useful in the FCC’s quest to modernize its broadband data collection process, and supportive of other related federal and state initiatives," he said.

Universal Service Administrative Co. is working to enhance its Lifeline national verifier (NV) of consumer eligibility, said Michelle Garber, USAC vice president-Lifeline, noting some changes will take time or could require more FCC direction. She acknowledged the NV's lack of greater access to government databases, particularly in less-populated rural states, increased initial verification failure rates, but said access to a key Medicaid national database is coming. "I don't think it's a question of if that'll happen; it's a question of when," she told us recently. "I feel like it'll happen this year."

The FCC approved 5-0 an order allocating the first bands above 95 GHz for Wi-Fi and other unlicensed use. Commissioners Geoffrey Starks and Jessica Rosenworcel voted for the order but raised questions, as expected (see 1903130057). The "spectrum horizons" order provides unlicensed use of 21.2 GHz of spectrum in four band segments and would permit experimental use on any frequency from 95 GHz to 3 THz.

California's net neutrality law is "a consequence" of FCC deregulation, said ex-commission Chairman Tom Wheeler on C-SPAN: "If the federal government has stepped aside, and the agency responsible for America’s networks says, 'No, we don’t have this responsibility any more for internet networks,' and we are a federal system, then why should we be surprised if the states step up?" Under President Donald Trump, "those networks regulated by the FCC have gotten everything they want. And they turn around and they say, ‘Oh my goodness, there’s a void there, we need some kind of rules.’ So they turn around and they go to Congress and say, ‘We’ve got to pre-empt what California has done,'" Wheeler added. ISPs are discovering the truth of what Adam Smith wrote that markets can't work without rules, Wheeler told The Communicators, put online Friday and televised this week. "They had uniform set of rules on open internet … on privacy that got overturned in the Trump administration." Monday, the Internet Association and USTelecom didn't comment and the commission and NCTA declined to comment. Wheeler criticized the FCC on cybersecurity under Chairman Ajit Pai. "If the most important network is probably going to be the wireless network, now in shorthand described as 5G," Wheeler asked, "what are we doing now to get in front of the threats that we know are coming?" The agency under Wheeler sought to require standards for spectrum the agency is making available for fifth-generation wireless be able to prevent such attacks, and sought technical feedback from experts, he recalled. "When the Trump FCC came in, they shut down both of these activities." He said the examination of what 5G gear can be bought is "important," such as whether equipment can come from Chinese companies. "The first step in rebalancing between the people and the powerful begins with oversight of the dominant network" via net neutrality, Wheeler blogged Friday for the Brookings Institution. "The second step comes with the establishment of rules for those who ride on the internet." The Trump FTC, which declined comment Monday, "has made noises, but has yet to step up to this challenge," wrote Wheeler, a Brookings visiting fellow. "Today’s internet barons behave just as the industrial barons in [then-President Teddy] Roosevelt’s day."

The rollout of a Lifeline national verifier (NV) continues to spark concerns that many eligible low-income consumers will be thwarted from signing up for the program or de-enrolled if already subscribing, though there are signs of progress. The Universal Service Administrative Co., charged by the FCC with implementing the NV, lacks application programming interfaces (APIs) for providers and electronic access to many key government databases. That undermines automated verification of consumer eligibility, and manual processes are cumbersome, stakeholders told us.

Frontier Communications faces a second Minnesota investigation in response to complaints by consumers and workers in a state Commerce Department report finding that the carrier possibly violated at least 35 laws and rules (see 1901240025). The Minnesota Office of Attorney General is probing possible consumer fraud in parallel to a Public Utilities Commission’s service-quality investigation, OAG commented this week at the PUC. Responding at length to the Commerce report of about 1,000 complaining consumers, the telco claimed fewer than 450 Minnesota customers had major service problems last year.