The FCC plans to name Sharon Gillett chief of the Wireline Bureau, a commission official told us Thursday. She couldn’t be reached, because she had a personal emergency. Gillett has been coordinating Massachusetts broadband stimulus efforts as the executive director of the Massachusetts Broadband Institute. She used to run the state’s Department of Telecom & Cable. Gillett has supported detailed broadband mapping, as well as tweaking the way the FCC deals with forbearance petitions. At the CompTel show, Gillett said it would be “fantastic” if the FCC involved states earlier in forbearance proceedings (CD March 5 p3)
Adam Bender
Adam Bender, Senior Editor, is the state and local telecommunications reporter for Communications Daily, where he also has covered Congress and the Federal Communications Commission. He has won awards for his Warren Communications News reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists, Specialized Information Publishers Association and the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. Bender studied print journalism at American University and is the author of dystopian science-fiction novels. You can follow Bender at WatchAdam.blog and @WatchAdam on Twitter.
Fighting over whether there’s a need for new FCC broadband regulation raged on in reply comments this week on the commission’s development of a national broadband plan. The argument pits big broadband providers and conservative think tanks against Internet companies and public interest groups, and it highlights continuing tension over proposed net neutrality regulation. It’s unclear whether the full commission or just the chairman’s office will write the final report, FCC officials said Wednesday.
Chairman Julius Genachowski invited a few outside organizations to the FCC for what he called a “meet and greet” this week. The first meeting, held Monday, involved consumer groups and the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, NTCA Communications Director Wendy Mann said Tuesday. Genachowski called the session the first of several meetings planned to seek groups’ ideas for the new commission, she said. Genachowski and eight of his aides took part in the invitation-only meeting, she said. The chairman emphasized his desire to make a difference in the lives of “ordinary Americans” and hold more-open discussion with organizations, Mann said. NTCA Industry Affairs Director Scott Reiter asked Genachowski to keep rural consumers’ needs in mind, she said. The association probably will discuss more-specific telecom issues when it meets on its own with Genachowski and his staff, she said. The chairman isn’t expected to hold many get-acquainted visits with industry for several weeks, especially since he’s still putting together leadership teams throughout the agency, commission officials said Tuesday.
The compensation rate for video relay service would be $5.03 a minute on average if the FCC decides to refigure the charges for the interstate telecom relay service fund’s 2009- 2010 year, the National Exchange Carrier said. The projection is based on cost information from VRS providers, it said. Excluding the VRS provider’s data, the average rate would be $5.59. The figures are “substantially less” than current VRS reimbursement rates, lawyer David O'Connor said. The current rate has three tiers. Companies get about $6.74 for the first 50,000 minutes, $6.47 for minutes 50,001 to 500,000, and $6.27 for minutes beyond that. Sorenson, the biggest U.S. VRS provider, has threatened legal action if the FCC changes the rate (CD July 13 p5). The commission now is using a three-year interim rate plan set by the National Exchange Carrier Association in 2007.
People sending ideas to the FCC on its national broadband plan must do better to submit realistic and workable suggestions, Blair Levin, coordinator of the commission’s plan, said Monday at the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council conference. The FCC has limited time and a limited budget, so it needs people’s “best ideas” quickly and clearly, he said. But many commenters don’t seem to recognize there are limits and that the plan must include tradeoffs, he said.
An appeals court upheld two FCC orders granting incumbent phone companies forbearance from dominant-carrier requirements applying to the special-access market. In an order Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected an effort by competitive carriers and business users of special-access services to throw out 2007 FCC decisions that partly deregulated AT&T, Embarq and Frontier. But the court left the door open for future price regulation, saying the commission has the power to tweak its rules in its special-access rulemaking
The FCC must not ignore U.S. successes as it develops broadband policy, Commissioner Robert McDowell said Wednesday at a Phoenix Center event introducing a new study on adoption. And it shouldn’t base policy on one group’s report card, he said. Despite the economic crisis, the telecom industry plans to invest $80 billion this year, McDowell said. “Whatever we do should help attract more private investment capital, not deter it.”
Jeff Pulver aims to “reboot telecom” by lobbying in Washington for widespread adoption of HD voice technology, the VoIP pioneer and Vonage co-founder said Tuesday. Pulver plans in September to formally introduce his effort, which seeks to make HD voice the “bare-bone minimum quality” voice standard for broadband, wireless and traditional wireline by 2015, he said.
An AT&T emergency petition on Universal Service Fund contributions is expected to flare up old arguments before the new FCC, telecom industry officials said Monday. Late Friday, the company urged “immediate commission action” to adopt the plan by AT&T and Verizon for a pure numbers-based mechanism, in light of the all-time high 12.9 percent contribution factor that kicked in earlier this month. But AT&T’s foes don’t appear to have budged on the subject.
Qwest rejoined USTelecom, nearly eight years after falling out with the association over membership dues. In 2001, USTelecom suspended Qwest as a member, saying the company was four months behind in paying membership fees and the association didn’t want to create the lower-priced class of membership that Qwest had sought. The same day, Qwest said it “resigned” from USTelecom because it didn’t fully serve its needs. Qwest has rejoined USTelecom as a tier-one member, the same level it was before, a USTelecom spokesman told us Friday. The association doesn’t give out dues information, he said. A Qwest spokesman said it had left “because we believed it to be in our best interests to do so at that time,” but today it is “very excited” to be back. In statements, executives didn’t mention Qwest’s controversial departure from USTelecom. Qwest’s return marks a “formalization” of a collaboration that’s been ongoing “for a number of years,” USTelecom Chairman Ron McCue said. Qwest Senior Vice President Steve Davis said Qwest joined “to work together with their other member companies on important communications issues such as broadband deployment, Universal Service Fund reform, and intercarrier compensation reform, including traffic pumping and phantom traffic.”