Congressional committees, agencies and the private sector will have to resolve differences in order to move forward on cybersecurity, industry and government officials said at an FCBA lunch Friday. Many Senate committees are pushing forward on bills, and it’s unclear when they'll have consensus on a single piece of legislation, said Deborah Parkinson, a Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee staffer. However, a big push from the top should keep senators on track, she said.
Qwest urged the FCC not to impose a “complete when filed” rule as the commission seeks to revamp the forbearance process. The commission last month circulated a draft order on a forbearance overhaul (CD June 10 p11). Under a “complete when filed” rule, petitioners would have to include all supporting information in the initial petition or reset the time limit on forbearance proceedings. In meetings with aides to Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, Qwest said the rule would unfairly block petitioners “from providing additional data requested by the FCC, from responding to objections or arguments from third parties, or from updating the data if the petition takes 12-15 months to resolve.” But Qwest agreed that the forbearance process “could be improved.” It suggested that the FCC require third parties to produce data relevant to forbearance proceedings. “Petitioners may not have access to all such data but the information is nonetheless critical to make a determination of whether the petition satisfies the statutory criteria for forbearance,” it said. The “complete when filed” rule is receiving much discussion at the commission, said an attorney for competitive local exchange carriers. CLECs believe Qwest’s objections are fair, and would support a “nuanced” rule that would allow the petitioner to provide additional data in certain circumstances, the lawyer said.
With the FCC considering a fifth Internet policy principle, on nondiscrimination, a Comcast executive said the company has always been willing to discuss network neutrality and management issues with policymakers. Existing antitrust and FTC laws address many of the same issues, Executive Vice President David Cohen said in an interview. Last week, Verizon Executive Vice President Tom Tauke similarly told reporters (CD June 5 p1) he’s willing to talk, adding that the phone company could find a way to live with a nondiscrimination principle.
The FCC should set a goal for everyone in the U.S. to have broadband access by early 2014, major phone companies said late Monday as comments for the commission’s national plan continued arriving. There was wide agreement that overhauling the Universal Service Fund must be a high priority.
The FCC was likely to miss its unofficial 180-day deadline to review CenturyTel’s purchase of Embarq, a commission official told us Friday. The self-imposed time limit was to expire Sunday. At our deadline Friday, FCC sources said no draft order had circulated on the eighth floor. The office of acting Chairman Michael Copps was still working out a few details, a commission official said. The FCC is expected to approve the $11.6 billion deal but has been studying company commitments offered to gain clearance (CD June 3 p2).
A federal appeals court rejected two FCC rules designed to protect deaf consumers from unwanted lobbying. Ruling late Thursday on appeals by Sorenson and Purple Communications, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver remanded the telecom relay service rules, calling one unconstitutional and the other arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedures Act. The court dismissed a challenge by Purple to a third rule on abusive marketing practices, because the TRS provider hadn’t sought FCC reconsideration.
A 23-year-old law that sets standards for government surveillance of communications should be updated to reflect technological change, said officials from Google and privacy groups in a panel Wednesday at the Computer Freedom & Privacy Conference. Americans are putting more of their information online, through new technologies like cloud computing that aren’t explicitly protected by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, panelists said. Congressional intervention is needed, said Nicole Ozer, a policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union: “Privacy laws, unlike some technologies, just don’t auto-update.”
With less than a week left to review the Embarq- CenturyTel merger under the unofficial timeline, the FCC still hasn’t circulated a draft order, agency officials said Tuesday. The commission is expected to approve the $11.6 billion deal (CD May 22 p1), but is still reviewing merger commitments, said one official. The FCC’s 180-day shot clock expires Sunday, but the regulator hasn’t always met the self- imposed target.
The FCC last week circulated an item on revamping agency procedures for review of forbearance petitions, according to the list of items on circulation on the commission’s Web site. An FCC official confirmed that the draft on circulation is a report and order. Offices are starting to review the order. The order is expected to deal with late- filed evidence, last-minute withdrawals and other problems that competitive carriers say have plagued the process (CD May 28 p3).
AT&T and Sprint Nextel urged the FCC to abolish a telecom relay service rule requiring conventional Teletype TRS providers to automatically and immediately call the appropriate public safety answering point when they get a 711 emergency call from an interconnected-VoIP user. In separate comments last week at the FCC, AT&T and Sprint said such users make too few of the calls to justify the costs of building the system needed to comply. But consumer groups said “people with disabilities must have the same access to emergency services as any person without disabilities.”