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).
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.
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.”
The U.S. solicitor general supported a strict standard for deciding whether a telecom company’s entry into a market has been blocked by local or state laws. Filing an amicus brief Thursday at the Supreme Court, the solicitor general’s office asked the high court not to review two appeals court decisions that rejected a vaguer standard, under which telecom companies could get relief from local laws by showing they “may” prevent a company from providing service.
An FCC report on rural broadband prescribes government intervention to spur availability and demand. The report, released publicly on Wednesday, was required by Congress in the 2008 Farm Bill and did not require sign off by all commissioners. Instead, writing in the first-person, acting Chairman Michael Copps highlighted common problems affecting rural broadband, including technological challenges, lack of data and high network costs. Copps also urged a revamp of the Universal Service Fund, new rules on network openness and an audit of all spectrum that the FCC has licensed, with an eye on where it is being used effectively or could see more use on a secondary basis.
The FCC may substantially reform the forbearance process as soon as this summer, said agency and industry officials. An order, rather than a further notice of proposed rulemaking, seems likely, they said. It appears all three commissioners are on board to do reform, and they have support from House Democrats, industry sources said.
The FCC sent its rural broadband report to Congress Friday and will make it public Wednesday, an FCC spokesman said. Congress required the commission to do the report in the 2008 Farm Bill. The NTIA and the RUS are expected to give weight to the FCC’s recommendations as they develop their broadband-stimulus programs (CD March 27 p1).