Adam Bender

The incoming Commerce Committee chairmen asked FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to take up only DTV items at the commission’s Dec. 18 meeting. Commissioner Michael Copps quickly expressed agreement, but it was unclear how Martin will respond. The request, in a letter sent Friday, may have cost Martin support from Democrat commissioners on contentious matters not involving DTV, industry sources said. Late Thursday, the FCC released its Dec. 18 agenda listing all of the items that Martin circulated late last month.

Incorrect payments continue in the universal service schools and libraries E-rate program and low income fund, the FCC’s inspector general said Friday. These are payments that shouldn’t be made or are for the wrong amount. The E-rate program had a rate of payment errors of 13.9 percent in audits just completed, up from 12.9 percent in 2007, the IG said. The incorrect payments totaled $232.7 million, compared to $210 million in 2007. The problem puts the program “at risk,” according to Office of Management and Budget guidelines that set 2.5 percent as the highest acceptable rate.

Sprint Nextel reached a $17.5 million preliminary settlement to resolve nearly all outstanding litigation on early termination fees against the carrier nationwide, the company said Thursday. The agreement excludes one California case that was decided last Friday, it said. If the deal stands, Sprint will pay complainants $14 million cash and $3.5 million in credits, it said. “We think the settlement is appropriate,” a Sprint spokesman said. “No wrongdoing was found and our focus remains on initiatives that continue to enhance the customer experience.”

The FCC looks set to grant Qwest forbearance relief from accounting rules, an FCC official told us Wednesday. The draft order on circulation grants Qwest relief from Automated Reporting Management Information System requirements, and no commissioner’s feelings on ARMIS appears to have changed since September, when the FCC voted unanimously to kill several of the requirements for AT&T and other price-cap carriers, the official said. Also, since the draft order’s circulation, the eighth floor has seen little lobbying on the issue, the official said. Only CompTel has voiced opposition to the order, in an ex parte filing Tuesday (CD Dec 10 p7). Commissioners must vote by midnight Friday, or the forbearance petition will be deemed granted. Although the FCC frequently releases forbearance orders late at night, the FCC official said there’s a good chance the Qwest order will surface early in the day.

Awkward timing could stop FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s free wireless broadband proposal from getting votes at the agency’s Dec. 18 public meeting, a commission official said Wednesday. Some commission officials believe it would be unwise to make AWS-3 auction rules this month, given the current economic crisis, a new FCC next year and a fast- approaching DTV transition, the official said. Concerns also exist regarding how effectively the free Internet plan can spur rural and low-income broadband deployment.

The Supreme Court should rule that AT&T and similar phone companies aren’t violating antitrust laws when they set prices high at wholesale and low at retail, the company said in oral argument Monday at the court. The case, Pacific Bell v. LinkLine Communications, centers on whether a “price squeeze” violates the Sherman Act if it’s done by a vertically integrated company that’s highly regulated at the wholesale level but has no antitrust duty to deal with competitors (CD Nov 11 p11).

In oral argument Friday, Verizon and the FCC fought a battle of semantics over a commission decision on the carrier’s retention marketing program. Verizon is challenging, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, an FCC ruling that the company broke rules on porting local numbers when it used porting requests from departing phone customers to trigger marketing to them. Judges David Sentelle, David Tatel and Stephen Williams heard the case. They extended the argument 30 minutes to question the FCC attorney.

FCC officials voiced frustration over new delays in the commission’s overhauls of the Universal Service Fund and intercarrier compensation. At PLI’s annual telecom conference Thursday, Wireline Bureau Chief Dana Shaffer, Commissioner Robert McDowell and Scott Deutchman, an aide to Commissioner Michael Copps, wouldn’t predict when the FCC would finally act. McDowell and Deutchman said they were disappointed no vote would happen at the Dec. 18 FCC meeting. Meanwhile, Hill officials said some in Congress are looking to move on a USF revamp, but the prospects are unclear.

The FCC plans to revise its backup power rule for cell sites after disapproval by the Office of Management and Budget (CD Dec 2 p1), the commission said in a letter late Wednesday to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The rule, part of the agency’s Hurricane Katrina order, was challenged by wireless carriers in that court. Since the FCC doesn’t plan to override the Office’s disapproval, the court should throw the case out as moot, the commission said.

The FCC should impose a wireless spectrum aggregation cap to curb consolidation and top national carriers’ dominance, regional carriers said in Tuesday comments. The small, rural companies backed a Rural Telecommunications Group proposal to impose a 110 MHz limit county-by-county on all commercial terrestrial wireless spectrum below 2.3 GHz. But big carriers and others warned that a cap could stunt the growth of the wireless broadband industry.