“Broadband" differs from "advanced telecommunications capability" but is key to an ATC statutory mandate, the FCC said in a Broadband Progress Report it released Friday after approving it Thursday (see 1601280064). The report said for simplicity’s sake, the commission sometimes used the term “broadband” to refer to “advanced telecommunications capability” in past inquiries on whether ATC was being deployed in a reasonable and timely fashion to all Americans pursuant to Section 706 of the 1996 Telecom Act. But it said “advanced telecommunications capability” is a statutorily defined term that differs from “broadband” as it’s used in other contexts. “Thus, in this Inquiry, we do not equate the term 'broadband' with the statutory term 'advanced telecommunications capability,' but we do necessarily consider the availability of various broadband services that contribute to advanced telecommunications capability in our analysis under the statute,” it said. The report cited various data for why the FCC said ATC isn’t being deployed “broadly enough and quickly enough” to meet the Section 706 mandate. It said one in 10 Americans lacks 25/3 Mbps (download/upload) broadband availability, and ATC deployment disparities persist between urban areas and rural and tribal areas. It elaborated on why the FCC believes both mobile and fixed broadband availability are necessary under the statutory mandate. It said there are various marketing, usage and adoption differences that dispel the notion that current fixed and mobile broadband services give consumers the same or substitutable services. “On the contrary, they are distinct services with complementary strengths and weaknesses, distinguishable in capability, pricing, and in the utility they provide consumers,” it said. The report said the FCC couldn’t yet define adequate mobile broadband speed or service standards, and it noted the FCC may consider different mobile and fixed speed benchmarks. The report said there are “many and varied” barriers to ATC deployment, and cited past and ongoing FCC efforts on rural broadband, E-rate and Lifeline USF modernization, and other matters. It said if consumers’ personal information can be protected, that could spur broadband service, investment and deployment, consistent with the 1996 act’s goals. Consumer groups are pushing the FCC to issue an NPRM opening a broadband privacy rulemaking (see 1601190077).

The U.S. has a mixed record in international broadband metrics, said an FCC international broadband data report listed in Monday's Daily Digest that looked at deployment, speed and pricing. "The available international broadband data, though not fully comparable to data on the United States, continue to suggest that although the United States may be among the leaders for developed countries with regard to some broadband metrics, it lags in some other metrics," said the 201-page report. For instance, with 89 percent coverage in 2014, the U.S. ranked ahead of 21 of 31 European countries on the scope of its fixed broadband deployment, it said. But the U.S. ranked only 26th out of 40 countries in 2014 in terms of actual fixed broadband "download speeds (26.68 Mbps) when weighted by sample size," it said. The U.S. also ranked only 23rd out of 33 countries for least-expensive overall fixed broadband pricing plans, though it ranked third least expensive on stand-alone broadband plans with data usage limits when taking those limits into account, the report said. On mobile broadband, the U.S. ranked 23rd least expensive out of 30 countries on price per GB for plans with usage limits less than 5 GB, and 23rd least expensive out of 31 countries on price per GB for plans with usage limits greater than 5 GB, it said.

The FCC is allowing tests of LTE-unlicensed, to be conducted by Qualcomm, on a “very small scale” at two Verizon sites, Julius Knapp, chief of the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology, said Friday in a blog post. OET approved special temporary authority (STA) for the tests in Oklahoma City and Raleigh, North Carolina, Knapp said. “Various parties have expressed concern that LTE-U may not share spectrum fairly with Wi-Fi and other devices operating in unlicensed spectrum,” he wrote. “The Office of Engineering & Technology and the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau have encouraged the industry to address and resolve these concerns and considerable progress has been made.” Grants of STA and experimental licenses “don't have any significance relative to whether the Commission may ultimately authorize a device or service,” Knapp wrote. “Significant steps remain” before LTE-U could see widespread commercial deployment, he said. “We believe that this development is an encouraging step in continuing that success.” The news got a bipartisan thumbs up from the leaders of the House Commerce Committee and Telecom Subcommittee. “This is what we have been working toward all along, and it’s the right call for consumers and innovation,” the leaders said in a news release. “An environment that fosters the development of next generation technologies is what makes America the greatest place in the world to do business, create jobs, and develop state-of-the-art communications tools for consumers.” CTIA Chief Technology Officer Tom Sawanobori said, “Fostering innovation in unlicensed bands is key to meeting consumer demand and maintaining our position as global leader in mobile broadband.”

A court set oral argument for March 17 on challenges to an FCC order pre-empting state restrictions on municipal broadband efforts. The consolidated case will be heard by a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, with the judges' names to be posted on a court calendar two weeks before the argument, said a short order Thursday (State of Tennessee, State of North Carolina v. FCC, Nos. 15-3291, 15-3555). Despite the scheduled hearing, the order said the judges, as they prepare for the case, could conclude oral argument isn't necessary.

FCC commissioners will look at a notice of inquiry at their February meeting seeking comment on programming diversity issues "and the principal obstacles that independent programmers face" in being carried on video distribution platforms, the FCC said Thursday. Commissioner Mignon Clyburn had said the NOI was in the works earlier this month at the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council's broadband conference (see 1601210031). The meeting is scheduled for Feb. 18.

The Justice Department "finally released" the full text of the EU-U.S. umbrella agreement, the Electronic Privacy Information Center said Monday on its website. EPIC sued the department last year when it didn't act on the group's Freedom of Information Act request. The agreement, EPIC said, "outlines data transfers between EU and US law enforcement agencies, and is the basis for the Judicial Redress Act currently before Congress." EPIC had asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to delay consideration of the bill until a hearing is held on it as well as when the umbrella agreement is made public. The committee is holding a hearing Thursday on the bill (see 1601270025).

Numerous American TV Alliance members lobbied the FCC in recent days on proposed changes to the totality of circumstances test for good-faith retransmission consent negotiating. In an ex parte filing posted Wednesday in docket 15-216, ATVA recapped a pair of meetings with Media Bureau staff, including Chief Bill Lake, and separately with the chairman's office, including Senior Counselor Philip Verveer. ATVA members at the meetings included representatives of the American Cable Association, AT&T, Dish Network, Mediacom, Suddenlink, Time Warner Cable and USTelecom. During the meetings, ATVA said the representatives said the FCC has "unquestionable authority to act in this area" and went over ATVA's proposals (see 1601140026).

The FCC is moving back Thursday's open meeting and giving extra time for most filings. In a notice Wednesday, it cited the weather-related closing of FCC offices Friday afternoon through Tuesday (see 1601250058) and said all filings that were due Jan. 22 through Jan. 27 are now due Thursday. Network Outage Reporting System notifications (see 1601250058) and reports and filings subject to statutory deadlines, however, are excepted from the deadline changes, the FCC said. In a separate notice Wednesday, the agency said Thursday's January open meeting still is a go, as was expected (see 1601260063). It will start at 1 p.m. in the Commission Meeting Room instead of the standard 10:30 a.m. The FCC also pointed to the recent winter storm, in an unopposed motion filed Wednesday in U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit asking that the filing deadline for its brief due Thursday in the appeal of its 2015 effective competition order be moved to Feb. 2. "The prolonged closure of the government has seriously disrupted the efforts of FCC counsel to prepare the brief," the agency said in its motion, which also asks that the intervenor for respondents' brief deadline be moved to Feb. 16, the petitioners' reply brief deadline moved to March 8, and final briefs now be due March 29. NAB, NATOA and Minnesota's Northern Dakota County Cable Communications Commission sued the FCC in August, asking the D.C. Circuit to reject the June effective competition order (see 1508280033).

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler joined a U.S. delegation to Cuba last week that had talks with government officials and others about improving bilateral communications links and domestic Cuban systems. "The Cubans we met were proud people who recognize the benefits new telecommunications networks can bring to education, health care and economic growth," Wheeler said in a blog post Wednesday, saying the delegation was led by Ambassador Danny Sepulveda of the State Department and included technology community representatives. "Our message was simple: we want to help (already, for instance, two companies have roaming agreements with the state-owned telecom provider). We spoke about a new undersea cable connecting our countries, commercial relations for equipment and service providers, as well as an ongoing regulatory dialog." Wheeler said the Cubans talked about upgrading to DSL and 3G wireless and "we urged them to leapfrog such linear transitions and expand to state-of-the-art services." The U.S. delegation pledged to support Cuba's efforts, and members of the island's "small but growing entrepreneurial community [are] hungry for network connectivity," he said. "It is unclear, however, just how anxious the Cuban government is to open up expanded network capabilities." The FCC recently removed Cuba from an exclusion list for international Communications Act Section 214 authorizations, easing the way for U.S. telecom carriers to provide facilities-based voice and data services to Cuba (see 1601150076). "We are also working on removing certain non-discrimination requirements on the U.S.-Cuba route, which would give U.S. carriers more flexibility to negotiate rates with the state-owned telecommunications operator and to respond to market forces," said Wheeler, who said he enjoyed his visit. Separately, the Department of Commerce said its Bureau of Industry and Security "will generally approve license applications for exports and re-exports of telecommunications items that would improve communications to, from, and among the Cuban people," under U.S. trade amendments for Cuba announced Tuesday in a release.

Global Tel*Link and Securus Technologies sought a court stay of certain FCC inmate calling service (ICS) rules, pending further judicial review of a recent order, which the agency refused to stay (see 1601220040). The commission imposed “rate caps that the FCC admits are below providers’ lawfully incurred costs,” GTL said in a motion Wednesday to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (Global Tel*Link v. FCC, No. 15-1461 and consolidated cases). GTL asked that the rate caps be stayed before their effective dates -- March 17 for prisons and June 18 for jails. It said it was likely to prevail on the merits of the underlying case, an initial prong in stay reviews. The rate caps don’t allow ICS providers “to recover the cost of site commissioners they are required to pay [to correctional authorities] -- even though the FCC recognized that those payments are both a substantial cost incurred by ICS providers and permitted by federal law,” GTL said: The FCC "acknowledged that, if commissions are taken into account, the rate caps are below cost.” The company said the rate caps were below cost even without factoring in the site commissions, and it said the agency lacked authority to cap intrastate ICS calls. GTL said the balance of equities also favors a stay because, first, it would otherwise suffer irreparable harm from being forced to charge “unlawful, confiscatory rates" and "the revenues lost cannot be recovered.” The public would also be harmed if the rate caps lead to the loss or reduction of service, it said, while there will be “no cognizable harm” if a stay is imposed. “The court will now set a calendar for briefing the matter, perhaps a month, and then a decision will be issued,” said a GTL spokesperson. “Briefing on the merits of the appeal will occur sometime after, once the court sets a calendar, probably spring into early summer, then oral arguments will take place in the fall and a decision to follow." In its motion, Securus sought a stay of various FCC fee restrictions, its site commission definition and certain reporting requirements. "This new regime will dramatically reduce Securus's rates for several services and may prevent their continued provision," said Securus, which also made detailed arguments in favor of a stay. Others may join the stay effort, GTL said.