Almost 60 public interest groups signed a letter urging the FCC to protect the privacy rights of broadband consumers and start a rulemaking proceeding on privacy immediately (see 1601190077). The letter was posted by the Center for Democracy & Technology Wednesday. "As adoption of broadband continues to accelerate and integrate across all aspects of our lives, the urgency to have clear privacy guidelines for providers of these services ratchets up significantly,” said Chris Calabrese, CDT vice president-policy, in a statement. “Every bit of data that consumers access on the Internet” is handled by an ISP, Public Knowledge Staff Attorney Meredith Rose said in a news release. “It’s this gatekeeper role that gives ISPs access to a vast amount of private data about their customers, and creates a substantial potential for abuse.” The FCC did not comment.

The FCC reminded small entities they can seek assistance on federal agency enforcement and compliance matters from the Small Business Administration's Office of the National Ombudsman. The office provides various forms of assistance, including a one-page form letter to facilitate written comments on "any complaints, suggestions, or compliments concerning a federal agency's enforcement action," an FCC news release said Tuesday.

The FCC should affirm the continued certification of the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable to regulate cable rates in Adams, MDTC said in an FCC filing. A petition by Time Warner Cable doesn't rebut MDTC's demonstration that effective competition isn't present in Adams, it said. The ZIP codes that TWC identifies in the proceeding don't contain residential households, MDTC said. Because of that, any DBS subscriptions in those ZIP codes are irrelevant to a determination of effective competition in those areas, it said. Even if the nonresidential subscriptions that TWC found were included in the effective competition calculation, the DBS penetration would still be under 15 percent, MDTC said. Only a few state and municipal interests challenged nationwide effective competition for cable operators, and those companies including TWC have been rebutting those challenges (see 1601110040 and 1601080019).

With the FCC poised to take a deep dive on sharing the 5.9 GHz band between Wi-Fi and auto companies (see 1601120055), NCTA said in a blog post Friday that it sees the use of the band as critical. “We’re working hard alongside technology companies, broadband providers, and consumers to encourage the FCC to work quickly, and to enter a collaborative testing process aimed at finding a win-win solution,” the cable association said. “We can all enjoy a future of fast, innovative, widely accessible broadband access. Meaningful sharing of the 5.9 GHz band would be a crucial step forward.”

Groups representing smaller telcos and consumers stepped up allegations the FCC’s planned local number portability administrator (LNPA) transition from Neustar to Ericsson’s iconectiv is a closed process dominated by large industry players. The LNP Alliance and New America’s Open Technology Institute “are concerned that decisions could be (or are being) made by the largest [North American Portability Management] carriers which would establish a non-neutral LNPA and/or processes and procedures that impose additional costs” on small and midsize (S/M) carriers and consumers. In a filing posted Friday in docket 95-116 that included a 2014 iconectiv white paper, the LNP Alliance and OTI said they had “reason to be concerned that iconectiv could undermine the traditional neutrality of the LNPA because, in the recent past, it has publicly advocated for a non-neutral LNPA arrangement.” The groups again asked the FCC to make public a Transition Oversight Manager Engagement Letter and a proposed iconectiv LNPA contract. “Timing is critical,” the groups said: “If these documents are not made available until after critical gating issues on the LNPA Transition and possibly the IP Transition have already been made, there could be irreparable harm to S/M carriers and consumers. With respect to the Proposed Contract, if review is not permitted until after it has been approved by the Commission, S/M carriers and consumers will be foreclosed from any meaningful input. While the Bureau Staff has previously indicated that portions of the Proposed Contract will be made public, they could not provide a near-term date when it would be made available to the Joint Parties. As time passes, the largest NAPM carriers and the Commission continue to close all other parties out of the process, feeding the suspicions of those outside the process that they may not like the results.” The FCC had no comment Friday.

Telecom policy is nearing a crossroads and could go in a very bad direction if the FCC doesn’t back off various utility-like regulatory initiatives, said AT&T Senior Executive Vice President Jim Cicconi. “The question is whether the Open Internet Order was designed solely to keep a free and open Internet, like the prior rule we supported, or whether it signifies a much harder shift — a shift away from the pro-investment policies of the past 20 years,” he said in prepared remarks for the Emerging Issues Policy Forum in Amelia Island, Florida, Thursday. Cicconi said the “velocity of technological change is incredible,” and broadband networks are the bedrock and catalyst for innovative products and services: “Without broadband would Facebook be the Facebook we know today? Would Amazon be the Amazon we know today? Would Google be Alphabet? Would Uber even work? Of course not.” The broadband networks have been built with $1.4 trillion of mostly private investment over the past 20 years, he said. Policymakers helped by adopting a pro-investment “light touch regulatory framework," he said, but the current FCC has “strayed from that course” by reclassifying broadband under Title II of the Communications Act. He said the agency could make things worse through various proceedings: “the re-regulation of special access and Ethernet services”; tech transition regulation of new services as older technologies are retired; examinations of usage allowance; “Mother May I” oversight; promotion of municipal broadband and “special privacy rules that will apply solely to ISPs, not Google and Apple.” Cicconi rejected the notion of a binary choice between an open Internet and “adopting an archaic regulatory model designed for railroads in the 1880s,” saying “ideological purity” should give way to “pragmatic policies that spur investment to serve consumer needs.” He said it will take trillions of dollars to build future broadband networks. “Government policies can either make it easy, or make it hard,” he said, urging policymakers to reexamine their course. Public Knowledge officials Thursday urged the FCC to consolidate and build on its 2015 decisions for net neutrality and Title II and against cable concentration (see 1601140064). The FCC declined comment Friday.

The failure of the recently concluded World Radiocommunication Conference to work out any agreements on the future of the 600 MHz band, which the FCC will offer in the TV incentive auction, and its shortcomings on the 28 GHz band raise real questions about the viability of the entire process, FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said Friday in a blog post. O’Rielly, who spent most of the opening week in Geneva at WRC (see 1511050041), praised the efforts of the U.S. delegation under Decker Anstrom. “For a number of reasons, other countries prevented a global 600 MHz allocation, even going so far as trying to block any discussion of the band at WRC-15,” O’Rielly said. “They also barred the 28 GHz band from inclusion in the 5G feasibility studies. It is incomprehensible that even doing studies should be a non-starter or off the table. Science should dictate the efficient allocation of spectrum, not politics or international protectionism.” Making matters worse in the 600 MHz band was a decision that individual nations could support a mobile allocation in the 600 MHz band through a footnote only upon the approval of neighboring countries, he said. “Ultimately, this de facto veto power led to a domino effect of countries blocking other countries at the end of the conference,” he said. “Therefore, many governments that supported the U.S. position were forced to sit on the sidelines.” O’Rielly said the failures of WRC-15 raise big questions about the ITU and the entire process. “There is a real possibility” that some of the practices at the WRC “undermined the value of future WRCs and increased the risk that the ITU will become a tool for governments and incumbent spectrum users to halt spectral efficiency and technological progress,” he wrote. “Global spectrum harmonization for future services will be difficult, if not impossible, or, at a minimum, be years behind innovation if such practices are allowed to occur.” O'Rielly "raises some important and legitimate concerns," an administration official said in response to the blog post. "Important progress was made, however, at WRC-15 for the future use of 470-698 MHz for mobile broadband, helped by Commissioner O'Rielly's very effective advocacy. In the Americas, the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Colombia and some Caribbean countries will move ahead, with no restrictions." The debate also revealed, as O'Rielly noted, that "many other countries supported the U.S. position and are clearly interested in using this band for mobile, particularly once they finish their digital transitions," the official said. "Much like the movement that started in 2007 and culminated at WRC-15 to globally harmonize the 700 MHz and 3400-3700 MHz bands for mobile broadband, WRC-15 has stimulated a similar process that will occur over the next decade for the lower UHF bands."

CTA faces a June 9 deadline for responding to Patent and Trademark Office pushback on its Aug. 25 application (see 1511110002) to register the CTA initials as a stand-alone trademark, PTO records show. PTO examiners appear from the records to have no problems with the application to register the full Consumer Technology Association name. But a “prior-filed pending application may present a bar” to landing CTA as a stand-alone registration (serial number 86736073) or even in conjunction with the full Consumer Technology Association name (serial number 86736040), the agency emailed Wiley Rein partner Christopher Kelly, CTA’s lead outside trademark attorney. CTA had no comment Thursday.

Globalstar critics continue to hammer on what they say is a lack of transparency about its broadband terrestrial low-power service (TLPS). In an ex parte filing posted Thursday in FCC docket 13-213, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), Microsoft, NCTA, Sony Electronics and the Wi-Fi Alliance said Globalstar's TLPS demonstrations don't back up FCC approval of spectrum use for the broadband, especially since it didn't say whether it "fixed the problems that rendered previous demonstrations unreliable." The problems include transmitters operating at low power levels, testing unrepresentative equipment and not testing for TLPS effect on latency or jitter, they said: Any mitigation plan involving Globalstar addressing interference issues after it gets complaints "is unworkable." The same critics -- minus Sony -- have criticized Globalstar's evidence in the past for not being complete (see 1512110068). In a statement Thursday, Globalstar said, "The only 'problems' that occurred during the Commission demonstration were Cable and Bluetooth's inability to show any interference that would realistically be caused by TLPS. The lack of any such 'problems' continues to be confirmed by Globalstar and its nationally recognized engineering consultants in TLPS deployments in Chicago and D.C. where dramatic consumer benefits were generated by the addition of TLPS' clear channel to existing wireless networks. In Chicago, throughput nearly doubled on the tested devices as existing Wi-Fi congestion was offloaded to Globalstar's clean TLPS Channel 14." The deployment at Washington School for Girls in Washington, D.C., "has allowed the school to significantly increase the number of students on its wireless network with no decrease in service quality," it said. "It is time for the Commission to take final action and allow this innovative new solution into the marketplace." The filing said ESA and others met with a representative of Commissioner Michael O'Rielly.

Wireline broadband adoption has plateaued and mobile isn't a satisfactory alternative, Gigi Sohn, senior aide to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, told a broadband conference Thursday, based on her written remarks. Sohn said recent results in a Pew Research Center study make the case that the FCC must modernize the Lifeline program. The report said after years of “slow but steady progress,” home broadband adoption fell to 67 percent, from 70 percent in 2013, she said. That doesn't mean fewer people are online, but more are using mobile connections, Sohn said. If more Americans have some form of Internet access, why does it matter that home broadband adoption has plateaued? she asked. “Because not all forms of Internet access serve the same function,” Sohn said: “Home broadband, which offers faster speeds and a lower likelihood of running up against data caps, does things for consumers that smartphone-only access can’t.” She said most job applications are now online, for example: “It’s a lot easier updating your resume and submitting it on your laptop than on your phone.” Sohn assured the group that Lifeline reform is imminent. Lifeline modernizations “is nearing its conclusion and key decisions will need to be made in the not-too-distant future,” she said at the Digital Pathway Summit in Amelia Island, Florida.