Bruce Kushnick asked a federal court to force the FCC to release records under the Freedom of Information Act about an Enforcement Bureau investigation of Verizon Wireless (Cellco Partnership) over allegations it improperly billed customers for unauthorized third-party products and services ("cramming"). In a complaint Tuesday seeking injunctive relief from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Kushnick, executive director of New Networks Institute, said the FOIA request was "relevant to his work as a journalist." Kushnick said the bureau and Verizon Wireless entered into a consent decree May 12 in which the company agreed to make $90 million in payments to consumers, states and the U.S. Treasury to "ostensibly" resolve the cramming allegations (see 1505120047). He said he then submitted a FOIA request for all documents reviewed or generated by the FCC in the probe, including third-party documents and documents exchanged by Verizon and the agency. The FCC released 1,788 pages of documents in three batches that generally Verizon had agreed to with redactions, he said, but it withheld 14,327 pages it had identified as relevant, plus internal agency documents the commission said it didn't have to identify or produce. "There is no clear explanation of why information is redacted and why documents are not produced," said Kushnick, who said some redactions included publicly available information. He called an FCC summary explanation "plainly inadequate under FOIA standards as interpreted by the courts," and he said agency claims of exemptions couldn't withstand scrutiny. "Even when Verizon had no objection to the disclosure of documents, the FCC without explanation, did not disclose certain documents," he said. Kushnick recently wrote a Huffington Post piece headlined "Exposing One of the Largest Accounting Scandals in American History." He said AT&T, CenturyLink, Verizon and other major telcos had "manipulate[d] their financial accounting to make the local phone networks and services look unprofitable and have used this 'fact' in many public policy and regulatory decisions that benefited the incumbent telecommunications utilities." He said at the core of the scandal was the "FCC's Big Freeze." He detailed his charges against Verizon in recent filings to the agency in docket 10-132. The FCC and the telcos didn't comment Wednesday.

The FCC said it reached a settlement with the New York City Department of Education resolving a commission investigation into whether the school system violated competitive bidding rules for the E-rate USF support program. Under a consent decree entered into with the FCC Enforcement Bureau, the NYC DOE will pay $3 million to the U.S. Treasury and withdraw funding requests for the 2011-2013 period, which already had been frozen by the commission, said an FCC news release and a bureau order issued Wednesday. The NYC DOE also agreed to withdraw claims for any further E-rate funding for services it purchased in 2002-2010, adhere to a detailed compliance plan and auditing schedule, and provide "extensive employee training on E-rate rule compliance," among other measures, the release said. The NYC DOE had no immediate comment.

Richard Wiley, former FCC chairman and founder of Wiley Rein, is stepping down as chairman of the firm effective Jan. 1, Wiley Rein said Wednesday. Wiley is retiring from the firm’s executive committee, but will continue at the firm as chairman emeritus. Wiley has also headed the firm’s 80-attorney communications practice. Bert Rein, a specialist in antitrust and commercial law and the firm’s co-founder, is also leaving the executive committee and will become vice chairman emeritus, the firm said. Industry lawyers said the change isn't a surprise, at least within Wiley Rein, and that a succession plan had been in the works for a long time. Wiley was at the FCC 1970-1977, rising from general counsel to commissioner to chairman. There has been an orderly transition, starting with Peter Shields being named managing partner several years ago, Andrew Schwartzman, senior counselor at the Georgetown Institute for Public Representation, told us in an email. “Dick is unquestionably the most influential member of the private communications bar and, if anything, this change gives him more time to practice law. I don't see any sign that he is slowing down.” Kathleen Kirby, co-chair of the telecom, media and technology practice, and Kimberly Melvin, partner in the insurance practice, will replace Wiley and Rein on the executive committee.

Nearly two dozen privacy, civil liberties and transparency groups urged President Barack Obama to light a fire under the White House budget office to comply with the requirement to develop an open government plan. The coalition, which sent a letter Monday, said the Office of Management and Budget failed to release a plan in 2012 and 2014, when every other agency did as mandated by the 2009 presidential memo. "Many of us have repeatedly expressed concern over the failure of OMB to meet this obligation in multiple forums," the coalition's letter said. "The failure is particularly troubling because OMB is an agency with a central oversight role on information policy, it has responsibility for implementation of this plan, and it often serves as the right hand of the President." The coalition said complying with the directive is important because the open government plans "encourage agencies to articulate how openness helps them fulfill their missions, address public concerns, and build openness into the way they operate." OMB, which developed a plan in 2010, hasn't updated it and declined to say when it might be published, said the letter signed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Project on Government Oversight, the Sunlight Foundation and others. "And we believe it is on course to fail again," it said.

The FCC said six companies switched consumers' telecom service providers without their authorization, violating rules against "slamming." The Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau issued nine orders Tuesday granting consumer slamming complaints against America Net (here), CenturyLink (here), GPSPS (here, here and here), Long Distance Consolidated Billing (here), TeleDias Communications (here and here) and TeleUno (here). None of the companies was fined, but in cases where consumers had not already paid unauthorized service fees, the unauthorized carriers were ordered to remove all charges incurred for service provided to complainants for the first 30 days after the service change. In those cases where consumers had already paid unauthorized service fees, the FCC ordered the unauthorized carriers to forward to the consumers' authorized carriers (which in at least two cases was also CenturyLink) an amount equal to 150 percent of all charges and copies of their bills; the authorized carriers were then ordered to credit or refund to consumers 50 percent of what they had paid the unauthorized carriers, among other actions. The bureau Friday issued similar orders finding four companies had engaged in slamming (see 1512180043).

Global Tel*Link asked the FCC to stay inmate calling service (ICS) rate caps in a commission order, pending further judicial review of those caps and other aspects of the order (see 1510220059). The stay is warranted because Global Tel*Link is likely to succeed in its legal challenge to the order on its merits, the company would otherwise suffer irreparable harm, and the balance of equities favors a stay, GTL said in a petition filed Tuesday at the commission in docket 12-375. "The reviewing court will likely set aside the rate caps, first of all, because -- as the Commission itself acknowledged -- they do not allow ICS providers to recover the legitimate costs of providing service in correctional institutions," GTL said. "To obtain permission to place their equipment inside prisons and jails, ICS providers must pay state and local authorities location rents or site commissions. The Commission recognized that the rate caps it set do not allow ICS providers to recover those location rents," the company said. The caps thus violate (1) Section 276(b)(1)(A) of the Communications Act requiring the FCC to ensure ICS providers are fairly compensated for all calls from their payphones, (2) Section 201 requiring "just and reasonable" rates, and (3) the U.S. Constitution, which bars "confiscatory rates," GTL said. It said the FCC "expressed its distaste" for site-commission payments to correctional authorities but declined to prohibit them. "The Commission cannot endorse site commissions -- however reluctantly -- yet prevent ICS providers from recovering that real cost of providing service," said GTL. The company said it would suffer irreparable harm without a stay because it wouldn't be able to recover the revenue lost due to the "unlawful, confiscatory rates." The FCC had no comment, a spokeswoman said. Securus Technologies, which had also said it would seek a stay, also had no comment.

NCTA urged the FCC to reject Level 3 arguments and adopt a broadband consumer disclosure format recommended in an FCC Consumer Advisory Committee proposal (see 1511040030). Level 3 wrongly assumes that broadband providers are solely responsible for interconnection links, "notwithstanding the indisputable fact that the conduct of both parties affects the performance experienced by the customer," NCTA said in a filing posted Tuesday in docket 14-28 responding to a Nov. 25 Level 3 filing (see 1511270035). NCTA said the FCC had recognized that interconnection was "far more complex than suggested by Level 3," and found in its net neutrality order that prescriptive rules would be premature. "Of particular note," the commission considered and rejected additional reporting duties on interconnection link performance, the cable group said, asking the agency to dismiss Level 3's plea for new reporting duties as "untimely and unwarranted." NCTA disputed Level 3 suggestions that, absent further reporting obligations, the FCC's performance measurements in its Measuring Broadband America (MBA) reports are misleading and harmful to consumers: "This allegation is complete nonsense." The charge is "particularly inappropriate given the structure of the program and the significant role Level 3" has played in it in recent years, the group said. "Through the program, broadband providers voluntarily submit to a measurement process that is overseen by a government agency (the Commission), administered by the Commission’s contractor (SamKnows), and run on facilities provided by third-parties whose advocacy is consistently hostile to broadband providers (M-Lab and Level 3)," NCTA said. "Given the rigorous nature of the testing, the Commission appropriately has found that disclosure of MBA results constitutes a safe harbor with respect to the requirement to report the actual performance of broadband service." NCTA also disputed Level 3's proposals for specific reporting requirements. Level 3 called the NCTA filing disappointing. "This isn't, or at least shouldn't be, about Level 3's or NCTA's members' business interests," emailed Joe Cavender, Level 3 vice president-federal affairs. "It should be about consumers. Consumers deserve to know what kind of performance ISPs actually are providing, and any performance disclosure that ignores the importance of interconnection simply fails consumers. Moreover, as we explained in our ex parte, the types of performance disclosures we propose are required by law. NCTA's argument to the contrary is just wrong."

The Universal Service Administrative Co. projects $1.9 billion will be available from past years to carry forward into funding year 2016 for the Schools and Libraries Support Mechanism, which funds E-Rate USF discounts, USAC CEO Chris Henderson told the FCC in a letter Monday filed in docket 02-6. Of that amount, $1.36 billion is from funding years 2013 and before, $355 million is from funding year 2014 and $188 million is from funding year 2015, Henderson said.

Federal judges denied the motion of William Cunningham to file an amicus brief in the FCC net neutrality and broadband reclassification case (USTelecom v. FCC, No. 15-1063). A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a short order Monday denying the motion without further comment. Cunningham had asked Dec. 7 that his amicus brief be allowed months after a deadline because he isn't a lawyer and didn't have access to the court's "ECF System" for making filings.

The FCC partially granted an incumbent telco request to extend the comment period in the rulemaking on special access business data services. An order issued Monday by the Wireline Bureau in docket 05-25 extended initial and reply comment deadlines to Jan. 22 and Feb. 19, respectively; they had been Jan. 6 and Feb. 5. USTelecom joined by ITTA filed a joint petition asking the deadlines be extended until at least 12 weeks after business market data submitted by industry parties was declared final and all software tools sought by the petitioners to analyze the data were made available (see 1511100068). "Even with the data set subject to refresh, parties have been able to perform significant analysis," the bureau said. "Although we find the Joint Petitioners have not demonstrated the need for a twelve week extension of time, we will extend the comment deadlines by an additional two and a half weeks to account for the upcoming data refresh."