Charging government agencies for the spectrum they use is a tool to free up spectrum for the private sector, said FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly in a blog post Tuesday. Agency spectrum fees (ASF) are “a more nuanced ‘stick’ approach” compared to statutorily forcing agencies to relinquish spectrum and “continually” generate spectrum efficiencies, he said. ASFs would give government agencies incentive to minimize their spectrum footprints, to minimize the impact on their annual budgets, O’Rielly said. “The days of reserving or warehousing spectrum on the infinitesimal chance that a particular band might be used in the rarest of occasions need to be brought to an end,” he said. “To argue that federal agencies cannot get 15 to 20 percent more spectrally efficient, with the use of modern technologies and sharing of services and spectrum within the government, is ludicrous.” NTIA could set the rates for ASFs, using private sector auctions as a base, O’Rielly said. Using the numbers generated by NTIA, agencies' annual budget appropriation would be reduced by the amount required “via a sequestration-like structure,” he said. “I would leave any funds generated by the fees to Appropriators to reallocate as they see fit, but I could see where some would want the money to lower the overall discretionary caps, and therefore the deficit.” ASFs aren’t a good tool for commercial spectrum users because they already paid for their spectrum, O’Rielly said: “The correct thing to do is to focus on the government users.”

A federal court asked net neutrality litigants to make suggestions by Oct. 23 on the format for the scheduled Dec. 4 oral argument on industry challenges to the FCC order. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit asked the parties to recommend which issues should be addressed, their sequence, the total amount of time for the argument and how much time each issue should receive, said a letter Tuesday from the office of the court's clerk. The letter also asked the litigants to provide the names of counsels for petitioners and respondents -- and for intervenors on both sides if they wish to cede them time -- who would argue and who they represent. The litigants were also urged to work out a unified oral argument format for the court's consideration. Meanwhile, various groups -- saying they had received consent or no objections from the parties to the case -- filed four more notices Friday of their intent to file amicus briefs supporting the FCC net neutrality order, which also reclassified broadband Internet access service under Title II of the Communications Act. The Computer & Communications Industry and Mozilla said they would coordinate their brief with other amicus parties. A second notice was filed by Web developer Automattic, A Medium Corp., reddit, Squarespace, Twitter and Yelp, which said they wouldn't be able to join other amicus parties. A third notice was filed by Engine Advocacy, joined by Dwolla, Foursquare Labs, General Assembly Space, GitHub, Imgur, Keen Labs, Mapbox, Our Film Festival (also known as Fandor) and Shapeways. A fourth notice was filed by the Broadband Institute of California, Broadband Regulatory Clinic and The Media Alliance. The case is USTelecom v. FCC, No. 15-1063.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai elaborated on his criticisms of the net neutrality order in the latest issue of the Federal Communications Law Journal. The 55-page piece with 330 footnotes is titled, The Story of the FCC's Net Neutrality Decision and Why It Won't Stand Up in Court. Pai said the Internet had been so successful in the U.S. because "the private sector took risks" and "government stayed out of the way," giving industry parties freedom from utility-style regulation. "Unfortunately, the FCC recently replaced that freedom with government control," he said. Pai detailed what he saw as the order's many procedural and substantive defects -- including its broadband reclassification under Title II of the Communications Act -- that he believes will lead it to be overturned in court. If he's wrong and the order survives judicial review, "American consumers will be worse off," Pai said. "For these will be the consequences: higher broadband prices, slower speeds, less broadband deployment, less innovation, and fewer options for American consumers. Indeed, we already have seen evidence that investment and innovation that fomented the digital revolution has slowed as a result of the agency's power grab." Separately, The Free State Foundation emailed a statement Tuesday saying, "We Told You So: Title II Regulation Harms Investment," which cited a recent Forbes piece by Hal Singer, an economist at the Progressive Policy Institute, as showing that the FCC order led to an 8 percent drop in broadband provider infrastructure investment in the first six months of 2015 compared to the first half of 2014, with wireline investment down 12 percent.

FCC reorganization of Enforcement Bureau field offices is to become effective Tuesday. That’s the date of an announcement slated to run in the Federal Register. In July, the FCC approved a plan for reorganizing Enforcement Bureau field offices, which includes shutting some of the offices (see 1507160036).

Three more groups plan to defend the FCC net neutrality and broadband reclassification order against challenges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (USTelecom v. FCC, No. 15-1063). The American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a notice Friday, saying no parties to the case objected to their plans to file an amicus brief. The ACLU and EFF said their brief would discuss the importance of "de facto neutrality principles to the growth of the Internet" and explain how the FCC order "will support continued growth of the Internet as a platform for expression and innovation." They also said they would dispute arguments the order violates First Amendment speech rights, but "in fact advances the values at its core by safeguarding the right of individuals to freely speak and be heard online." Thursday, the Open Internet Civil Rights Coalition also filed a notice, saying all the parties had consented to its plans to file an amicus brief in defense of the order. The coalition said all its members -- which included the Center for Media Justice, Common Cause and National Hispanic Media Coalition -- participated in the FCC net neutrality proceeding "to promote the values of diversity inherent in the public interest standard of the Communications Act of 1934 and the First Amendment."

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioner Mignon Clyburn will speak at events in Miami and Jacksonville, Florida, organized by the commission's Connect2Health Task Force to promote broadband-enabled health technologies, the FCC said in a public notice Wednesday. The FCC leadership also will visit two telehealth centers while in Florida, the PN said. The Consumer Spotlight event is scheduled in Miami Sept. 30 and will feature Univision Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Juan Rivera, while the Broadband Health Summit will be in Jacksonville Oct. 1, with executives from the Mayo Clinic, Microsoft, MDLive and other connected health services, the commission said.

Correction: The party affiliation of Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad is Republican (see 1509010058).

The 4Q USF contribution rate for carriers will drop to 16.7 percent (from 17.1 percent) of interstate and international telecom revenue, said industry consultant Billy Jack Gregg in his quarterly update Tuesday. Despite projections by Universal Service Administrative Co. that the interstate/international telecom revenue base will decline from $15.046 billion to $15 billion in 4Q, the contribution factor is expected to dip because the previously announced USF demand for the quarter also declined from $2.17 billion to $2.12 billion, said Gregg of Universal Consulting.

Library and consumer groups said they plan to support the FCC net neutrality order, which is being challenged in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (the case is USTelecom vs. FCC, No. 15-1063). A major Internet group previously said it would back the order. The American Library Association, Association of College and Research Libraries, Association of Research Libraries and the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies filed a motion Tuesday asking the D.C. Circuit for leave to file an amicus brief in support of the Department of Justice and FCC as they defend the order, which also reclassified broadband Internet access service under Title II of the Communications Act. The groups said their brief would argue the net neutrality rules are needed to protect the interests of libraries and their users. "Without rules banning paid prioritization, libraries would be significantly hampered in efforts to provide the most vulnerable populations with access to content and services on the Internet, including educational resources and non-profit content," they said. The groups also plan to argue the that FCC general Internet conduct standard was an appropriate tool under the Communications Act to ensure the Internet remained "open" and "a democratic platform for research, learning and the sharing of the information" in the face of "future harms that cannot yet be defined." Consumers Union filed a notice Tuesday of its intent to file a brief supporting the DOJ/FCC. The group said all the parties to the case had consented to its participation. The Internet Association -- representing Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Yahoo and other prominent Web companies -- filed a similar notice Aug. 7. The DOJ/FCC brief is due Sept. 14 and the supporting intervenor and amicus briefs Sept. 21. Cable/telco petitioners challenging the order filed their briefs in July (see 1507310042) and intervenors and amicus briefs supporting their challenge were filed in August (see 1508070058).

No new filings were posted to the FCC Electronic Comment Filing System Tuesday, though the planned outage associated with the agency's IT upgrades (see 1508200049) was still a day away. Many of the filings showed up Wednesday, and an FCC spokesman told us the lack of postings was related to the upgrade plans. “In preparing the hardware for the upgrade, a connection to a server was temporarily lost,” the spokesman said. No information was lost, and ECFS was restored to working order by Wednesday afternoon, the spokesman said. The outage and upgrade were on schedule to begin at 6 p.m. Wednesday, the spokesman said.