IT Connect “willfully and repeatedly” violated FCC rules by “brokering 210 toll free numbers for fees ranging from $375 to $60,000 per number,” the FCC said in a notice of apparent liability for forfeiture released Wednesday (http://fcc.us/1p7qfQO). Selling toll-free numbers by a private entity for a fee is against commission rules. The company had been cited in 2007 for “warehousing, hoarding, and brokering toll free numbers,” which are a “public resource” that are not owned by any individual or entity, the notice said. The company continued to sell toll-free numbers for the next several years, including to the Sokolove law firm, “for substantial fees,” the notice said. IT Connect and its owner, Richard Jackowitz, face a $3.36 million fine. The company did not comment.

Internet-based relay services don’t have to file waiver status reports by April 16, the FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau said in an order Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1p7DS2k). The reports would have detailed their progress in meeting the existing waived mandatory minimum telecom relay service (TRS) standards. “The Commission currently is considering action that would make permanent exemptions to certain TRS mandatory minimum standards,” wrote acting Chief Kris Monteith. “It is unlikely that this proceeding will be concluded prior to the April 16, 2014 filing deadline for the annual reports. Given that the Commission is in the midst of conducting this review, we find that requiring [Video Relay Service] and IP Relay providers to file new status reports this year -- which are, at least in large part, expected to repeat what has been reported to the Commission on multiple prior occasions, as has been the case in prior years’ reports -- would serve little purpose and impose an unnecessary burden on the providers at this time."

CenturyLink opposed an application by Iowa Network Services to do a service-based time-division multiplexing-to-IP transition experiment. The INS application seeks to resolve legal and policy questions arising from the technology transitions, which is exactly what the FCC cautions it is not seeking from experiments, CenturyLink said in a filing posted Monday (http://bit.ly/1ixJrEv). INS “ignores the requirement” that experiments maintain the intercarrier compensation (ICC) “status quo ante,” which means that traffic included in the trial “be subject to the same ICC rights and obligations that applied immediately before the experiment,” CenturyLink said. “The central focus of the INS proposal appears to be to try and extend the existing legacy ICC regulatory framework, including underlying requirements such as equal access, to new all-IP network functionality and networks where they do not apply today,” the ILEC said.

The definition and purpose of telephone numbers confronted FCC and industry engineers at a numbering testbed workshop Tuesday. “The whole point is to explore as many reasonable solutions as possible” to learn what works well, said FCC Chief Technologist Henning Schulzrinne. Attendees considered what purpose telephone numbers should be used for “besides supporting real-time communications”; whether it’s possible to design a “fully-distributed ‘meshed’ system that does not rely on a master database” of number assignments; and how caching might be built into the architecture to “facilitate robustness.” Any new system has to do a much better job of presenting information about the entity to nontechnical users, Schulzrinne told the several dozen participants. It needs to be able to address consumer fraud, as well as more traditional, “not outright criminal, things that people do,” such as nuisance calls, he said. The group discussed how best to route numbers in an IP-based world, and some suggested a potential Domain Name System-like approach. “What makes a phone number unique” is that it’s a global identifier not associated with a specific provider of services, associated on a long-term basis with a person, organization or service; and -- compared with domain names -- it’s “reasonably international” in terms of usability, Schulzrinne said. It’s also usable outside the local domain, unlike, for instance, a Facebook ID, he said. As for “details” such as how many digits phone numbers contain, or whether they're assigned by one entity or another? “I'm agnostic on that,” Schulzrinne said.

Consumers are unable to dial 911 directly at tens of thousands of buildings across the country, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai told a national Emergency Number Association conference Monday, according to prepared remarks (http://fcc.us/1gv9NIT). Pai sent letters in January to CEOs of the ten largest hotel chains in the U.S., asking how many of their hotels required dialing 9 before calling 911 (CD Jan 14 p14). The American Hotel and Lodging Association gave Pai survey results showing that guests can reach emergency services by dialing 911 without an access code in only 44.5 percent of franchised properties, and 32 percent of independent hotels. The association has convened an industry-wide task force to develop best practices, and individual hotels are working on upgrading their telephone systems, Pai said. “My office will keep working with the hospitality industry on solving this problem. And I'm optimistic that the number of hotels where guests can reach emergency services by dialing 911 will keep growing.” Pai on Monday turned his attention to offices and schools, which also frequently require an access code to get an outside line. His letter asks multi-line phone system vendors about the accessibility of 911, and whether they have plans to upgrade systems. “The greatest weapon in our arsenal is awareness,” Pai said.

The FCC Wireline Bureau granted a petition for partial reconsideration filed by Farmers Telephone Co. of Riceville, Iowa, it said in an order on reconsideration Friday (http://bit.ly/OFVup9). “As a result, five census blocks previously deemed as unserved in the Connect America Phase I challenge process will now be treated as served,” wrote Deputy Chief Carol Mattey. Windstream had elected to serve 27 locations in the five disputed census blocks, the order said. Windstream has until April 7 to elect to receive the $19,800 in incremental support it was going to receive, by identifying an appropriate number of replacement locations in previously authorized blocks, the notice said.

The FCC released Version 4.1 of its Connect America Cost Model Friday (http://fcc.us/OFUCAT). Release of the document is part of the agency’s “continuing open, transparent, and deliberative process” to adopt a Phase II cost mode, the Wireline Bureau said in a public notice (http://fcc.us/OFUWQ1). The new model contains updated State Broadband Initiative Round 8 data, modifies certain default input values and makes several technical changes, the bureau said.

The FCC Wireline Bureau announced a new “rate floor” of $20.46 a month Thursday (http://bit.ly/1eWEVvf). It’s part of the agency’s attempts to phase out excessive subsidies for basic phone service, “which allowed some phone companies to charge their customers as little as $5 a month” when the average suburban or urban customer was paying $16, said Chief Julie Veach in a statement (http://fcc.us/Ny4wTU). “The reforms have been gradually eliminating these excessive subsidies to level the playing field for all consumers and contain the cost of the program, which is funded by universal service fees ultimately paid by consumers.” A new rate survey found that the average monthly rate in urban and suburban areas is $20.46, higher than the agency expected, an FCC official told us, so the bureau is seeking comment on extending the phase-in. Comments in docket 10-90 are due March 21, replies March 31. Commissioner Ajit Pai opposes the rate floor, saying in a statement that it’s equivalent to “a rate hike of up to 46 percent in the next few months.” Pai opposed what he called an “FCC-initiated increase” in rural phone bills (http://fcc.us/OFnuJ2): “Why should the FCC saddle rural Americans with rate increases when doing so may not save the Universal Service Fund a dime and may in fact divert scarce funds away from broadband deployment? And why should the FCC override state-set rates to raise costs for consumers?” The economy is good for many in Washington, D.C., but “a recovery hasn’t yet reached much of rural America,” Pai said. “Let’s not add to the challenges our fellow citizens face by increasing their phone bills. Instead, let’s freeze the rate floor indefinitely and reexamine this misguided policy."

Some last-mile ISPs are playing “chicken” with the Internet, said Level 3 General Counsel Michael Mooney in a blog post Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1j4E3Mr). Contrary to popular belief, Internet access for the end-user doesn’t necessarily slow down simply because lots of people are using the Internet at the same time, Mooney said. It also slows down when “ISPs try to strong arm the content providers into paying” by “refusing to increase the size of their networks unless their tolls are paid,” he said. “These ISPs are placing a bet that because content providers have no other way to get their content to the ISPs subscribers, that they will cave in and start paying them.” Level 3 has in many cases “offered to sit with the ISP to hammer out a fair, equitable, scalable and resilient network architecture, but to no avail,” Mooney said. VoIP calls, online video and interactive Web browsing are all at risk, he said. “Some say network neutrality is a solution looking for a problem. We disagree.” The FCC should address interconnection issues as part of its net neutrality proceeding, Mooney wrote in a follow-up comment. “In the same way as last mile ISPs should not be able to discriminate directly against third party provided content, they should not be able to do the same thing indirectly by forcing content companies and intermediary providers into a no win choice of either paying the ISP arbitrary tolls or suffering through lower bitrates and degraded service quality for streaming video.” Netflix recently agreed to a paid peering deal with Comcast, and others besides Mooney want the FCC to address whether such pacts should be allowed (CD March 5 p1).

Comments are due April 3 in response to a petition by the National Exchange Carrier Association on behalf of its rate-of-return member carriers asking the FCC for a waiver of section 51.909(a)(4) of its rules for the 2014-15 tariff period, said a public notice Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1j4Gte7). That section requires NECA to adjust its switched access rate caps if a carrier enters or exits the association. “NECA states that a waiver would avoid the need for tariff revisions at the federal and state levels required to effectuate de minimis changes in rates associated with 2014 pool election changes and will better serve the public interest than strict enforcement for the upcoming year,” the notice said.