AT&T didn’t violate antitrust laws when it set DSL prices high at wholesale and low at retail, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. The court reversed an appeals-court decision allowing a “price squeeze” claim against the carrier. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the unanimous decision in Pacific Bell v. LinkLine. Justices John Stevens, David Souter and Ruth Ginsburg signed on to a concurrence by Stephen Breyer that differed narrowly with Roberts’ opinion.
More than 600 telecom carriers each face $20,000 fines for failing to file annual certifications last year showing compliance with Customer Proprietary Network Information rules, the FCC said late Tuesday. Other operators, accused of filing faulty certifications, face fines of $1,000 to $10,000. Most of the carriers that received notices of apparent liability were small companies from across the wireline, wireless and satellite industries. The fines are a part of the FCC’s efforts to “reduce its backlog” and provide “improved regulatory guidance,” the commission said.
The FCC took flak on Friday from federal court judges about two orders granting incumbent phone companies forbearance from dominant carrier requirements applying to the special access market. The exchange took place during oral argument at the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit. The case concerns FCC decisions in 2007 to grant petitions by AT&T, Embarq and Frontier, which were submitted as “me too” requests following a deemed-granted ruling for Verizon. In oral argument, Judges David Sentelle, Brett Kavanaugh and Harry Edwards had far more questions for the FCC than for petitioners representing business end users and competitive carriers.
The FCC is mulling an extension to the filing deadline for the revised FCC Form 477, an FCC official told us Friday. The completed form, which will collect broadband availability data by census tract, is due from companies March 2 but isn’t yet accessible on the FCC Web site. Requests for delay were submitted by most major wireline and wireless industry groups this month, but the FCC has so far kept mum on the issue.
Requiring opt-in customer consent before a carrier shares information with outsiders doesn’t violate carriers’ First Amendment rights or the Administrative Procedure Act, the U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, ruled Friday. It rejected the NCTA’s challenge to a 2007 FCC order on customer proprietary network information. “There is nothing” to the NCTA’s argument that “the administrative record does not support the Commission’s Order,” the court said. Judge Raymond Randolph wrote the decision, which was supported by Judith Rogers and David Tatel.
Embarq withdrew a forbearance petition asking the FCC to declare that access fees apply to interconnected VoIP traffic. An FCC official told us the action wasn’t surprising, after the rejection last month of a FeatureGroup IP petition on the subject (CD Jan 26 p4). A few months before Embarq filed, FeatureGroup asked for a ruling that access charges don’t apply to interconnected VoIP. Embarq’s filing seemed tactical, the FCC official said. Embarq may have decided after the FeatureGroup decision that its own petition was no longer useful, the official said. An Embarq spokesman declined to comment.
The FCC released instructions for its new Form 477, to collect information about broadband deployment by census tract. Screenshots and answers to frequently asked questions are also now available on the FCC Web site at www.fcc.gov/form477, the commission said Thursday. The new Web-based interface through which filers will submit forms will be available on fcc.gov “as soon as possible,” the agency said. Filers must submit it by March 2. The FCC’s public notice made no mention of a request by several major rural associations to extend the due date by 120 days (CD Feb 12 p11). The companies argued an extension was warranted because the new form still isn’t available on the FCC site. An FCC spokesman declined comment. Rural carriers are grateful for the FCC’s outreach efforts, but the new information doesn’t get rid of the “logistical problems of filling in the form at such short notice,” said Steve Pastorkovich, senior policy analyst at the Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies. OPASTCO, one of the rural-carrier groups that asked for a 120-day extension, was making its case on the eighth floor Thursday morning, he said. The group understands the FCC’s desire for speed, he said, but a “short extension” would improve the accuracy of the information, he said.
Verizon violated local number porting rules when it used porting requests from departing phone customers to trigger marketing to them, said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. It denied a Verizon petition to review (CD Dec 8 p1) last year’s FCC order on the subject. In a 11-page decision Tuesday, the court called “reasonable” the FCC’s interpretation that Section 222(b) of the Communications Act prohibits using porting information in marketing efforts. The ruling is a “clear-cut” loss for Verizon, and the odds of the carrier winning on further appeal are “very small,” said David Kaut, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus.
The FCC should collect data on special access competition from all providers, including competitors, AT&T said. In a Friday letter to the FCC, senior vice president Robert Quinn condemned a TW Telecom proposal sent in December to President Barack Obama’s transition team (CD Dec 24 p7). Among other suggestions, TW said the FCC should apply price caps to all incumbent carrier special access services, regardless of capacity and technology. If adopted, Quinn said, the TW plan “would deliver a double body blow: destroying incumbent LEC incentives to invest in new infrastructure and, by mandating the leasing of our facilities at below-market rates, also eliminating our competitors’ incentives to invest in their own networks.” TW relied on “incomplete” and “stale” data to make its arguments, Quinn said. Available data is lacking because competitors like TW have “refused” to submit “specific data showing the extent of their networks, facilities, service offerings and market successes,” he said. “The new FCC should put an end to this gamesmanship by adopting rules that require all facilities-based broadband providers to report granular data on their broadband networks and services.” TW Telecom is happy to give more data if the FCC asks, but believes there’s enough on the record already to support its recommendations, said Thomas Jones, an attorney representing the company, in an interview. TW hasn’t submitted data maps detailing the specific location of wires, as AT&T desires, he said. But it has submitted “extensive” price comparisons showing AT&T charges too much, he said.
Government, industry and other officials are pushing for an overhaul of the FCC Web site. It got top honors in a 2002 Brown University report on federal Web sites, but hasn’t received a significant make-over since. With a fresh government focus on transparency, and techie Julius Genachowski expected to take the FCC’s helm, many believe the site might finally see an overhaul. “The site is an embarrassment right now” for the Web-savvy administration of President Barack Obama, said Jerry Brito of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.