The FCC should condition its grant of 700 MHz C-block licenses to Verizon on that carrier’s acceptance of open- access obligations on its own devices, Google said Friday in a petition. “Failure to do so now will only foster uncertainty and delay, rather than innovation and investment,” Google said. Verizon claims the right to exclude its handsets from the open-access condition imposed on the C block in the 700 MHz auction, Google said. If Verizon does so, it could block applications on its C-block devices, Google said. “Verizon believes it may force customers who want to access the open platform using a device not purchased from Verizon to go through ‘Door No. 1,’ while allowing customers who obtain their device from Verizon access through ‘Door No. 2,'” Google said. Google’s petition is “sour grapes,” a Verizon Wireless spokesman said: “We knew the auction rules before we bid, and of course are abiding by those rules.” The company plans to respond to the petition this week, he said.
The FCC will come out with a comprehensive intercarrier compensation revamp in six months, FCC lawyer Joseph Palmore said during oral arguments on Core Communications’ appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin authorized the statement, Palmore said. Core seeks a writ of mandamus telling the FCC to provide within 60 days a statutory basis for a nine-year-old interim compensation scheme for ISP-bound traffic.
USTelecom named a former top advisor to Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., a deputy to Walter McCormick, the association’s president. Alan Roth, former House Commerce Committee staff director and chief counsel, will fill a new position of senior executive vice president, USTelecom said. Starting June 1, Roth will oversee all government affairs, said a USTelecom spokeswoman. Regina Hopper, USTelecom executive vice president, will oversee all other external affairs, she said. Both will report to McCormick. “It’s clear that USTelecom and other incumbent providers are gearing up for [a] tough next two years with growing Democrat majorities” and perhaps a Democrat president, said Paul Raak, legislative affairs vice president for the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance. “Here at ITTA we are evaluating our strategy for the next two years as well, which will no doubt be challenging.”
A new P2P Best Practices Initiative will “supersede” and “broaden the scope” of a proposal to write a “P2P Bill of Rights & Responsibilities” (CD April 17 p8), the Distributed Computing Industry Association said. The effort will make for “safe and efficient use of P2P services” by clients and ISPs, as well as enhance P2P efficiency, DCIA CEO Mark Lafferty said. A DCIA working group will form by June, aiming to get the job done “well before the end of the year,” DCIA said. The group, comprising ISPs and P2P companies, has a less technical focus than DCIA’s P4P Working Group, it said. Participation is voluntary and open to nonmembers, it said. DCIA will present the group’s purpose statement and recruit members at Monday’s Los Angeles P2P Media Summit. The group’s “formative meeting” will occur in New York during the May 19-21 Streaming Media East Conference. Comcast, AT&T and Verizon support the effort and plan to take part, company representatives told us.
Relay service providers should specify the parts they like in three proposals to assign 10-digit phone numbers to Internet-based relay service users, FCC Wireline Bureau Chief Dana Shaffer said at a commission workshop Tuesday. Last month, the FCC said it would choose a plan this quarter and carry out ten-digit dialing this year. Without more input, the FCC could choose a plan with parts that relay providers don’t like, Shaffer said. “Let’s start talking to each other, because we don’t have much time.”
The FCC granted AT&T forbearance from accounting rules (CD April 25 p2), despite opposition from rivals accustomed to using the rules against AT&T in agency proceedings. Heavy state lobbying failed to sway Commissioner Deborah Tate. Commissioner Robert McDowell’s vote, much fought over, swung the 3-2 decision in AT&T’s favor.
The most important FCC aides on telecom are Wireline Bureau Chief Dana Shaffer and Wireless Bureau Chief Fred Campbell, along with Chairman Kevin Martin’s wireline adviser Ian Dillner and wireless adviser Aaron Goldberger, said sources including current and former FCC staff.
“We don’t know and don’t care” what content moves over the Comcast network, Comcast External Affairs Vice President Joseph Waz said Wednesday at the Quello Communications Law and Policy Symposium. Waz was responding to a question about recent criticism by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin of Comcast network management practices (CD April 23 p1). “I don’t know how much more clear we can be about this,” Waz said. Comcast manages bandwidth-intensive protocols like P2P, not applications, he said. Comcast’s decision to start using technology-agnostic management is not an admission that it has discriminated against content, he said. Waz stressed that the new system will be in place by year end. “If there’s any lack of clarity on that, I'm glad to have the opportunity to restate what we said in our press release.” On the panel, Waz and Verizon’s Link Hoewing said industry cooperation is the way to address network management concerns. A Comcast- and BitTorrent-planned Internet Engineering Task Force workshop, as well as Comcast and other ISPs’ collaboration in the Distributed Computing Industry Association P4P Working Group, prove regulation isn’t needed to thwart network management abuses, Waz said. “We're not going to have problems working through these issues if we can work together,” Hoewing agreed. The technology industry has faced congestion problems before, he said, citing the “World Wide Wait” of the ‘90s and FTP congestion problems before that. Adding capacity is one way to fight network congestion, but not the whole answer, he said. Also on the panel, Hoewing dismissed condemnations of U.S. broadband deployment. The U.S. has a national broadband strategy, he said. “We actually have consciously, over a period of years said, ‘We're going to encourage platform competition,'” he said. That “is a national broadband policy.” There’s still progress to be made, he said, noting rural areas as an example: “But by and large there is a national policy that has been working pretty well.”
The Public Safety Spectrum Trust is “the dog” and Cyren Call “is the tail,” PSST Chairman Harlin McEwen emphatically declared Tuesday at a Wireless Communications Association panel. The FCC has voiced concern about the relationship between D-block private licensee PSST and private carrier advisor Cyren Call (CD April 17 p1). “Our goal is not about [Cyren],” McEwen said. “It’s to get a public safety network.”
Contrary to what AT&T claims, the FCC still uses cost- allocation data it requires of the company, said the Ad Hoc Coalition in an ex parte letter to Commissioner Robert McDowell. Ad Hoc represents 21 major customers of telecom companies, including financial, manufacturing and other big businesses. The FCC has until Thursday to rule on an AT&T petition seeking relief from the accounting rules, which require that Bell companies keep records separating interstate and intrastate costs. In an interview Tuesday, Ad Hoc lawyer James Blaszac attacked recent statements by Bob Quinn, AT&T regulatory senior vice president, whom Blaszak debated on the issue Monday afternoon in McDowell’s office (CD April 22 p5). If the FCC no longer used allocation data, it wouldn’t have forced the Bells to keep collecting it in an order last August, Blaszak said. The August order, which let Bells combine their local and long distance divisions, says Bells remain subject to “a number of legal obligations,” particularly FCC “accounting and cost allocation rules and related reporting requirements.” And the FCC will need such data to complete proceedings under way on special access and intercarrier compensation, Blaszak said. The FCC also should keep getting the data to monitor price cap regulation efficacy, he said. Quinn told us Monday that the data don’t accurately measure for that purpose, because the percentages used to separate costs have been frozen since a 2001 Federal- State Joint Board on Jurisdictional Separations reform proceeding began. Data accuracy is an issue for the separations proceeding, not this forbearance petition, said Blaszac. Discussing Monday’s debate, Blaszac said it was unclear from McDowell’s questions which issues preoccupy him. McDowell will be an “important vote,” he said.