Gabriella Novello

The FCC Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee OK'd recommendations from the Increasing Broadband Investment in Low-Income Communities working group Thursday (see 2010290057). The delayed report met with mixed reactions.

The FCC Hospital Robocall Protection Group OK'd best practices for service providers and healthcare facilities to combat illegal robocalls and spoofing Monday. Recommendations for service providers include implementing secure telephone identity revisited (Stir) and signature-based handling of asserted information using tokens (Shaken) on IP portions of networks, prioritizing support for hospitals, and establishing notification protocols for robocall events. HRPG recommended hospitals establish a process to identify a robocall problem and coordinate with providers and law enforcement, consider joining threat intelligence and information sharing organizations, and consider implementing available robocall-blocking capabilities. Enforcement Bureau Telecom Consumers Division Chief Kristi Thompson recommended further implementation of blocking and labeling tools throughout hospital networks. Thompson recommended establishing safe harbors to incentivize increased call blocking and cooperation with trace-back requests. HRPG Chair Dave Summitt emphasized the need for these recommendations, citing recent Social Security spam calls at his employer, Moffitt Cancer Center. “In a four-day period, we totaled over 45,000 of these calls hitting our infrastructure,” Summitt said. Commissioner Brendan Carr abstained from the vote, saying he will wait to cast an official vote in case any of the recommendations are brought before the full commission. Earlier Monday, the FCC approved an order clarifying that government contractors must obtain consumer consent before making robocalls (see 2012140028).

President-elect Joe Biden's incoming administration should soon nominate an FCC chair willing to rein in costs for inmate calling services, advocates for ICS rate cuts and other changes said in recent interviews. The Biden administration is in a “really good position to get across the finish line” because of a past NPRM on rate caps, said United Church of Christ Office of Communication's Cheryl Leanza. “That puts them ahead of the game.”

Three entities won more than $3.6 billion of the $9.2 billion awarded through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Phase I auction to deploy broadband to more than 10 million Americans, said an FCC Wireline Bureau release Monday. It was below the $16 billion approved by the FCC. LTD Broadband received the largest amount, $1.3 billion to service 528,088 locations in Minnesota, Wisconsin, California, Missouri, Illinois, Oklahoma, Colorado, Indiana, South Dakota, Texas, Nebraska, Iowa, North Dakota, Ohio and Kansas. Charter won $1.2 billion for 1.06 million locations in Texas, Wisconsin, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Indiana, Kentucky, Alabama, Missouri, Oregon, Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, Michigan, Massachusetts, Virginia, Washington, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Illinois, California, Vermont and New Mexico. The Rural Electric Cooperative Consortium gets $1.1 billion for 622,147 locations in Missouri, South Dakota, Indiana, Georgia, Ohio, Montana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Colorado, Georgia, Florida, Virginia, Oklahoma, Oregon, Kentucky, Arizona, New Mexico, Michigan, Illinois, Tennessee, New York, Texas, Ohio, South Carolina, Indiana and Wisconsin. California will receive $695 million in rural broadband funding, Mississippi $495 million, Arkansas $424 million, Minnesota $408 million and Illinois $378 million. About 85% of serviced locations will receive gigabit-speed broadband, with the rest getting at least 100/20 Mbps. Winning bidders must submit a post-auction application for support by Jan. 29 and requests to assign some or all of their winning bids to related entities by Dec. 22. With $6.8 billion left over from Phase I, $11.2 billion will now be available for the RDOF Phase II auction, FCC Chief of Staff Matthew Berry tweeted Monday. “We have looked at the auction as a compelling way for Cable companies, specifically Charter, to expand their footprint with compelling returns,” New Street’s Jonathan Chaplin told investors Monday: “The results of the auction point to a more competitive auction than we expected resulting in fewer subsidies awarded. Charter was the biggest winner, but won fewer markets than we expected.” New Street sees the auction as “an opportunity for Cable to further accelerate subscriber growth.” The Wireless ISP Association seeks “lessons learned that can help improve Phase II of the RDOF auction, which will even more granularly identify and then bring service to those who remain in the digital divide,” emailed Louis Peraertz, vice president-policy.

Public interest groups and prison communications providers disagreed on the FCC Further NPRM to lower the cap on interstate and international inmate calling service rates (see 2008060053). Advocates said the new rate caps were a step in the right direction, while providers said the commission relied on misleading data. Filings were posted Tuesday in docket 12-375. Existing rates have been "unjust and unreasonable, with substantial and damaging social consequences," said the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates, arguing the "need for reform is acute and compelling." Verizon, which no longer provides ICS, backed the proposed rate caps, saying changes are "long overdue." But "more work is needed" to calculate appropriate rate caps, said Pay Tel Communications, because the methodology for the proposed rates "reflects a false assumption that location costs are far more homogenous than they actually are." Pay Tel said the proposed rates are "legally unsuitable for adoption." Civil rights and faith organizations led by MediaJustice and United Church of Christ said the rates should be as low as 5 cents per minute. The Financial Justice Project in the Treasurer and Tax Collector’s Office of San Francisco proposed the FCC consider contracts on a per-device model, rather than per-minute. Securus supported the commission's effort but raised concerns the new interstate limits "may be insufficient to permit providers to recover all reasonable costs." Securus asked to consider the impact of site commissions. Inmates with communication disabilities "remain cruelly isolated from outside contact," said disability-rights groups, and the commission must do more to end "unjust and illegal practices," particularly amid the pandemic. Helping Educate to Advance the Rights of the Deaf said it's an "absolute travesty" incarcerated people with disabilities lack "even have the most basic access to" telecom.

No major changes were made to the FCC's final NPRM on expanding the contribution base for internet-based telecommunications relay service, we found in our comparison to the draft. Commissioners voted to include video relay service and IP relay service during their meeting last week and said they intend to revisit funding arrangements in the future because VRS is now the second-largest TRS program (see 2011180058).

Four telecoms asked the FCC for more time to implement call authentication technologies, before the June 30 deadline to meet the secure telephone identity revisited (Stir) and signature-based handling of asserted information using tokens (Shaken) framework. The filings appeared Monday in docket 17-97. AT&T asked for a one-year extension, citing network congestion due to COVID-19 and aging platforms. Lumen said it "remains on track" to meet the deadline but sought an additional six months to accommodate any potential equipment-related delays. UScellular asked for an extension and didn't request a specific time frame because it's transitioning non-IP customers to an IP network. Verizon asked the FCC to declare it's not required to deploy Stir/Shaken for its plain old telephone system customers because it would be "an onerous task with any benefits vastly outweighed by the burdens." The company wants three years to finish upgrading its fiber-to-the-premises-session initiation protocol platform with Stir/Shaken capabilities.