The FCC should refrain from imposing net neutrality rules on wholesale interconnection, Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) President Dean Garfield and ITI Senior Vice President-Government Affairs Vince Jesaitis told Philip Verveer, senior counsel to Chairman Tom Wheeler, and aide Daniel Alvarez Jan. 14, said an ex parte filing posted in docket 14-28 Tuesday. Including interconnection in the net neutrality order expected in February is still up in the air (see 1501150054). The commission should not act until it develops “a more robust record” on the need for regulatory intervention, defines the problem that needs to be solved, and finds that regulation would not harm the wholesale broadband market or residential consumers’ Internet experience, ITI said. “At a minimum the technical aspects and business implications of peering and interconnection need to be understood fully before deciding on the best path forward,” said ITI, which said regulatory intervention “based on the limited record” could “do more harm than good.” Members include Akamai, AOL, Dell, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, says the ITI website. Meanwhile, in its separate comments in the docket, Verizon called the New Network Institute’s Jan. 13 petition for the commission to investigate the company “frivolous,” in a letter to the agency, posted Tuesday. NNI accused Verizon of “massive deception,” Verizon said, because the telco had relied on Title II in cable franchise applications as the source of its authority to deploy fiber, while opposing a Title II net neutrality approach for broadband. “But there is no ‘gotcha’ here,” Verizon said. Verizon offers plain old telephone service (POTS) over its fiber network, which is subject to Title II. It also offers other services over the same network, like FiOS TV and FiOS Internet, which haven’t been subject to Title II, Verizon said. “Offering POTS over the network -- and relying on our traditional telephone franchise for purposes of deploying networks that are still used to offer traditional telephone services -- is irrelevant to the question of the regulatory classification for broadband Internet access services or what the best regulatory framework is to encourage continued investment in broadband Internet access.”

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s proposal to raise the benchmark for judging the availability of broadband to 25 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream is facing opposition from Verizon. The proposal will be added to the commission’s Jan. 29 meeting for a vote, an agency official told us Friday. Increasing the standard in determining the adequacy of broadband deployment, from 4/1 to 25/3, would be a “large” shift, Maggie McCready, Verizon vice president-federal regulatory affairs, and William Johnson, associate general counsel, told Wheeler aide Renee Gregory and an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn in separate meetings Tuesday, said an ex parte filing. A draft FCC report on the progress of broadband deployment to be voted on at the meeting concludes that deployment, based on the higher standard, isn't occurring in a “just and reasonable fashion" (see 1501070046). Verizon officials disagreed. They said an assessment shouldn't discount the growth in mobile Internet access, “an important source of broadband connectivity that is being widely embraced by consumers, and, particularly with the widespread availability of 4G LTE,” the commission's report should reflect deployment of these services. The draft report calls the 4-year-old 4/1 standard “dated,” and said 53 percent of rural Americans, and 17 percent nationally, lack access to broadband at 25/3 Mbps speeds. A key consideration is the growth in streaming video and audio, which now comprises 63 percent of downstream traffic, an agency fact sheet about the proposal said. The commission also will vote on issuing a notice of inquiry on how to improve broadband deployment.

If the FCC takes a Communications Act Title II net neutrality approach and opts not to forbear from Sections 201 and 202, it should, at most, rely on the sections only to provide additional authority for transparency, no-blocking, and antidiscrimination rules, CEO Michael Powell and other NCTA officials told agency General Counsel Jonathan Sallet, Philip Verveer, senior counselor to Chairman Tom Wheeler, and other officials Monday, said an ex parte filing posted Wednesday in docket 14-28. Applying Sections 201 and 202 beyond what’s needed to enforce net neutrality rules “would expose broadband providers to the investment-reducing and innovation-chilling risks that have sparked vehement opposition to reclassification,” NCTA said. It’s “particularly important to forbear from enforcing Section 201(b),” the filing said, because “the directive to ensure that all ‘charges’ and ‘practices’ are ‘just and reasonable’ would subject every aspect of a broadband provider’s business to regulatory second guessing and micromanagement.” President Barack Obama’s call, while endorsing reclassification, to forbear from rate regulation “cannot be accomplished without forbearing from Section 201(b) -- as that provision is the primary source of statutory authority for the FCC to engage in rate regulation,” NCTA said. The association stressed it continues to oppose reclassification, and wants forbearance from all requirements if the commission adopts the Title II approach. Forbearance also should be done concurrent with any approval of reclassification, NCTA said. Calls by some to suspend sections of Title II, while the commission decides whether to forbear from them, “would deprive industry participants of much-needed regulatory certainty,” NCTA said. Also attending the meetings were James Assey, executive vice president; Rick Chessen, senior vice president-law and regulatory policy; Steven Morris, associate general counsel; Latham Watkins’ Matthew Murchison and Matthew Brill; and members of the commission’s general counsel’s office and the Wireline and Wireless bureaus. NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield urged Sallet Monday not to forbear from Section 254 because it could block the agency’s ability to require broadband customers to begin contributing to the USF (see 1501120039), said an ex parte filing. Brendan Kasper, Vonage senior regulatory counsel, and Morgan Lewis’ Joshua Bobeck and William Wilhelm urged an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn Monday not to forbear from Sections 201, 202 and 208, the company’s ex parte filing said. Vonage backed Google’s position to not forbear from Section 224, which gives broadband providers access to utility poles and other infrastructure needed for deployment (see 1412310041).

The FCC’s requirement that formal complaints under Section 208 of the Communications Act and Section 224 pole attachment complaints be filed electronically took effect Monday, an Enforcement Bureau public notice said. The commission’s order in November implemented a 2011 order requiring the docketing and electronic filing of all new Section 208 and Section 224 complaints (see 1410220045).

Edge companies’ stocks are “as vulnerable to being devalued by the FCC’s move to Title II” in a net neutrality order as broadband providers’ stocks, wrote Anna-Maria Kovacs, visiting senior policy scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Business and Public Policy, in a paper released Tuesday. “As the FCC engages in its Procrustean task of trying to fit [broadband Internet access providers] into Title II, it is unlikely to be able to keep the knife away from content delivery networks (CDNs), peering and transit providers, and providers of VOIP, texting, tweeting, social media, and content,” Kovacs wrote. “These entities, by equally arbitrary means, could also be sliced and diced into something they never intended to be. All parts of the Internet ecosystem are at risk of being forced to deconstruct their service offerings. ... No one will be safe.” Kovacs urged Congress to step in.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai will give a progress report Jan. 23 on his efforts to improve access to emergency personnel when dialing 911, a news release said. Pai in January sent letters to the CEOs of major hotel chains, after a December 2013 incident in which a child tried to dial 911 when her mother was being strangled by her estranged husband (see 1401210049). The child had not first dialed 9 for an outside line, so the call did not go through, Pai said at the time. Pai’s news conference will be at the Marshall (Texas) Police Department, where the child’s 911 call would have gone, Pai’s release said. It was unclear if the event will be webcast.

States “remain in the best position to oversee and investigate” intrastate inmate calling services rates and service, NARUC said in comments posted in docket 12-375 Monday. State authority “is clear,” NARUC said, and additional federal actions on ICS “are unlikely to survive judicial review and are likely to undermine existing State actions to address this issue.” NARUC supports FCC action to regulate interstate ICS calls, the group said. Fifty-one former state attorneys general urged the agency to regulate “high intrastate” ICS rates, a letter posted Friday said. They wrote that in their former positions, they “came to understand virtually all aspects of state government. Most of us were both criminal prosecutors while at the same time represented state departments of corrections. We fully understand the pressures on state budgets and how government often struggles to come up with enough funding to do even the simplest of things.” But they said they were “fully aware that 95 [percent] of the 2.2 million people held in prison and jails in the United States will one day be returned to society. We know that recidivism rates are high and that we as a society should do all that we can to lower that rate. Studies indicate that prisoners who maintain close connections with their families and children while incarcerated have lower recidivism rates.”

Google is right to argue in a Dec. 30 letter to the FCC that net neutrality rules shouldn’t interfere with cable companies’ pole attachment rights, NCTA said in its own letter to the commission Friday. Google, though, was wrong in arguing that the reclassification of broadband to Title II is necessary to preserve those rights. Google said Google Fiber “‘lacks federal access rights pursuant to Section 224 because it offers an Internet Protocol video service that is not traditional cable TV,’” NCTA said. But the “law is clear” that facilities-based providers of Internet Protocol television services “do qualify as cable operators under the Communications Act,” which defines a cable operator as “one who ‘provides cable service over a cable system,’ without any reference to the technology," NCTA said.

The FCC said it partially granted the Prison Policy Initiative’s request for additional time to comment on the commission’s inmate calling service overhaul Further NPRM. The deadline for filing comments is now Jan. 12, replies Jan. 27, the FCC said Friday in the Federal Register.

Public Knowledge is “disappointed” the FCC denied a petition by the group and the National Consumer Law Center to require AT&T to lay out a specific time line for its IP trials in Florida and Alabama (see 1403030032). AT&T justified “highly confidential treatment of its detailed timeline information,” the Wednesday order said, but the bureau also emphasized that “robust public comment on the grandfather and discontinuance applications will be essential.” The bureau signaled it would be “disinclined to allow information” on Section 214(a) applications AT&T will have to file for discontinuing copper-based service “to be subject to confidential treatment -- absent extraordinary and unanticipated circumstances.” AT&T has said it wouldn’t seek discontinuation until at least the end of the year. If the bureau were to order the release of a detailed time line “at this early stage,” the order said it could harm the commission’s ability to get companies to obtain “similar voluntary disclosures in the future and discourage participation in trials.” The order required AT&T to revise its proposal to the commission within 14 days to include the percentage of living units in Carbon Hill, Alabama, that would receive wireline and/or wireless service in the trial. The company inadvertently released the information to the press and didn't oppose releasing it to the commission, the order said. “Although we are glad the Commission’s confidentiality challenge process brought some new information into the public eye, we are disappointed that, even months after the Commission solicited public comment on AT&T’s proposal, the public still does not know when AT&T’s proposed trials will actually start and stop," Jodie Griffin, Public Knowledge senior staff attorney, said in the statement. “We are also disappointed the Commission took nine months to issue a decision on this procedural point. The Commission’s confidentiality challenge process must provide challengers effective and prompt redress, or companies will only grow more bold in over-claiming confidentiality to keep damaging or embarrassing information secret.” The Public Knowledge and NCLC petition was filed April 8. AT&T didn't comment.