The Professional Association for Customer Engagement committed to working with members to provide information on costs of a reassigned number database, which the FCC is considering authorizing to help prevent illegal robocalls under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Legitimate callers are harmed "by blocking and labeling legal and TCPA-complaint calls," which can have "unintended consequences," filed PACE on meetings with Commissioner Mike O'Rielly, aides and Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau staffers, posted Friday in docket 02-278. Numeracle CEO Rebekah Johnson shared her experiences as a consumer getting legitimate calls that her wireless carrier "improperly" labeled as "SCAM LIKELY." Banks called to verify her wire transfer and her use of a credit card at a remote store, leading to her card being canceled when she didn't answer; she also missed a call from an airline about a flight.

As the tech-telecom-e-commerce industry outpaces the rest of the U.S. economy, it faces sufficient competition, the Progressive Policy Institute reported Thursday. Productivity in the sector grew almost 60 percent 2007-17, compared with 5 percent in the rest of the non-health private sector, PPI said. “Companies in the tech/telecom/ecommerce sector are subject to sufficient competitive pressures that they are distributing their rapid productivity gains to customers in the form of falling prices -- and to workers in the form of higher pay and more jobs.” The group advises antitrust regulators to weigh potential global competition when considering market concentration and to examine industries sector by sector. “There’s no evidence that today’s tech leaders make up a significantly higher share of the U.S. and global economies compared with past industry leaders,” it said.

Moving to 5G, most carriers will see that the most “cost-effective way” to deliver such bandwidth and low latency “is to deploy more antennas, a lot more antennas, and each of those is a high-performance antenna that needs to be backhauled with fiber,” Corning Chief Strategy Officer Jeffrey Evenson told a Credit Suisse investors conference Tuesday. “Fiber has been a pretty small part of cellular builds,” but 5G “changes the game,” he said. The company estimates each antenna will require eight fibers, so “we're building new plants to supply this,” he said. It developed a supply agreement with Verizon to “de-risk” that investment, he said: The next decade will determine whether 5G is a “fiber-to-the-home-size business or something even bigger."

FCC staff voiced concerns about "overutilization" of IP captioned telephone services, "marketing, and a lack of understanding" among IP CTS users "about how the service works," said the International Hearing Society, representing hearing healthcare professionals, in docket 03-123. "They highlighted alternate methods for achieving effective telephone communication, and inquired about patient satisfaction with the phones, and provider determinations about which captioned telephones they chose to offer to patients," IHS said Monday on a Nov. 14 meeting with Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau and Office of Managing Director staffers. "The preferred method for determining eligibility for a captioned telephone should be based on the licensed hearing care professional’s clinical judgment following a comprehensive hearing evaluation," argued IHS. "FCC and IHS agreed to work together to provide education to hearing aid dispensing professionals about IP CTS services." Providers and deaf groups objected to FCC-proposed IP CTS changes (see 1809180048).

The FCC Enforcement Bureau reached a $50,000 settlement agreement with Gable Signs & Graphics over violations of FCC rules on LED signs, said a consent decree Tuesday. Gable “violated the Equipment Marketing Rules by marketing LED signs without the required equipment authorization, labeling, and user manual disclosures, and by failing to produce certain required test records,” the settlement said. “Gable admits that it violated the Commission’s rules." A compliance plan includes regular compliance reports and a training program for employees. The agency has settled 21 cases involving noncompliant LED signs since March, said a release. “The settlements yielded approximately $850,000 in penalties paid to the U.S. Treasury and commitments to ensure compliance with the law." Gable didn’t comment.

Lifeline providers backed a Q Link Wireless petition to submit documentation of low-income consumer eligibility to a national verifier via bulk transfer rather than through its online portals, which Q Link says it can't use absent an application programming interface (see 1811090038). Waiver should be granted to all eligible telecom carriers as an interim solution until there's an API, commented the National Lifeline Association in docket 17-287, posted Monday. NaLA said the FCC and Universal Service Administrative Co. should "promptly move to implement a service provider API in the National Verifier to facilitate an efficient and effective enrollment process that serves consumers while safeguarding the Lifeline program through an independent determination of eligibility." TracFone last week also urged the FCC to grant Q Link's petition and extend relief to all ETCs.

A New York town sued by Crown Castle disagreed that an FCC September declaratory ruling “has any impact" on the case. At the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Crown Castle claimed Hempstead violated Communications Act Section 332 when it delayed and effectively denied a request to install wireless facilities in the right of way (see 1806130052). Crown Castle said last week (in Pacer) the FCC’s declaratory ruling supported its case. Hempstead disagreed (in Pacer) Monday: The company's distributed antenna system sites aren't small wireless facilities as defined by the FCC. The FCC ruling applies only to small wireless facilities that provide wireless broadband and telecom, but the DAS facilities will provide 4G LTE broadband information services, it said. “The Declaratory Ruling is irrelevant.”

FCC staff OK'd Florida Public Service Commission request for waiver of some Lifeline rules (see 1810300039) for four months through Feb. 10, for 12 counties hit by Hurricane Michael, including Bay, Gadsden, Gulf, Holmes, Jackson, Leon, Liberty, and Wakulla. There's "good cause" to give eligible telecom carriers serving such subscribers there more time on non-usage and recertification rules, ordered the Wireline Bureau, listed in Monday's Daily Digest. "Strict compliance with these rules would be impracticable and would risk de-enrollment of Lifeline subscribers in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael." On Friday, the FCC sought comment on 36 questions about the storm, including the extra time it took to fix communications networks in the Florida Panhandle (see 1811160050). The order is in docket 11-42.

Proposals are due Feb. 4 for a Secure Telephone Identity Policy Administrator, ATIS told the FCC Thursday in docket 17-59. It noted an STI Governance Authority request for proposal to select the overseer of an industry Secure Handling of Asserted information using toKENs (Shaken) framework to authenticate calls and combat illegal robocalls.

TV white space database provider Nominet says it fixed the issues with its database raised by NAB Oct. 19. “We promptly reviewed our Licensing Management System (LMS) data import process and rectified the identified discrepancies,” Nominet replied, posted in docket 04-186 Wednesday. NAB had said the system provided incorrect information (see 1810190026). “We would further encourage any stakeholders to engage with Nominet directly to ensure protection of their services and end users,” the company said. “The discrepancies were due to the difficulty of importing data from" LMS, it said.