Serving people with disabilities must be a high priority of U.S. broadband policy, said FCC Commissioners Michael Copps, Mignon Clyburn and Robert McDowell, during a commission field hearing at Gallaudet University, a school in D.C. for people with impaired hearing. “It’s not just something nice for us to do,” said Copps, who hosted the event. “It’s their right. … Access denied is opportunity denied.” Marlee Matlin, an actress who has won an Academy Award and is deaf, called for closed captioning in video media streaming online. The hearing followed an FCC order late Thursday clearing up outstanding technical issues related to the Nov. 12 transition of Internet-based telecom relay services to 10-digit phone numbers.
Government should fund a competition for ISPs to win low-income consumers who have yet to adopt broadband, said Information Technology & Innovation Foundation President Robert Atkinson at an ITIF forum. In a report released Thursday, ITIF suggested that NTIA give $250 per new customer to the ISP that signs the most new subscribers in a low- income census tract in a single year. Under the approach, increasing broadband subscribership by 5 percent would cost $970 million, estimated Atkinson. A key advantage of the idea is that money would only be spent after a new customer signed up for broadband, maximizing accountability, he said. And the approach relies on market competition, encouraging “people out in the field [to] figure out the best way to do this,” he said. John Horrigan, the FCC broadband team’s consumer research director, said the proposal is “an interesting and provocative idea.” It could be improved by rewarding consumers in addition to ISPs, he said. For example, ISPs could reward customers who bring in other new low-income users to the fold, he said. Key to spurring adoption is “cultivating a social infrastructure around adoption and new adopters so that they really start to use the technology,” Horrigan said. Many consumers adopt technologies after hearing about it from a peer, he said. Atkinson said broadband adoption won’t happen on its own because people won’t want to pay what they do for a more critical public utility like electricity, and the technology is much tougher for new users to understand than telephony. “I don’t know anyone who would say a computer is a simple technology.”
The FCC laid the groundwork for an investigation into special access, issuing a public notice late Thursday “on an appropriate analytical framework” for reviewing issues raised in the commission’s long-pending proceeding. Chairman Julius Genachowski announced the notice last month in a letter to Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii (CD Oct 9 p1). Meanwhile, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile and others renewed their attack on special access charges in comments at the commission as part of its broadband investigation. Comments were due Wednesday on National Broadband Plan Public Notice No. 11, on the impact of middle- mile access on broadband availability and deployment.
The FCC could adopt an order this week approving AT&T’s $944 million purchase of Centennial, an eighth-floor official said Tuesday. Chairman Julius Genachowski circulated a draft order last week that includes conditions consistent with commitments made by AT&T last month, and commissioners aren’t expected to get hung up in a long negotiation, the official said. The chairman appears intent on finishing the order by the deal’s one-year anniversary on Saturday, the source said.
Big phone companies urged the FCC to reject a petition on broadband data collection by state regulators. The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners had asked the commission to decide that federal rules don’t limit states’ collecting information from broadband service or infrastructure providers (CD Sept 30 p10). But in comments this week, AT&T, Verizon and USTelecom said the proposed rule would represent an unwarranted expansion of state authority.
The FCC is discussing ways to step up the agency’s involvement in cybersecurity matters, but it isn’t seeking to broaden its responsibilities, said Public Safety & Homeland Security Bureau spokesman Robert Kenny. The commission collected big phone companies’ opinions in a meeting last month (CD Oct 27 p10). So far, industry officials have revealed no concerns.
Google Voice has narrowed its blocking of outbound calls to fewer than 100 U.S. telephone numbers that have high termination access fees and are used by free conferencing and adult chat-line providers, Google said late Wednesday in a letter to the FCC. Google said the blocking is permissible because the company provides an information service. It was responding to an FCC Wireline Bureau letter (CD Oct 22 p14).
The economic model being developed for broadband deployment will be the FCC’s largest since its Benchmark Cost Proxy Model, the broadband team’s deployment director, Rob Curtis, said Thursday at an Arts & Labs forum at George Washington University. And in a speech at an FCBA seminar, plan coordinator Blair Levin cited a shortage of spectrum as one of the biggest barriers to spurring broadband.
Purple Communications asked for a five-month delay of the deadline for deaf consumers to register 10-digit phone numbers for Internet-based text relay services. Video relay service users would still have to register by Nov. 12 under the proposal. “Although providers have been largely successful in registering video relay service users, there remains a majority of IP Relay users who have not registered despite aggressive efforts to convince them to register,” Purple said. “More time is needed and more effort is required to educate IP Text Relay users of the need to register.” The deadline has already been extended over concerns about consumer confusion, lack of public education, and technical issues. Consumer groups and relay providers attending an FCC workshop last month said education problems still remain, especially for IP text relay users (CD Sept 28 p5). “Consumer groups at this point are non-committal toward the effort by Purple or any other Internet Protocol text relay service provider” seeking an extension of the deadline, said Claude Stout, executive director of Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing: “The FCC will need to make the decision.”
Advocates and foes of network neutrality rules praised the process set up by the FCC in its rulemaking commenced Thursday, in a panel late Wednesday hosted by the Advisory Committee to the U.S. Congressional Internet Caucus. But the telco and cable representatives said they still worry rules could chill broadband network investment. The cable industry is “very encouraged” by the open and data-drive nature of the process established by Chairman Julius Genachowski, said Howard Symons, a cable attorney with Mintz Levin. Cooperation and negotiation between each side of the debate will be critical to making good rules, agreed Amazon.com Public Policy Vice President Paul Misener. “Why not take a real hard look at this and do it right?” However, AT&T Vice President Hank Hultquist said he fears proposed rules are too vague on what operators are allowed to do. For example, it’s unclear whether proposed rules allow AT&T to provide quality of service for customers, or provide “limited-purpose devices” like Amazon’s Kindle, he said. AT&T is worried that the FCC seeks to abandon the Telecom Act Section 202 standard allowing “reasonable” network management, replacing it with a blanket standard banning network discrimination, with some exceptions, he said. Neutrality advocates said exceptions to the FCC’s proposed nondiscrimination rule must be narrow and limited. Public Knowledge doesn’t want “exceptions that swallow the rule,” said staff attorney Jef Pearlman. The FCC mustn’t write criteria for reasonable net management so loosely that it acts as a “Trojan horse” for bad behavior, agreed Misener.