Net neutrality advocates lauded President Barack Obama for his remarks Thursday during an innovation town hall meeting in Los Angeles. “I was opposed to it when I ran,” Obama said of paid prioritization deals. “I continue to be opposed to it now.” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler “knows my position” but Obama “can’t just call him up and tell him exactly what to do,” Obama said, noting that the FCC’s an independent agency. “But what I've been clear about, what the White House has been clear about is, is that we expect whatever final rules to emerge to make sure that we're not creating two or three or four tiers of Internet.” Obama said he’s “unequivocally committed” to net neutrality and “we don’t want to lose that or clog up the pipes” of the Internet. Free Press President Craig Aaron issued a statement arguing that Wheeler has “lost political support” from Obama for his net neutrality proposal, which Free Press and some others believe would not ban the prioritization deals Obama mentions opposing. Aaron called for Title II reclassification of broadband. Demand Progress Executive Director David Segal said “anything short” of reclassification is now “a betrayal of Internet users, of free speech and democracy, and a violation of the President’s expressed wishes.” Internet Association President Michael Beckerman lauded Obama for his support for “enforceable net neutrality rules” that keep consumers free from Internet slow lanes. That group’s members include AOL, Facebook, Google, Netflix and Yahoo.

Correction: Commissioners Mike O'Rielly and Ajit Pai both dissented from an FCC vote on an application for review of OpenBand connected with a Freedom of Information Act request (CD Oct 9 p14).

Two House Democrats pressed the FCC on net neutrality. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., sent FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler a letter Wednesday, as expected (CD Sept 12 p9), calling for a mix of Communications Act Section 706 and Title II authority in crafting strong net neutrality rules. “Of the proposals put forward, there is only one that currently meets the criteria of clear, unambiguous authority, strong rules, and measured restraint that has been demanded by the public,” Lofgren said in the letter, released Thursday (http://1.usa.gov/1si1buR). The FCC should “reclassify broadband Internet access as a title II service, and use a combination of its rulemaking and forbearance authority under section 706 to implement its Open Internet rules,” she said. Lofgren recognized a concern that Title II forbearance could be considered arbitrary and capricious and thus the forbearance could be nixed, urging use of the affirmative authority of Section 706 to back the rules. She told the FCC to look at “a new title II service independent from the telecommunications infrastructure used for its transmission,” saying such a split has precedence. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairman, also pushed for Title II reclassification. “Classifying broadband Internet as a common carrier would preserve net neutrality and ensure that the Internet remains a place where all Americans can bring their ideas and be heard,” Ellison said in a Wednesday op-ed for The Huffington Post (http://huff.to/1neo5C2), saying reclassification “would promote social justice and economic equality.” Ellison framed the benefits of net neutrality in terms of people of color, invoking recent racial unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, and the role the Internet played. “Communities of color -- long underrepresented in public dialogue -- would be among those hardest hit by such censorship,” Ellison said of the concept of Internet fast and slow lanes.

More can be done to include people with disabilities in the design, development and re-engineering of advanced communications technology, said the FCC in its second biennial 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) report to Congress, released Thursday (http://bit.ly/1v7PlEV). The availability of accessible communications equipment has increased since the 2012 report, and industry “has made efforts to ensure that advanced communications services and the equipment used for these services are accessible to people with disabilities,” the report tentatively concluded. But some accessibility gaps remain, the report said. One issue is that while software updates can be used to disseminate accessibility improvements to technology such as Web browsers and mobile phones, they can also unintentionally make such features malfunction, the report said. “These concerns suggest a need to be mindful about avoiding the creation of new barriers to accessibility as technologies and service plans continue to evolve,” the report said. The CVAA report is largely complimentary of industry efforts to provide accessible products and information to the disabled. Between Jan. 1, 2012, and Dec. 31, 2013, consumers filed 92 complaints with the commission, the report said. Of these, 31.5 percent alleged violations by equipment manufacturers, 55.5 percent by service providers, and 12 percent complained of violations by both, the report said. All of the complaints reported violations of Section 255 of the Communications Act, which requires telecommunications providers to ensure “that such services and equipment are accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities, if readily achievable,” the report said. Fifteen percent of complaints about equipment-related issues involved “inaccessible wireless handsets received in conjunction with subscriptions for telephone services under the Commission’s Lifeline program,” the report said. Another 12 percent of complaints about service providers concerned an inability to access billing information, the report said. “Most of these were from consumers who were blind or visually impaired, who expressed long-standing frustrations with acquiring access to their accounts,” the report said. The commission’s Disability Rights Office was able to resolve nearly all the complaints, the report said. “The Commission did not assess any forfeiture penalties for accessibility-related violations during the period covered by this Report,” the report said.

The FCC has been implementing recommendations from its report on process reform to reduce the number of pending items and move incoming items through the FCC system faster, said Diane Cornell, special counsel to the Chairman’s Office, in a blog post Thursday (http://fcc.us/1oVdirW). Efforts to streamline processing have led the Enforcement Bureau to “largely complete” its review of pending complaints, which in turn led to the Media Bureau granting “almost 700 license renewals this week,” Cornell said. The Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau has closed more than 760 dockets and sought comment on another 750 dockets that could be eligible for closing by the end of 2014, Cornell said. Between May and September 2014, the Wireless Bureau resolved 2,046 applications older than 6 months, creating a 26 percent reduction in its applications backlog, Cornell said. The process improvements responsible for the enhanced efficiency include the FCC’s consent agenda, Bureau specific backlog reduction plans and best practices, said Cornell. These have led to the Media Bureau issuing effective competition rulings in omnibus form, the International Bureau eliminating the effective competitive opportunities test for submarine cable landing licenses and 214 applications, and the Wireline Bureau streamlining USF appeals, the report said. Further process reforms will come in the months ahead, and will be accompanied by periodic updates, Cornell said.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai was the lone dissenter from an order (http://bit.ly/1yNJzdY) denying a January 2013 application for review of a 2012 Freedom of Information Act request from telecom provider OpenBand, said an order released Wednesday. The commission affirmed an Office of General Counsel decision to redact and withhold documents containing “communications between Wiltshire & Grannis and the Commission” on OpenBand v. Lansdowne, a case OpenBand lost last year in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (CD April 9/13 p21) the order said. The case concerned an arrangement between a Virginia land developer and OpenBand that made the company the exclusive video provider for a residential subdivision, and though the FCC wasn’t a party in the case, it did file an amicus brief against the arrangement, which means communications between it and Wiltshire Grannis are privileged, intra-agency communication, the order said. That’s “a bridge too far,” said Pai’s dissent. Wiltshire Grannis is not part of the FCC, Pai said. “Its attorneys certainly are not compensated pursuant to the GS scale. And when they come to lobby the Commission, its attorneys must comply with our ex parte rules.” The commission’s intra-agency argument might apply if Wiltshire Grannis had been representing the FCC, but it was representing Landsdowne, Pai pointed out. “In its communications with the Commission, Wiltshire Grannis was pressing its client’s interest, not the government’s.” Though OpenBand had argued that a former FCC general counsel at Wiltshire Grannis had induced the FCC to file the amicus brief, the agency said there’s “no support” for OpenBand’s argument that there was a criminal conflict of interest. “The 2007 Exclusivity Order proceeding that promulgated the bar on exclusive arrangements at issue in the OpenBand litigation was conducted long after the former FCC General Counsel’s departure from the agency in 2001,” said the order. Wiltshire Grannis attorney Christopher Wright, the referenced former FCC general counsel, said it’s important for the agency and private parties on the same side to be able to communicate in legal proceedings.

The Telecommunications Industry Association Wednesday named Scott Belcher as CEO. TIA President Grant Seiffert will report to Belcher, the group said (http://bit.ly/1pR99Fp). Belcher was CEO of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, which has been battling the wireless industry on proposals to use the 5.850-5.925 GHz band for Wi-Fi. Belcher’s group has lobbied on behalf of the automotive industry, which plans to use the spectrum for vehicle-to-vehicle crash avoidance systems and has been worried about Wi-Fi interference (CD Feb 4 p4). Industry officials said in June the TIA board was looking for a new CEO and had hired a major head-hunter firm to identify and vet candidates (CD June 9 p11). Seiffert had been the top official at the group since January 2007. Belcher takes over Nov. 9. As CEO, Belcher “will have responsibility for managing TIA’s overall operations and providing long-term strategic direction,” said TIA Chairman Tom Stanton, CEO of Adtran.

Creating net neutrality rules under Title II would require edge providers to make payments to ISPs for termination services, said George Ford, Phoenix Center chief economist, during a teleforum Wednesday. Reclassification, he said, would turn edge providers into ISP customers, which would require the broadband providers under Section 203 of the Communications Act to tariff termination service for Internet content. The FCC can’t forbear the tariff because the broadband providers are considered terminating monopolies, and competition is the basis for Section 10 forbearance, said Ford, who made the argument in a policy bulletin last month (http://bit.ly/WEvdLa). That the tariff requirement hasn’t been discussed in depth during the net neutrality debate “reveals the superficial nature of this debate,” Ford said during the forum. Tariffing has “significant compliance costs,” and neither carriers nor the agency is set up to handle tariffs, which have become less common, said Wiley Rein’s Thomas Navin, a former Wireline Bureau chief, during the forum. Title II proponents disagreed. The agency could forbear the tariffing requirement in Section 203, said Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld, pointing to his Oct. 2 blog post (http://bit.ly/10K8cZV), because other statutes like Sections 201 and 202 allow the FCC to act in the case of “unjust reasonable rates and practices and otherwise protecting consumers.” Edge providers “are not in fact the customers of the end-user ISP. There is no service there,” said Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood, and “there'd be a real danger in that view,” because “quite literally every website in the world becomes a customer of Comcast’s just because I view that site on my Comcast connection.”

The pending Local Number Portability Administrator (LNPA) selection process has put too much emphasis on recommendations from the North American Numbering Council “with little focus on important public policy issues such as the potential impact on telecommunications competition or consumers, particularly if there is an LNPA transition,” Neustar said in a filing last week at the FCC. Neustar said under the law, the FCC must select “any new LNPA through a rulemaking proceeding.” A rulemaking proceeding “will ensure that important public policy issues raised by the selection and a possible transition can be aired and reviewed through a more transparent process,” Neustar said (http://bit.ly/Zredtv). Neustar also noted the importance of LNPA selection to competition. “Most number porting today is wireless-to-wireless and wireline-to-wireless, reflecting the dynamic nature of today’s wireless industry,” it said. About one in 20 wireless and wireline numbers is ported every year, Neustar said. The filing is in docket 95-116. Also in the docket North American Portability Management (NAPM) said despite earlier comments filed by Neustar it had conducted a “formal analysis” of bids submitted by companies looking to serve as the LNPA (http://bit.ly/1vI2Qb4).

Marriott International and its subsidiary, Marriott Hotel Services, will pay $600,000 to resolve an FCC investigation into whether Marriott intentionally interfered with and disabled Wi-Fi networks at a Tennessee convention center, the agency said Friday (http://fcc.us/1rRzKH2). Marriott employees had used containment features of a Wi-Fi monitoring system at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville to prevent individuals from connecting to the Internet via their own personal Wi-Fi networks, the agency said. At the same time, Marriott charged consumers, small businesses and exhibitors as much as $1,000 per device to access Marriott’s Wi-Fi network, the agency said. The actions violated Section 333 of the Communications Act, said the commission. “It is unacceptable for any hotel to intentionally disable personal hotspots while also charging consumers and small businesses high fees to use the hotel’s own Wi-Fi network,” said Enforcement Bureau Chief Travis LeBlanc in a news release. “This practice puts consumers in the untenable position of either paying twice for the same service or forgoing Internet access altogether.” Marriott also agreed under a consent decree (http://bit.ly/1BDuFDj) to cease the unlawful use of Wi-Fi blocking technology and take steps to improve how it monitors and uses its Wi-Fi technology at Gaylord Opryland, the release said. Marriott must put in place a compliance plan and file compliance and usage reports with the bureau every three months for three years, including documentation of any use of access point containment features at any U.S. property that Marriott manages or owns, the release said. Marriott was not immediately available for comment.