Replies on an Edison Electric Institute petition for declaratory ruling on pole attachment rates are now due Sept. 10 in docket 17-84, said an FCC Wireline Bureau order posted Thursday granting EEI's motion for an extension (see 2108270060).

Industry backed an Alarm Industry Communications Committee request to delay AT&T's Feb. 22 3G data termination sunset, in comments posted Tuesday in FCC docket 21-304 (see 2108200021). AICC "clearly demonstrated the harmful impact" of the planned sunset, said the Alliance for Automotive Innovation. The auto industry "has been constrained in its ability to address or mitigate the impact of the 3G sunset," the group said, adding that it supported AICC's proposed Dec. 31, 2022, deadline. The Alcohol Monitoring Systems and AARP backed a 10-month extension. A "global semiconductor chip shortage" has affected the electronic monitoring industry's 4G transition, AMS said. AARP cited "clear linkages" between the COVID-19 pandemic and "the ability of AICC members to successfully complete the 3G transition." An "abrupt, premature, or disorganized shut-down of this key element of wireless connectivity threatens millions of people that rely on 3G," said Public Knowledge, Access Humboldt, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, Center for Rural Strategies and New America's Open Technology Institute. The FCC is "well-positioned to serve as an honest broker that can collect and protect information necessary to make an objective evaluation of the obstacles facing the transition," they said. AT&T disagreed, saying alarm companies are "fully capable of replacing 3G radios" used by customers. The chip shortage "has not kept the major alarm companies from ... winning and activating new customers," it said. A delay would "undercut AT&T’s 5G rollout and overall network performance," it said. AT&T will respond to others' comments in replies due Sept. 14, said a spokesperson.

AT&T asked the FCC to adopt a spectrum screen for 2.5 GHz-6 GHz. In 2016, AT&T opposed FCC decisions to impose low-band and high-band spectrum screens (see 1607080026). “It makes no sense to maintain them and not apply a similar screen for mid-band spectrum,” the company petitioned Wednesday. “Mid-band licenses are the most important input in any wireless provider’s portfolio of 5G spectrum assets -- and, not coincidentally, are also the most likely to become the subject of anticompetitive foreclosure strategies.” Current rules “do little to prevent” the potential for anti-competitive behavior involving mid-band since “they apply only the highly diluted overall spectrum screen to acquisitions of additional mid-band spectrum, inaccurately treating that spectrum as though it were fungible with other spectrum, while applying more granular scrutiny to acquisitions of spectrum below 1 GHz even though that spectrum actually is fungible with other bands,” AT&T said. Nothing “stops” carriers “from overpaying for yet more mid-band spectrum” because the existing screen “cannot prevent providers with outsized mid-band assets from engaging in a foreclosure strategy designed to keep rivals from obtaining the mid-band assets they need.” So “act through provider-specific review of post-auction long-form license applications, not through ex ante, provider-agnostic caps on spectrum acquired in any given auction." A new screen “is not a cap on how much spectrum any entity can hold,” blogged Executive Vice President-Federal Regulatory Relations Joan Marsh. “It is a filter that the FCC can use to identify spectrum acquisitions that trigger more detailed consideration of the potential for competitive harms.” The petition criticizes the FCC for “not requiring any spectrum divestitures” by T-Mobile in buying Sprint, which “trivialized its overall spectrum screen.” AT&T and T-Mobile trailed Verizon in bidding that ended in February for C-band spectrum (see 2102180041). The FCC, T-Mobile and Verizon didn’t comment.

Amazon’s proposed $8.45 billion MGM buy (see 2105260061) “is not simply a one-off deal for streaming content,” but the latest move in Amazon’s “overarching strategy to create numerous interconnected points of dominance over businesses and consumers,” nearly three dozen organizations wrote FTC Chair Lina Khan and the other commissioners Tuesday, urging them to block the transaction. If the deal goes through, consumers “will be more forcefully pushed into subscribing” to Amazon Prime Video because more content will be exclusive to the service, “rather than being available across many platforms,” said the groups. Amazon also could “destroy rivals to its Fire TV products by denying other streaming platforms access to its content,” they said. Amazon’s control over the intellectual property for MGM content would allow it to “further exert leverage over its e-commerce platform” by forcing competitors “to prioritize Amazon content and product placement within non-Amazon products in exchange for access to content or IP rights,” they said. “We urge the FTC to halt this deal and to continue to investigate Amazon’s broad abuse of its ecosystem.” An Amazon spokesperson declined comment on the letter. He cited past Amazon statements that competition for content is “already intense,” and that the MGM buy “will help to strengthen this competition and provide even more choice to consumers.”

The FCC acting chairwoman's office circulated an NPRM on tackling SIM swapping and port-out fraud, proposing various actions aimed at preventing takeovers of consumers' cellphone accounts and follow-on attacks using stolen data, the agency told us Monday. The NPRM was circulated Friday. SIM swapping happens when a wireless carrier is deceived into transferring a victim's service from the victim's mobile phone to another phone in a scammer's possession, the agency said. Port-out fraud is when the scammer, posing as the victim, opens an account with a new carrier and then arranges for the victim's number to be transferred -- or "ported out" -- to the new carrier account, the FCC said.

Mavenir is the company where Pardeep Kohli is CEO (see 2108270039).

ACA Connects praised the FCC FY 2021 regulatory fee order for setting satellite MVPD fees to the same rate paid by other MVPDs (see 2108270072). “The FCC finally has made the regulatory fee amount it charges DIRECTV and DISH Network per subscriber equal to that imposed on cable and IPTV providers, closing the book on its seven-year phase-in process,” said President Matthew Polka Monday. Information Technology Industry Council Director-Policy Joel Miller expressed concern about the agency’s look at possible future changes to regulatory fees. “The law and process undergirding how the Commission allocates the burden of reg fees among regulated entities has been well-established,” Miller emailed Friday. “Any changes to this model of regulation could have far-reaching negative consequences and should be carefully considered.”

A new DOJ Cyber Fellowship program is designed to develop “prosecutors and attorneys equipped to handle emerging national security threats,” the agency said Friday. The program will be coordinated through the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, it said.

The FTC Competition Bureau will begin recommending “enforcement action” Sept. 27 against companies that “fail to file” proposed transactions with the commission and DOJ “when retirement of debt is part of the consideration for the deal,” acting bureau Director Holly Vedova said in a Thursday blog post. Competition “is concerned” informal agency staff interpretations provided to companies about whether specific types of deals require going through the review process “may not reflect modern market realities or the policy position of the Commission,” Vedova said. “We are currently in the process of reviewing the voluminous log of informal interpretations to determine the best path forward,” but “previous informal interpretations” that “gave the impression that companies could avoid filing by paying off a target company’s debt, instead of paying the company with cash … missed the mark.” Some “merging parties have responded by structuring deals in ways that they believe fall outside of the filing requirements,” she said.

The FCC deactivated the disaster information reporting system for Tropical Storm Henri, said a public notice in Tuesday’s Daily Digest. A DIRS report from Monday showed 7,648 cable and wireline subscribers out of service in Connecticut, 13,167 in Rhode Island, 4,573 in New York and 1,321 in Massachusetts. No public safety answering points or broadcasters were reported out of service, it said.