The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the mandate of a panel's partial reversal of an FCC order that largely deregulated business data service rates of price-cap incumbent telcos. An FCC motion to stay the mandate is granted until Nov. 12, 2019, said a court order (in Pacer) in Citizens Telecommunications v. FCC, No. 17-2296. The FCC argued the stay would avoid BDS market disruption while it considers the procedural reversal and remand of TDM interoffice transport pricing deregulation (see 1810100054), which it proposed to reinstate in a recent Further NPRM (see 1810230032). Incompas and Sprint opposed the motion while USTelecom, AT&T and CenturyLink backed it (see 1810220035).

Comments are due Dec. 10 on a study on feasibility of a three-digit dialing code for a national suicide prevention and mental health crisis hotline and analyzing how well the current National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (NSPL) addresses veterans' needs, said a public notice in Friday's FCC Daily Digest. That study was required by the National Suicide Hotline Improvement Act signed into law in August (see 1808140037). The Wireline Bureau also said it's directing the North American Numbering Council to provide recommendations on issues the FCC needs to address in that study. In a letter to NANC Chairman Travis Kavulla, bureau Chief Kris Monteith said the group should consider the feasibility of using a currently designed three-digit dialing code, including codes the FCC has set up for other purposes, versus creating a new code, and do a cost-benefit analysis of using a three-digit code compared with current use of the NSPL toll-free number.

BMI and ASCAP consent decrees let companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google and Netflix not pay songwriters what they deserve (see 1810010031), and it’s good DOJ is exploring these decrees, National Music Publishers Association CEO David Israelite said in a Technology Policy Institute podcast. Songwriters “should have a right to negotiate the price of what they create in a free market, and the consent decrees prevent them,” he said in a conversation TPI promoted this week that included RIAA President Mitch Glazier. Thursday, the Internet Association didn’t comment. The Music Modernization Act’s Mechanical Licensing Collective (see 1809180059) will revolutionize how the music industry treats data, Israelite said. The MLC establishes a royalty payment database governed by a board of 10 publishers and four songwriters with oversight from the Copyright Office. It’s unique that the industry won’t “treat the ownership information as proprietary or confidential but rather as public information that is designed to get proper payment,” Israelite said, noting sound recordings will be publicly accessible for three years when the proper owner can’t be found.

San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo (D) accused the FCC of allowing a wireless industry land grab by approving an order in September designed to speed siting of small cells (see 1809260029). Many mayors “have welcomed the opportunity to partner with the private sector to equip their city-owned streetlight poles with these new technologies and achieve more equitable access in their communities,” Liccardo wrote Thursday in a New York Times opinion. “The telecommunications industry has quietly worked to usurp control over these coveted public assets and utilize publicly owned streetlight poles for their own profit, not the public benefit.” The new rules “force local jurisdictions to provide telecom companies with unfettered access to public streetlight poles at below-market, taxpayer-subsidized lease rates,” he said. “By eviscerating the ability of cities to negotiate with industry, the rules undermine widespread local efforts to broaden access for less affluent families and create an uncertain future for some existing agreements.” Liccardo made headlines earlier this year when he resigned from the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee complaining about a lack of local representation (see 1801250049) and his city, along with Seattle, sued the FCC (see 1810250055). Wireless industry groups didn't comment. “The real story of San Jose’s digital divide is Mayor Liccardo and his 5G tax,” emailed a spokesperson for FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr. Under Liccardo “San Jose -- the Capital of Silicon Valley -- has seen zero small cells deployed,” the spokesperson said “Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of small cells have been deployed in places overlooked by coastal elites. … For those living in San Jose, Mayor Liccardo’s leadership gap has been the cruelest part of the digital divide.” Liccardo is right, countered Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood. "While it's so important to focus on the kids and the families hurt by this FCC's policies, as he rightly does, even this telling of the harms doesn't do full justice to the comedic villainy of this FCC,” he said. “Thank goodness the FCC is in line for some serious oversight questions from the incoming House of Representatives.”

The wireless industry benefits from the FCC opting for flexible use over prescribing how particular bands are to be used, which could happen with satellite, Chairman Ajit Pai said Thursday at the Hudson Institute. He said the agency won't dictate how satellite companies use spectrum, especially since companies often have very different ideas. He could foresee, decades from now, algorithms dynamically managing spectrum allocation, uses changing depending on time and location, "and getting people out of the process." Pai said allowing U.S. access to Galileo signals (see 1810240030) should bring "huge benefit for consumers" via more global navigation satellite system resiliency and reliability, plus industrial applications like precision agriculture. NASA is encouraged by the mushrooming of commercial low earth orbit operations, since the agency intends to shift increasingly to buying some services from commercial operators, said Tom Cremins, NASA associate administrator-strategy and plans. Cremins said the agency continues to push technology with commercial applications and noted 2019's launch of a laser communications relay demo. Pai saw much international interest at the ITU plenipotentiary conference last week in Dubai in what the U.S. is doing broadly to remove "regulatory underbrush." He said countries struggle with similar problems as the U.S. and sometimes come up with solutions the U.S. might incorporate.

ATIS said much work remains on more accurate geo-targeting of wireless emergency alerts by carriers. Wireless Technologies and Systems Committee members spoke with Lisa Fowlkes, FCC Public Safety Bureau chief, and an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai. “The industry is advancing several standards required to implement new WEA capabilities,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 15-91. “One of the challenges … is the need to define the behavior of devices as they move from outside the polygon to inside the polygon during the WEA broadcast,” ATIS said. “This is a complex issue and a significant number of proposals have been contributed, each of which has different potential impacts to standards, networks, and devices, and require more time to develop a consensus with the alert originator community.”

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals should suspend review of Portland, Oregon's challenge to an FCC ban on local moratoriums of wireless infrastructure deployments, replied (in Pacer) the agency Wednesday in Portland v. FCC, No. 18-72689. Three petitions for reconsideration are at the commission on "issues identical to those presented here," the regulator noted: "Because resolution of the FCC’s reconsideration proceeding may limit or modify the needed scope of judicial review, the Court should grant the FCC’s motion for abeyance."

Ericsson was hired to create the radio access and core network for Dish Network's planned narrowband IoT network, Dish said Tuesday. Ericsson is the first wireless vendor hired for the network deployment, scheduled for March 2020, Dish said. It said it and Ericsson have validated narrowband IoT data transmissions based on 3rd Generation Partnership Project standards, including extended range communications of up to 100 kilometers from a base station.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr learned lessons from 48 hours with telecom crews in Florida last month post-Hurricane Michael. Better coordination is needed, he said. “More than 7,000 power company crews and contractors worked around the clock to restore power, and this meant cutting, pulling, and replacing thousands of utility poles,” Carr blogged Tuesday. “Unfortunately, their work resulted in a significant number of cuts to fiber and other communications lines. In fact, one fiber company reported 37 cuts in the first few days.” Carr has questions about the wireless resiliency cooperative framework, subject of staff inquiries earlier Tuesday (see 1811060052). “The reports I heard on the ground were that this type of roaming worked well when carriers exercised their roaming rights,” he said. “But I heard conflicting reports about how quickly some providers implemented roaming. There should be greater awareness about resiliency roaming and planning.”

The FCC Public Safety Bureau sought information from seven wireless carriers are how they are implementing the industry’s wireless resiliency cooperative framework, in light of recent hurricanes. Tuesday's letters went to Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, U.S. Cellular, Southern Linc and GCI, asking for responses by Nov. 26. The bureau asks about mutual aid and roaming agreements, how they might have been modified during each disaster and about any incidents where another carrier refused a request for such an agreement. The FCC approved the framework in December 2016 (see 1612210008). Americans "expect quick and effective recoveries from natural disasters like Hurricane Michael and other storms,” said Chairman Ajit Pai. “We are re-examining the last Administration’s framework to make sure all wireless carriers are meeting communities’ needs and doing everything they can to promptly restore service.” Some expressed concerns then that a voluntary approach wasn’t strong enough. The bureau sought more general comment in June and in August, New York City said a voluntary approach isn’t sufficient to ensure network resilience (see 1808030036). CTIA disagreed.