The FCC awarded Somos contracts to be the North American numbering plan and pooling administrator, including routing number administrator, the company said Monday. "Somos will work for a successful transition with [incumbent] Neustar, in a manner that provides the least external impact," said toll-free numbering administrator Somos' CEO Gina Perini. The FCC and Neustar didn't immediately comment.

Wireless service continues to return to storm-ravaged parts of Florida, Georgia and Alabama, the FCC reported Monday, but Verizon Wireless said continuing fiber cuts are slowing efforts in the Florida Panhandle. As of 11 a.m., providers reported 5.2 percent of cellsites were out in 110 counties, said the commission's Hurricane Michael impact update. That was down from 6.2 percent Sunday, 11.5 percent Friday (see 1810120054) and 18.8 percent Thursday (see 1810110060). Verizon Wireless said it's working "round the clock" to restore service and has seen "positive movement," as 99 percent of its network is in service in Georgia and 98 percent in Florida, with the Panama City and Panama City Beach areas experiencing the most problems. Fiber connections -- "needed for cell sites and some mobile assets to work" -- are "a significant challenge," it said. "As soon as we have fiber repaired and start to see sites come back on air, we experience new cuts resulting from other restoration efforts happening in the community such as clearing roads, residential property clearing, and replacing electric poles." The FCC reported 157,371 cable and wireline subscribers without service in Florida, 61,991 in Georgia and 3,445 in Alabama, down from 252,748, 103,775 and 18,244, respectively on Friday. Two TV stations, 13 FMs and two AMs were off-air, respectively, down from three, unchanged and down from three, Sunday. No public safety answer points were reported down.

FCC headquarters reopen Tuesday after being closed Monday due to water damage, it said. "Early today, sprinklers were activated to put out a small fire on the west side of the 5th floor, and the water caused localized damage on that floor as well as several floors below where the sprinklers went off," said an email to staff Sunday. "The closure will allow remediation teams and relevant staff to ensure that the facility is fully functional before staff returns." Employees were teleworking Monday as damage was being assessed, emailed a spokesperson. Filings were posted Monday in the electronic comment filing system. The fire started in a small refrigerator and was detected by the system, activating the sprinklers, which put out the fire before a fire engine and truck arrived, said a D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department spokesman. He said the department received a call at 8:42 a.m. Sunday and its personnel arrived in four minutes.

Rules designed to speed deployment of small cells and 5G take effect Jan. 14, says a Federal Register notice scheduled for Monday. The FCC approved the changes in September over concerns by Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel (see 1809260029).

Industry groups are renewing their fight against an FCC policy statement that triples damages for amounts owed to USF and other funds. In a docket 16-330 ex parte posting Thursday, CTIA, NCTA, USTelecom and Incompas recapped a meeting with FCC Chief of Staff Matthew Berry at which they said the agency's way of defining a continuing violation in recent years runs contrary to the one-year statute of limitations for nonbroadcast notices of apparent liability contained in the Communications Act. The groups argued that four particular categories shouldn't be considering continuing violations, repeating an argument made to the Enforcement Bureau (see 1802010021). The groups petitioned in 2015, challenging the policy statement (see 1503060066).

A $600 million e-connectivity pilot program could be leveraged into $1 billion in broadband support, said Rural Utilities Service acting Administrator Chris McLean at a Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition conference Friday. He said RUS is looking at providing a mix of grants and loans, and while the former are scored dollar-for-dollar for budgetary purposes, loans aren't, allowing funding to be stretched. RUS hopes it can accept applications "early next year," he said, amid contracting and IT "contingencies." Electric co-ops are eager to participate, seeing broadband as enhancing their grids and economic opportunities in their rural communities, said Brian O'Hara, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association senior director-regulatory issues. "Interest is only growing." One complication is co-ops must get at least 85 percent of revenue from members to retain tax-exempt status, with last year's tax overhaul broadening the definition of revenue, he said. The RUS mandate is to target funding on rural areas where at least 90 percent of households lack "sufficient access" to 10/1 Mbps service, but O'Hara called for efforts to deploy 25/3 Mbps service. He said grants could be a "game changer," particularly in sparsely populated areas, because loans often "don't move the needle" making a business case. McLean quipped grants are "like dating," as "you hope it goes well," but loans are "like marriage," as RUS and recipients "have to live with each other." RUS wants project participants to have "skin in the game" and make serious commitments, and believes community partnerships are vital, he said. Program challenges include determining actual, not advertised, data speeds and figuring out how to measure service quality, he said. O'Hara credited the FCC Connect America Fund Phase II subsidy auction with expanding broadband support beyond incumbent telcos, including to electric co-ops, which he said will get about $225 million cumulatively over 10 years. He voiced interest in the Remote Areas Fund auction, but said the bigger deal will be what happens after 2021 to about $1.5 billion in annual CAF II funding currently going to large telcos. Public schools in Kent County, Maryland, provide students -- 62 percent of whom qualify for free meals -- with laptops and other devices, said Laura Jacob, the system's technology supervisor. The county government played a key role by building a 110-mile fiber network with 70 hot spots to expand home internet access, she said.

Congress should provide one-time funding to "forklift all 911 centers across the country at least to the level of technology that we've got now and that can match what FirstNet has,” APCO Chief Counsel Jeff Cohen said in an interview for C-SPAN's The Communicators, to be televised Saturday and likely put online Friday. Getting to next-generation 911 will take at least $10 billion, Cohen said. Congress is mulling NG-911 legislation (see 1809260062). The bill should be bipartisan, say that 911 must be IP-based, uniform and interoperable across country, and require states receiving grants to show they have a funding mechanism to sustain the network, Cohen said. APCO is concerned that early NG-911 deployments won't be interoperable: "If one state or one region deploys a connecting network, it will allow all the 911 centers connected to it to work together and share data [but] that's not necessarily the case if a 911 center needs to share data with another agency." State 911 fee diversion is a “terrible practice," he said. Congress can try to stop it by conditioning 911 grant programs, but the size of grants a state could lose must be significant compared with the amount a state is diverting, he said. "You need pain," which could be provided by a $10 billion NG-911 grant program, he said. Commissioner Mike O’Rielly and the FCC are doing well to “name and shame” diverters, but while the number may be shrinking somewhat, the practice stubbornly continues, he said.

An FBI investigation, which it requested the Association of National Advertisers cooperate with, was into media buying practices between advertisers and ad agencies (see 1810100051). ANA was not, as we erroneously reported, linked to a DOJ investigation into ad price collusion among major TV groups including Sinclair. That reported DOJ investigation is a separate matter from the reported FBI probe (see 1810050041).

A hold Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, placed on FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr's reconfirmation remained in place Thursday night despite the commission's bid to fund payments to a top Alaska USF Rural Health Care (RHC) Program participant. The FCC Wireline Bureau said Wednesday evening it cleared Alaska telco General Communication Inc. to receive $77.8 million in RHC payments for FY 2017. Sullivan and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, told us that action alone won't fully resolve their concerns with FCC handling of the program, which led Sullivan to place the hold on Carr's confirmation to a full five-year term ending in 2023 (see 1809120056). Sullivan worries FCC handling of RHC negatively affected constituents (see 1809130059). The approved GCI payment figure is 26 percent less than the $105 million it sought. The agency required GCI and other RHC participants to substantiate rural telecom rates after finding two non-Alaska carriers apparently falsified documentation to inflate their rural rates, which the program subsidizes based on their differential with typically lower urban rates. The FCC proposed $40 million in fines against the two carriers. GCI didn't comment. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters he's aware of an FCC proposal “that addresses” concerns Sullivan and Murkowski raised about RHC “and we hope that this satisfies” them. The senators were still “getting feedback” on the proposal Thursday, Thune said. He said he hopes the FCC's actions might end Sullivan's hold so the Senate can confirm Carr and Democratic FCC nominee Geoffrey Starks as part of a pre-election package of nominees, though that appeared to be unlikely. Senate leaders were negotiating at our deadline on a deal that would leave the chamber in recess until after the November elections. Sullivan later told reporters he plans to meet with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai “next week” to follow up on his RHC concerns. Murkowski believes the FCC needs to address how it will provide “certainty” on processing Alaska providers' RHC applications in the future.

Hurricane Michael had a "serious impact on communication services in the Florida Panhandle and parts of Georgia," the FCC reported Thursday, based on network outage data submitted by 11 a.m. Chairman Ajit Pai cited "substantial communications outages." The FCC said one public safety answering point was reported down in Florida and 15 PSAPs in both states were "re-routed." About 19 percent of cellsites in 101 affected counties across three states were reported out of service: in Florida, seven counties had more than two-thirds of cellsites out, and four had more than one-third out; 14 Georgia counties and one Alabama county had more than one-third of cellsites out. There were 185,841 subscribers reported without cable or wireline telecom service in Florida, 63,473 in Georgia and 14,855 in Alabama. Four TV stations, 30 FMs and four AMs were reported out. Pai said his office and Public Safety Bureau staff contacted representatives of carriers and broadcasters about the situation and how to restore service as quickly as possible. "We were pleased that carriers had pre-positioned equipment and were in the process deploying cells on wheels (COWs) and cells on light trucks (COLTs) in order to get wireless service up and running in many locations," he said. USTelecom said members are coordinating with emergency responders and electric utilities to keep networks running, and summarized efforts of AT&T, CenturyLink, Frontier Communications and Verizon to help affected customers. The Wireline Bureau Wednesday reminded providers of a temporary waiver it granted from a phone number "aging" rule in storm-affected areas. It lets carriers, upon customer request, disconnect phone service to avoid billing issues during network disruptions and then reinstate the customer's number when service is reconnected.