Frontier Communications' stock plummeted again Friday, closing down 19 percent and leaving it with a market capitalization of just $582 million. Thursday, Moody's Investors Service downgraded Frontier's speculative-grade credit rating from B2 to B3, making it six notches below investment grade. "Frontier continues to face revenue and EBITDA pressure, although subscriber trends have improved sequentially within its acquired California, Texas and Florida (CTF) markets," said a release Thursday. "Yet, the legacy Frontier business has remained weak over the past five quarters with sharp broadband subscriber losses in each period. Although the business is starting to show signs of stabilization, the trends remain negative. Moody's expects Frontier's EBITDA and cash flow to continue to decline into 2018." Moody's also downgraded Frontier's "probability of default" rating and said its outlook remains negative. Frontier didn't comment Friday. Consolidated Communications' stock dropped 11 percent Friday after the company reported Q3 results, but Raymond James analysts kept their "strong buy" recommendation and Well Fargo analysts kept their "outperform" recommendation.

Public Knowledge argued for keeping net neutrality regulation under Title II of the Communications Act, saying it protects broadband consumers and that undoing it risks violating the Administrative Procedure Act. "While the Commission has the legal authority to decide to throw consumers to the wolves, it is not free to pretend this is consistent with its previous orders or actions," said a PK filing Friday in docket 17-108 on a meeting with an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. "Embarrassing as it may be for the current Commission, the APA requires -- at the least -- an acknowledgement of its previous commitment to protect consumers and an explanation as to why it no longer believes it should do so. To pretend in the final Order, as the Commission does in the NPRM, that the Commission never committed to protecting broadband privacy or otherwise protect consumers, is the definition of arbitrary and capricious." Telecommunications Industry Association CEO Wes Johnston and others urged the FCC to "remove Title II regulation of broadband, as well as Commission action to remove barriers to siting of wireless facilities," said a filing on meetings with Commissioners Michael O'Rielly and Brendan Carr and aides, and an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai, that were "introductory in nature." NCTA President Michael Powell argued for returning broadband to Title I classification in a meeting with Carr and an aide. Comcast also urged a reversal of Title II in a meeting with Pai's Chief of Staff Matthew Berry and Senior Counsel Nicholas Degani. The National Hispanic Media Coalition pitched Pai's wireline adviser, Jay Schwarz, on issuing a public notice seeking comment on open internet complaints and related material.

An FCC draft Lifeline item is "a drastic departure" from Chairman Ajit Pai's "claims to support affordable broadband for low-income consumers suffering from the digital divide," said the Lifeline Connects Coalition, Boomerang Wireless and Easy Wireless in a filing posted Friday in docket 11-42 on a meeting with an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. "Because the item eliminates resellers from the Tribal Lifeline program and proposes to eliminate resellers from the entire Lifeline program, despite the fact that 69 percent of all Lifeline subscribers (and 76 percent of wireless subscribers) are currently served by resellers, we urged Commissioner Clyburn’s office to work to change the item so that it does not threaten to suddenly and dramatically widen the affordability gap that places tens of millions of low-income Americans on the wrong side of the digital divide," they said. The draft is on the tentative agenda for the FCC's Nov. 16 meeting (see 1710270013). Meanwhile, TracFone Wireless submitted an emergency petition to the FCC to temporarily waive new minimum service standards for Lifeline-supported services. As of Dec. 1, "the minimum service standard for mobile voice service will increase from 500 minutes per month to 750 minutes per month; the minimum standard for mobile broadband will increase from 500 MB per month to 1 GB per month," TracFone said, asking for a waiver to implement service proposals it made in September.

The FCC is planning a series of “after-action steps” to review “what worked during” Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria “in terms of communications continuity and restoration as well as areas for improvement,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in a letter to House Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., released Thursday. Pallone pressed Pai in October to do an FCC review of the resiliency of U.S. networks after the hurricanes, including whether the voluntary 2016 Wireless Network Resiliency Cooperative Framework “lives up to its potential” (see 1710060043). The FCC's “immediate focus is on assisting with the restoration of communications services and networks in areas” affected by the hurricanes, but the Public Safety Bureau already said it plans to issue a public notice to seek input on communications networks' performance during the storms, Pai said. The bureau also plans to “host a workshop to better understand the issues identified through this public process and develop options to address shortfalls and opportunities. As the ongoing response and recovery efforts continue, the Commission will consider what additional steps, including field hearings, might be taken to ensure communications networks are fully prepared for future disasters.” Pai is planning to visit Puerto Rico Sunday and Monday to assess hurricane-recovery efforts and consult with local officials on the commission's next steps to provide assistance. “The FCC is committed to supporting recovery efforts and doing everything we can to help restore communications networks as quickly as possible,” said Chairman Pai in a Friday release.

The FCC Technological Advisory Council will meet Dec. 6 at 12:30 p.m., said a Thursday public notice. “The TAC is helping the Commission to continue the momentum spurred by the National Broadband Plan to maximize the use of broadband to advance national interests and create jobs.” TAC last met in September (see 1709190055). The meeting is in the Commission Meeting Room.

Facebook in Q3 experienced its first quarter with more than $10 billion in revenue, said CEO Mark Zuckerberg on a Wednesday earnings call. “None of that matters if our services are used in a way that doesn't bring people closer together, or if the foundation of our society is undermined by foreign interference,” he said. “I've expressed how upset I am that the Russians tried to use our tools to sow mistrust. We built these tools to help people connect and to bring us closer together, and they used them to try to undermine our values. What they did is wrong, and we are not going to stand for it.” Facebook “is doing everything we can to help the U.S. government get a complete picture of what happened,” said Zuckerberg. Efforts “sweeping across all our platforms” are aimed at identifying and eradicating fake accounts, it told the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday (see 1710310061). Facebook is working with Congress “on legislation to make advertising more transparent,” said Zuckerberg. The company is “moving forward on our own to bring advertising on Facebook to an even higher standard of transparency than ads on TV or other media,” he said. It soon will “start rolling out a tool that lets you see all of the ads a page is running and also an archive" of political ads that "have run in the past,” he said. The platform has 10,000 employees “working on safety and security, and we're planning to double that to 20,000 in the next year to better enforce our community standards and review ads,” he said. “In many places, we're doubling or more our engineering efforts focused on security.” It’s also building new artificial intelligence “to detect bad content and bad actors, just like we've done with terrorist propaganda,” he said. “I am dead serious about this. And the reason I'm talking about this on our earnings call is that I've directed our teams to invest so much in security on top of the other investments we're making that it will significantly impact our profitability going forward, and I wanted our investors to hear that directly from me. I believe this will make our society stronger, and in doing so will be good for all of us over the long term. But I want to be clear about what our priority is. Protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits.” Facebook shares closed 2.1 percent lower Thursday at $178.92.

AT&T remains confident it will close on Time Warner by year's end, despite word DOJ is considering challenging the deal, analysts said Thursday. That close could come by month's end, analyst David Barden of Bank of America emailed investors Thursday. The Wall Street Journal that day reported the agency is discussing possible settlement terms. BOA said it's standard for the agency to work along multiple fronts for merger reviews. BOA said new DOJ antitrust chief Makan Delrahim is positioning himself to have the last word on any conditions, and the company expects any conditions to be reasonable. It said the time Delrahim is taking has to do with coming up to speed on the takeover rather than with material issues. Wells Fargo's Jennifer Fritzsche emailed investors the issue might be more about Justice increasing leverage in negotiating conditions than a serious intent to block the deal, saying the DOJ would face an "uphill battle" in court trying to block the vertical merger. If the department does push back, that might indicate horizontal mergers -- like Sprint/T-Mobile -- might not fly with the administration, Wells Fargo said. DOJ didn't comment. AT&T said when the agency reviews any transaction, "it is common and expected for both sides to prepare for all possible scenarios. For over 40 years, vertical mergers like this one have always been approved because they benefit consumers without removing any competitors from the market. While we won't comment on our discussions with DOJ, we see no reason in the law or the facts why this transaction should be an exception." Time Warner closed down 3.8 percent to $94.70. BOA said AT&T Senior Executive Vice President-External and Legislative Affairs Bob Quinn indicated this week DOJ wouldn't likely approve consolidation of two national wireless carriers without creation of a fourth facilities-based player, since that would likely face political and career antitrust staff opposition. BOA said an MVNO-based cable provider also wouldn't fit that bill of a facilities-based operator. AT&T didn't comment on that.

Sprint asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a lower court ruling that federal law doesn't pre-empt state authority to regulate non-nomadic, intrastate long-distance VoIP calls (see 1706230047). Sprint said under FCC precedent the VoIP traffic "is an 'information service' exempt from traditional common carrier regulation," whether state or federal. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in June -- agreeing with a 1990 9th Circuit California v. FCC ruling -- contradicted "clear FCC policy," said a Sprint cert petition this week in Sprint Communications v. Richard W. Lozier, Jr., et al. "The court below thereby both broadened and deepened the conflict, breathing new life into what had been an outlying and outdated Ninth Circuit decision." The 8th Circuit affirmed a U.S. district court ruling siding with an Iowa Utilities Board decision requiring Sprint to pay intrastate access fees to Windstream for VoIP service. Sprint said the 8th Circuit said Windstream's state tariffs apply to the VoIP calls, even if they are an information service because an enhanced service provider exemption doesn't apply. "That holding conflicts with decades of FCC decisions establishing federal policy to the contrary," said Sprint, citing actions going back to a 1980 Computer II finding by the FCC that enhanced services weren't subject to common-carrier regulation. NARUC General Counsel Brad Ramsay said the Sprint petition was wrong on the facts and the law. "The FCC in order after order for 13 years has been adamant that it has not classified VoIP as either an information service or a telecommunications service," he said. "So of course this entire petition is based on the 'fact' that facilities based VoIP service is an information service -- the one legal issue the FCC insists it has not decided." He said "states, both with and without FCC concurrence, regulate some aspects of VoIP services -- imposing USF and emergency calling fees and requirements that Congress specified (and the DC Circuit confirmed in the Verizon case) can only apply to the extent a carrier is providing a 'telecommunications service.'" The FCC didn't comment Thursday. “Windstream is not surprised by Sprint’s cert filing with the US Supreme Court since Sprint appears to be intent on endless litigation in this matter,” said Deputy General Counsel Carol Keith via statement.

Cable and telco parties called on the FCC "to address abusive 8YY arbitrage caused by" a few CLECs ("8YY" designates toll-free numbers beginning with an "8"). It "would be more prudent immediately to take targeted actions to address such abusive schemes while the Commission more fully examines the appropriate treatment of legitimate 8YY traffic for compensation purposes," said a letter Wednesday in docket 01-92 from the American Cable Association, Frontier Communications, ITTA, NCTA, NTCA, Windstream and WTA. "As part of an examination into the reasonableness of 8YY rates, the Commission should carefully consider whether a bill-and-keep regime is warranted in the case of 8YY calls, as this would result in shifting costs from businesses to end-user customers."

FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly backed pre-emption of localities to spur broadband deployment, citing a recent filing by Uniti Group's fiber unit. "Impossible to read this Uniti Group ex parte & not see need for @FCC preemption to facilitate broadband deployment," he tweeted Wednesday, linking to its filing in docket 17-84. Uniti "is confronting an unwieldy thicket of resistance at the local level in the form of moratoria on accessing the rights-of-way for installing wireless facilities, excessive obligations that require cash deposits in local banks, as well as cumbersome and expensive regulations regarding the type and placement of facilities in the public rights-of-way," its Monday filing said. "Challenges are multiplying as local governments tend to mirror ordinances adopted by other localities. Despite federal law to the contrary, many localities have implemented moratoria, in name or in fact, on installing small cells in the public rights-of-way. Even when local officials -- like county commissioners, city councils, staff, and attorneys -- are provided copies of relevant federal rulings prohibiting moratoria, these parties feign ignorance or express their intention to violate federal law." It attached a list of 44 jurisdictions it said implemented moratoria, and examples of local ordinances, including one from Jacksonville, Florida.