Verizon urged the FCC to ensure a "national, light touch" broadband framework that promotes investment and innovation, and that isn't undermined by a "patchwork of contrary state or local regulation." Regulation of broadband access services should "recognize that these services are inherently interstate" in nature, said the telco, backing an "open Internet" and voicing concern about Communications Act Title II classification. "State-specific rules relating to these services simply don’t work when we are talking about services that freely cross state boundaries: a user may be in one state, but accessing content from a host in another state, while using a provider from yet a third," said a Verizon filing posted Thursday in docket 17-108 on meetings Monday with outgoing acting General Counsel Nick Degani (see personals section in this issue), Special Counsel Kristine Fargotstein and aides to Chairman Ajit Pai. The company said courts "consistently recognized" FCC authority to pre-empt state or local laws obstructing or conflicting with federal objectives. New America's Open Technology Institute and Free Press backed Title II and detailed the "flaws in the arguments offered by carriers, and adopted" in the recent NPRM proposing to reclassify broadband as Title I and revisit net neutrality regulation. Meeting with Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel and aides, OTI and Free Press cited "seeming irregularities in the commenting process and the Commission's approach," including regarding consumer complaints not included in the record. The FCC's Title II net neutrality order is popular and support is growing, but public support could make little difference, former Commissioner Michael Copps said in a speech at the Public Interest Advocacy Centre in Ottawa, Ontario. Copps is now at Common Cause, which provided a copy of his remarks. Copps warned against what he sees as the danger of increased broadcast consolidation, conceding mergers were also approved under the Obama administration. The FCC has launched “an assault” on the internet, he said. “On this issue, as on so many others, opinions inside the fabled Washington Beltway bear little resemblance to what most citizens are thinking,” Copps said. “Special interests and discredited ideology trump what citizens clearly want their communications ecosystem to look like. You know, net neutrality is such a no-brainer. I don’t believe it would even be an issue without the big money interests and the power they wield in our nation’s capital. But they have that power, so the future of net neutrality in the United States is under dire threat, from our FCC and possibly Congress, too.”

The FCC and others must repair the "broken" inmate calling service market, said FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn and FTC Commissioner Terrell McSweeny Thursday. They said the FCC majority "remains silent," despite a commitment by Chairman Ajit Pai to act, after a court overturned key decisions by the prior commission to limit ICS rates and fees. "The FCC should end the practice of picking and choosing, ignoring and punting, while an unarguably dysfunctional market regime preys on the most vulnerable," Clyburn and McSweeny commented in Wired. "The FCC can and should adopt targeted rules to address the costs of interstate calls. States and localities can and should reform their practices to cap rates and eliminate kickbacks. And Congress can and should enact a legislative solution that provides a firm legal foundation for further inmate calling reforms." Large ICS providers "are willing to skirt rules" for a profit, they wrote. "For instance, when the FCC banned the practice of charging exorbitant fees to connect calls, the companies simply renamed the fees, calling them 'first minute' charges." An FCC spokeswoman emailed: "Chairman Pai is committed to working with his colleagues at the Commission, Congress, and all stakeholders to address the problem of high inmate calling rates in a lawful manner once the court cases are resolved. But contrary to what was written ... challenges to the 2013 and 2016 orders are still pending before the D.C. Circuit, thus limiting the Commission’s ability to address these issues at this time. That court has instructed the parties to file motions addressing those cases by November 6." Wright Petitioners have urged the FCC to impose restrictive conditions on Securus first-minute charges in its planned sale to SCRS Acquisition (see 1710030033). An FCC draft order circulated to commissioners (see 1710130053). Securus didn't comment.

Serving at the FCC is an “incredible honor,” new Commissioner Brendan Carr said at an FCBA reception Tuesday evening honoring him and returning Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. “My focus at the commission so far has been on the ways that tech and telecom policy can help create jobs, spur investment and grow the economy,” Carr said. He noted he has been active in the FCBA. “When I started out, the highest office I ever aspired to was co-chair of the FCBA’s Young Lawyers Committee,” he joked. “I’m not really new,” Rosenworcel said. “The truth is, maybe I needed a vacation.” Rosenworcel said being away from the agency gave her a chance to spend time with her children. “We rely on your expertise, we rely on your filings, we rely on you to tell us how the law works and how you think the law should work,” she said.

Turning on existing FM radio functionality in iPhones would be easy for Apple if it wanted to, NAB Chief Technology Officer Sam Matheny blogged Wednesday. He said the company "has specifically chosen" not to offer FM functionality in the iPhone, having disabled the FM chips there, which also blocks app developers from offering FM apps. The company said it removed FM capability from its 7 and 8 series iPhones, but tear-down reports show the iPhone 8 contains a Broadcom 4357 chip family the manufacturer says includes an integrated FM radio core, Matheny said. Citing FM radio use after recent natural disasters, NAB urged the company to activate FM capabilities. At the NAB Show New York Wednesday, CEO Gordon Smith also urged Apple to activate the chips. Both NAB and Chairman Ajit Pai urged the company to activate the chip as a way to promote public safety (see 1709290002). Apple didn't comment.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai accused Commissioner Mignon Clyburn of partisan dissent on the $17.3 million USF settlement with Verizon to resolve an investigation into an E-rate bidding scheme in New York City, which the company blamed on a convicted city consultant (see 1710170057). Clyburn criticized the commission for recovering only a fraction of the "$50 million in harm" and not imposing a penalty, particularly given lawmaker concerns about a lack of more USF resources for high-cost support. Pai said Verizon also forfeited any right to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in E-rate subsidies, and accused Clyburn of leaving key facts out of her dissent, including that the consent decree was negotiated by the Enforcement Bureau under the prior chairman, whose office briefed each commissioner’s office. "Commissioner Clyburn’s office expressed no concerns whatsoever about the agreement at that time -- and there is contemporaneous written evidence of this," he said in a statement Tuesday. "If the terms of a settlement that were just fine under a Democratic chair are now unacceptable under a Republican chair, FCC enforcement becomes little more than political caprice. I hope that that’s not the case going forward." A Clyburn spokesman emailed Wednesday: “It is curious that the Chairman claims that Commissioner Clyburn approved a document in 2016 that was not finalized until 2017. When she was presented with the text of the consent decree in 2017, she determined that she could not support the item as drafted. She negotiated in good faith, and was told that no modifications would be made to the consent decree.”

The FCC Media Bureau paused the nonbinding 180-day shot clock for Sinclair buying Tribune at Day 104 to give parties more time to comment by Nov 2, when the bureau will restart the clock, said a public notice Wednesday. The pause and additional comment round are intended to allow interested parties to react to Sinclair’s Oct. 5 responses (see 1710060055) to an FCC information request. “The Commission has a strong interest in ensuring a full and complete record upon which to base its decision,” the PN said. “Pausing the clock will ensure that commenters have additional time to review and comment on this new information.”

A fuller picture of broadcast operations in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands emerged in the FCC's Tuesday report on the impact of Hurricane Maria. In Puerto Rico, five TV stations were confirmed operational and nine out of service, compared with two operational and one out of service in Monday's report (see 1710160028). Eighty radio stations were confirmed operational and 51 out of service in Puerto Rico, compared with 72 operational and 33 out of service Monday. In the Virgin Islands, four radio stations were confirmed operational and four out of service, compared with two operational Monday, with no reports on TV stations. Information on wireless, wireline, cable and 911 operations was little changed; about 75.3 percent of cellsites were out in Puerto Rico and 55 percent of cellsites were out in the Virgin Islands. Puerto Rico's education secretary, the governor of Texas and the Texas Education Agency asked the FCC for urgent USF E-rate support to schools and libraries affected by hurricanes, in filings (here, here, here) posted Tuesday in docket 02-6.

The FCC and DOJ settled with Verizon over possible E-rate competitive bidding violations. The telco agreed to pay $17.325 million to the USF and $354,634 to the U.S. Treasury to resolve parallel investigations, said a commission release Tuesday. Commissioner Mignon Clyburn dissented, citing "over $50 million in harm." The company responded that New York City Department of Education consultant Ross Lanham was at fault, engaged in fraud without the telco's knowledge and the company worked to return money to the program.

Saying she's "deeply concerned" with the majority commissioners' priorities on localism, viewpoint diversity and communications services affordability, FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn criticized the agency's most-recent mobile wireless competition report, according to prepared remarks for a Tuesday Media Institute speech. She and fellow Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel slammed the report when adopted along party lines 3-2 at the September commissioners' meeting (see 1709260045). She said the report, narrower in scope than past years', doesn't offer a route for supporting policies that would help increase wireless connectivity in rural areas. She also cited a variety of complaints about the Lifeline program and related universal service issues and pushed for a rulemaking, though saying she didn't have ready ideas on how to tackle removing barriers to entry for new providers. The FCC didn't comment.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C Circuit ruled Tuesday that FCC policy of collecting information on multilingual emergency alert system notices without requiring such alerts is reasonable, denying (in Pacer) a petition for review from public interest groups including the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (see 1705110061). “If Congress intended to require multi-lingual communications in general, and multi-lingual emergency alerts in particular, we would expect Congress to have spoken far more clearly than it has done” said the majority opinion by Judge Brett Kavanaugh joined by Judge Karen Henderson. Judge Patricia Millett agreed with the majority in ruling the FCC hadn’t violated anti-discrimination provisions of the Communications Act, but said in a dissent the agency’s 11-year delay in deciding on multilingual EAS messages was arbitrary and capricious. “The problem of ensuring effective communication to the public during crises is too grave to be ensnared in seemingly interminable bureaucratic limbo,” Millett said. Despite ruling in the FCC’s favor, Kavanaugh needled the agency for operating on “bureaucracy standard time.” Communications Act provisions against discrimination don’t specifically compel the FCC to require emergency alerting in languages other than English, Kavanaugh said. The commission isn’t being arbitrary in not acting on multilingual alerts because there are legal and technical issues with enacting them, such as the lack of FCC authority over alert originators such as local governments, the majority said. It “would be reasonable for the FCC to flatly say that the alert originators (the federal, state, and local government entities) are the parties responsible for deciding whether and when to issue emergency alerts in languages in addition to English,” Kavanaugh said. The FCC plan to seek more information from EAS entities is a repeat of its previous information requests, and the court shouldn’t allow the agency to use it as a delaying tactic any longer, Millett said. “Choosing to repeat an inquiry that has twice been asked and answered, the Commission identified no reason to believe that round three of reporting would reveal new ways to address the multilingual problem.” The majority opinion suggested the agency cease delays. “The FCC should move expeditiously in finally deciding whether to impose a multi-lingual requirement on broadcasters, or instead to leave the issue with alert originators and others,” the opinion said. “At some point, the FCC must fish or cut bait on this question.” The League of United Latin American Citizens and the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council said the decision wasn’t a total loss. “One point of agreement by all three judges is that the FCC has taken far too long to act,” the groups said in a news release. “Calling the FCC’s delay ‘bureaucracy standard time,’ the panel majority called on the FCC to ‘move expeditiously.’”