The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating deaths Wednesday of three broadcast tower workers in Miami-Dade County, Florida, said Miami-Dade Fire and Rescue and OSHA spokesmen. OSHA doesn’t release preliminary information on investigations, but it confirmed the workers were employees of Texas-based tower company Tower King II. A Fire and Rescue spokesman told us the men were killed after equipment collapsed, causing them to fall hundreds of feet. In an interview last month, Tower King II CEO Kevin Barber told said his crew was preparing for a job in Florida connected with the post-incentive auction repacking, and his firm is one of a very limited number that could take on the most challenging tower work (see 1708160050). Tower King II, The National Association of Tower Erectors, NAB and tower owner Sunbeam Television didn’t comment. Commissioner Mike O'Rielly tweeted a link to TV news coverage of the incident Thursday morning. "May God please welcome them & bless their families. So sad," O'Rielly said.

Petitioners challenged an FCC business data service order from different directions in opening briefs to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals made available Wednesday and Thursday. The order (see 1704200020) should be vacated because it "unreasonably deregulated" incumbent telco BDS rates, said Access Point, Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users Committee, Alpheus Communications, BT Americas, Incompas, Granite Telecommunications, New Horizon Communications, Sprint, Windstream and XChange Telecom in Citizens Telecommunications of Minnesota v. FCC, No. 17-2296. They said price-cap ILECs -- including AT&T, CenturyLink and Verizon -- "built extensive networks as franchised monopolists, and dominate the [BDS] market because their local facilities reach virtually every business" in their regions. "It is often economically infeasible for BDS providers seeking to compete with the ILECs to deploy local facilities, so they must purchase them from incumbents," said the brief of the BDS competitors and business customers. "Similarly, carriers seeking to provide competitive voice services must buy incumbent facilities, particularly to serve businesses with multiple locations." But Citizens and CenturyLink asked the 8th Circuit to vacate a 2 percent "X-factor" the FCC applied to reduce ILEC legacy BDS rates in areas remaining under regulation to account for productivity gains. "The FCC chose a 2.0% X-factor that significantly overstated efficiencies in the provision of rate-regulated BDS offerings and ignored evidence of slower productivity growth among such services relative to others," said the ILECs' brief (in Pacer). "It also failed to account for evidence of declining utilization of these services, which has caused the per-unit cost of providing these services to remain steady or even increase. The resulting X-factor forces excessive annual rate reductions not supported by the record." Citizens and CenturyLink asked for 20 minutes of oral argument. The BDS competitors and business customers suggested the court divide 30 minutes of oral argument between themselves and the commission, but not give time to Citizens and CenturyLink, which "advance the frivolous contention that the FCC should have completely deregulated" BDS rates.

The FCC Disability Advisory Committee meets Oct. 16, starting at 9 a.m. at FCC headquarters, said a notice in Wednesday's Federal Register. Among topics will be reports on “technical and practical challenges of supporting compatibility of real-time text with refreshable Braille displays and similar assistive technologies” and ways to “accelerate the integration of real time text by public safety answering points,” the notice said.

Commenters mostly backed possible FCC creation of a database for reassigned numbers to help curb unwanted robocalls. They also generally called for a "safe harbor" from Telephone Consumer Protection Act liability, in replies posted Tuesday and Wednesday in docket 17-59 to comments on a notice of inquiry (see 1708290033). "Initial comments demonstrate overwhelming support for the establishment of a robust database of reassigned numbers and reflect virtual unanimity for the creation of a safe harbor," said the Credit Union National Association: "CUNA urges the Commission to move forward quickly to the next stage of this proceeding by issuing" an NPRM. The agency "should move forward with establishing a comprehensive reassigned number database and an associated TCPA safe harbor as contemplated in the NOI," said Comcast. Others supported establishing the database with some sort of safe harbor. The National Consumer Law Center and other consumer groups asked the FCC to require parties using a safe harbor to meet a set of conditions. Numbering administrator Neustar opposed creating the database. "Commercially-available solutions like Neustar’s can accurately combine information from multiple datasets and deliver reliable information quickly and efficiently so that callers can avoid placing robocalls to phone numbers that have been reassigned," it said. CTIA urged caution, given complexities.

T-Mobile “has no issue with voluntary adoption of ATSC 3.0 technology," but is “concerned” about calls for an FCC mandate to “force inclusion of the technology” in smartphones, it told Media Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology staff in Tuesday meetings, said a filing Wednesday in commission docket 16-142. “Counter to the assertions of NAB” that it and its fellow 3.0 petitioners never called for tuner mandates (see 1709250053), “several parties, including NAB members, have argued for Commission action to mandate ATSC 3.0 reception in mobile devices,” said T-Mobile. Its PowerPoint presentation to FCC staff listed the Advanced Television Broadcasting Alliance of low-power TV interests as calling for a tuner mandate in smartphones when 3.0 broadcasts are available to 25 percent of the U.S. population and noted that NAB TV board members Sinclair and Gray have seats on the alliance board. Other 3.0 “mandate proponents” include Free Access & Broadcast Telemedia and Sinclair’s One Media subsidiary and Mark Aitken, Sinclair’s vice president-advanced technology, T-Mobile said. The carrier referenced One Media's May 9 comments in the FCC's 3.0 rulemaking in which it appeared to dip a toe in the water of backing future tuner mandates, though it actually stopped well short of asking the commission to impose them now (see 1705110053).The PowerPoint also referenced an Aitken quote from our Sept. 13 report (see 1709120020) in which he said that “our concern, be it demonstrated by T-Mobile and others, is that, in fact, the free market is not functioning the way that regulators believe it can or should.” That report also quoted Aitken as saying: “To be clear, we’ve not asked for a mandate. We believe in the free market. We hope that the free market can prevail.” The PowerPoint said T-Mobile was the "largest winner of 600 MHz band spectrum" in the incentive auction, and is "working to rapidly deploy competitive wireless services" in that band.

A federal court denied an appeal of a three-judge panel's inmate calling service ruling that reversed key FCC pricing decisions in a 2015 order, including intrastate rate caps (see 1707280058 and 1706130047). No judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit asked for a vote on Wright Petitioners' request for en banc review, said a brief order Tuesday in Global Tel*Link v. FCC, No. 15-1461. "This was not unexpected, but it is nonetheless very disappointing," said petitioners' counsel Andrew Schwartzman, Georgetown Law Institute for Public Representation senior counselor, Wednesday.

Following expected regulatory approvals of autonomous vehicle in the late 2020s, costs will fall and consumer acceptance will gain, Cowen Research reported Monday. Shifting from individually owned cars to a network of self-driving vehicles, called “intelligent mobility,” means ride hailing, car sharing and networks of connected autonomous vehicles are poised for increased adoption, it said. Cowen sees a consumer-driven transition from owning cars to one of access to transportation services with the transportation-as-a-service market becoming five to six times the size of the automobile market. “Every product is a service waiting to happen,” said Cowen. Today’s $1.50-per-mile cost for Uber and Lyft -- vs. about $0.80 for personally owned vehicles -- can be cut 40-50 percent for full AV, it said. Cowen calculated an $11 trillion market, five to six times larger than the automobile market. Juniper Research Monday meanwhile said the number of ride-hailing drivers will increase nearly 15 percent this year, rising from 4.3 million in 2017 to 8.6 million by 2022. Platform providers can expect revenue to almost double in the period to $19 billion, the industry researcher said. Surge pricing could account for 30 percent of revenue by 2022, said the study, and overuse could cause "cries of extortion."

Garmin and Iridium brought concerns about Ligado's broadband terrestrial low-power service plans to meetings with Wireless Bureau and eighth-floor staff, said FCC docket 11-109 filings posted Tuesday. Recapping a meeting with an aide to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, Garmin said it discussed its worries about Ligado interference with Garmin's certified aviation devices. It repeated its oft-made argument in favor of the 1 dB standard for determining harmful interference to GPS receivers. Iridium -- recapping meetings with the Office of Engineering and Technology, the Wireless and International bureaus and the offices of Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioners Brendan Carr and Jessica Rosenworcel (see here, here, here, here, here and here) -- said it repeated its technical analysis findings (see 1609020029 and 1612140061) that Ligado's L-band operations would cause significant harmful out-of-band emission interference to Iridium's mobile terminals. It said Ligado's proposed OOBE limit at 1626.5 MHz doesn't provide enough interference protection. It said the FCC shouldn't grant Ligado's application on its 1627.5-1637.5 MHz plans but that if it does, it must impose conditions to ensure enough interference protection for Iridium services. Ligado didn't comment.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit should overturn FCC restoration of the UHF discount, said Free Press, the United Church of Christ Office of Communications, Common Cause and other groups in their initial brief challenging restoration of the rule. The technical reasons for the original UHF discount rule no longer apply, and the FCC doesn’t have the authority to alter the national ownership cap, they said. That makes restoring the discount “arbitrary and capricious,” the groups said. The brief challenged the FCC’s connection of its action on the discount to a future proceeding that would look at the national cap: “Even if had authority, it could be years before this yet-to-be launched proceeding could be completed.” Public interest groups had sought to have the restoration of the discount stayed but were rejected by the court (see 1706150033).

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request seeking any analyses done by or for the FCC of public comments during the 2014-2015 open internet proceeding, the Wireline Bureau last week gave us 25 pages of various blog posts and said it was withholding the remaining responsive records. It said it was withholding reports, emails, memos and other materials on the analysis of docket 14-28 comments because releasing them through the FOIA process would cause competitive harm to the entity that created them. It cited the exemption of interagency and intra-agency records, saying since they reflect staff analysis, thought processes and recommendations, they "would impair candid discussions about the subject-matter [of the docket] and thereby diminish the deliberative process" that goes with agency orders. It also said such nonexempt information is so intertwined with exempt information that "reasonable segregation is not possible." The blog posts the FCC provided were on NPR in 2014, looking at a breakdown done by data analysis firm Quid, and a series of 2014 blog posts by social media analysis firm Textifter -- three about open internet comments and a variety of unrelated blog posts. How the agency is handling public comments in the current net neutrality proceeding has been questioned (see 1707180019).