FCC staff partially granted a Windstream waiver petition seeking added compensation to make up for intrastate access charges it billed to Halo Wireless in 2010-11 but was unable to collect (see 1509020059). The Wireline Bureau said it was acting "consistent with precedent" to allow Windstream to recover through intercarrier compensation (ICC) certain funds that it wasn't able to collect from Halo "due to an access charge avoidance scheme and subsequent bankruptcy" filing. "Windstream demonstrates good cause to include in its recovery calculations revenue associated with traffic eligible for compensation that was terminated during [FY 2011] and that otherwise meets the criteria spelled out in our revenue recovery rules," said a bureau order Wednesday in docket 01-92. "Including such revenue in Windstream’s revenue calculations, subject to [certain] conditions ... conforms to the policies underlying the recovery mechanism" adopted in a 2011 USF/ICC overhaul order, said the bureau. The 2011 order set terminating access-charge rates on a downward path to zero. Windstream welcomed the waiver. It enables the company "to recover important universal service funding withheld because of an improper avoidance scheme by Halo Wireless," emailed Senior Vice President Eric Einhorn. "We are pleased that the Commission agreed that Halo’s ploy to disguise traffic should not deny Windstream of vital and valid universal service support.”

Google is working on “a secret project” in virtual reality by partnering “deeply” with a “leading OLED manufacturer” to create a VR-capable display “with 10X more pixels," said Clay Bavor, vice president-VR, at a Society for Information Display conference in Los Angeles. He later declined to answer our question to identify the company. A representative then physically restrained us from a follow-up query. Better VR displays may have the “horrifying” result of requiring 100 Gbps, Bavor told the conference Tuesday. “Not only can you not render that much data, you can’t even transfer it,” he said. “You can’t even move it around the device.” Google didn't reply to our requests for comment Tuesday or Wednesday.

A civil rights attorney for Cleveland broadband consumers threatened a class-action lawsuit against AT&T over alleged income-based discrimination in the city as described by a National Digital Inclusion Alliance report. In a Tuesday letter, Parks and Crump attorney Daryl Parks said the Cleveland consumers will file an FCC complaint and advise state governors to consider the alleged AT&T income discrimination as state executives weigh AT&T’s FirstNet plans this year. Parks notified AT&T about the “redlining” concerns last month (see 1704270045). In a May 5 letter, AT&T Assistant General Counsel James Meza disagreed that the company violated the civil rights section (Section 706) of the Telecom Act. “This study is flawed and its conclusions are specious,” said Meza. AT&T is spending large amounts of money in Ohio and has a “targeted effort to promote broadband adoption by low-income customers,” he said. In the new letter, Parks said the ISP defined “redlining in such a way that only an extreme racial bigot could ever be found to be redlining” and interpreted Section 706 “in a manner that would render the statute completely impotent.” The company's “amount of aggregate investment is irrelevant to discrimination in the placement of investments,” Parks said. An AT&T spokesman and FirstNet didn’t comment further.

The FCC’s current landlord may want a 20 percent premium over the current rent to extend the agency’s lease, the commission said in its 2018 budget request. The FCC needs the extension because its lease will expire in October, but its new building won’t be ready until FY 2019, and current landlord Parcel 49C’s protest of the General Service Administration’s award of the bid for the new headquarters to Trammell Crow is pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals, the budget papers said. GSA is negotiating the extension, the document said. The 20 percent rent increase would be an extra $9 million per year, the budget said. “The first six months after the lease award is critical as the Commission will be required to meet design and construction timetables established by the GSA and the new lessor,” the budget said. “The FCC is also required to provide the details related to specialized areas and requirements related to electrical, heating, air conditioning, floor loading, specialized construction and the equipment to support them.” The commission also wants to use auction funds to create “public facing” and internal spectrum visualization tools, the budget said. The visualization tools would aid in helping the public and the agency understand “who has the rights to different spectrum bands at different locations,” the budget request said. The FCC also will be working to transition its systems “100 percent” to the cloud, the budget document said. “The FCC will proactively engage security engineers and architects to ensure the modernization of systems in the cloud are secure and adhere to Federal mandates and regulations to include two factor authentication.”

The FCC posted a rulemaking notice on its proposed $356.7 million in regulatory fees for FY 2017. Comments are due June 22, replies July 7, said the NPRM in docket 17-134 released Tuesday.

The FCC reviewed and processed 916,117 applications and complaints last fiscal year, meeting its speed of disposal (SOD) goals 98 percent of the time, said its FY 2016 performance report Tuesday. That was the same percentage for FY 2015, and the FCC said it met its SOD goal of 96 percent in six of the past seven years. Both the Media and International bureaus saw improvements in SOD, with the former going from 85 percent in FY 2015 to 91 percent in FY 2016, while the latter went from 76 percent to 82 percent, the FCC said. The offices of Consumer and Governmental Affairs and of Engineering Technology and the Wireline and Public Safety and Homeland Security bureaus all were in the 99th percentile, while the Wireless Bureau was in the 98th.

Fight for the Future is calling a cease-and-desist letter it received for FFTF's Comcastroturf.com "exactly why we need Title II net neutrality protections that ban blocking, throttling, and censorship." The letter, which says it is from LookingGlass Cyber Security Center on behalf of Comcast, says the Comcastroturf.com domain is too close to "Comcast," violating the company's trademark, and the site should be reassigned to the cable operator. The site allows people to search if their names were attached to comments filed with the FCC in favor of a Communications Act Title II regulation of broadband rollback and to sign a petition demanding an investigation. FFTF said in a news release Tuesday if such a rollback happens, "there would be nothing preventing Comcast from simply blocking sites like Comcastroturf.com that are critical of their corporate policies. It also makes you wonder what Comcast is so afraid of? Are their lobbying dollars funding the astroturfing effort flooding the FCC with fake comments that we are encouraging Internet users to investigate?” FFTF, Demand Progress and Free Press are behind the Battle for the Net website that sends a form letter to the FCC opposing the Title II rollback. Comcast said it "supports strong, legally enforceable net neutrality rules and does not and will not block websites or content. Title II does not equal net neutrality." It also said, "Like most major brand owners, Comcast protects our company and brand names from being used improperly on the Internet by third parties. We use an established outside vendor to monitor for websites that use our name and brands without authorization, and the vendor routinely sends out notices to those sites. That is what happened here. This particular site also raised other legal issues supporting further investigation (for example, the site appears to collect personal information and has no posted privacy policy). After reviewing the site further, we do not plan additional action at this time.”

Kris Monteith will stay on as FCC Wireline Bureau chief, Chairman Ajit Pai announced Tuesday in an agency release. Monteith was acting bureau chief. Pai noted the bureau's role in FCC efforts to encourage "broadband investment across America and in helping spur deployment where it lags behind." Monteith has been with the FCC for 20 years, including as chief of the Enforcement Bureau, acting chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau and deputy chief of the Wireline and Media bureaus. She's "a smart, dedicated public servant and a leader in effort to close #DigitalDivide," Pai tweeted to us.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday in TC Heartland v. Kraft Foods Group Brands in favor of placing limits on eligible court venues for patent infringement lawsuits. Heartland Food Products Group asked the top court to review 28 U.S. Code Section 1400(b), which requires a plaintiff to bring a patent infringement suit only in a U.S. District court where the defendant resides or has an “established place of business.” The tech sector took a substantial interest because of the case's potential to restrict movement of patent cases to Texas' Marshall and Tyler-based district court and others perceived as friendly to plaintiffs (see 1701170066 and 1703270053). The Supreme Court said patent lawsuits can be brought only in the district court in which the defendant is incorporated. The 8-0 ruling, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, reverses the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s 1990 precedent in VE Holding Corp v. Johnson Gas Appliance that a patent infringement suit could be brought in any jurisdiction where a party conducted business. “While we are disappointed in the Supreme Court's ruling on this procedural matter, we respect the Court's opinion and do not believe it has any impact on the ultimate outcome of our case,” Kraft said in a statement. Heartland didn’t immediately comment. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., hailed the ruling as a decision “to restore reasonable limits on where patent lawsuits can be brought.” He said in February he would re-evaluate what language to include in future patent law revamp legislation based on the Supreme Court’s then-forthcoming Heartland decision (see 1702010069). Goodlatte said now he will continue exploring “other aspects of abusive patent litigation and how we keep our patent laws up to date to ensure a well-functioning patent system.” Congress still “needs to step in with comprehensive patent reform,” Computer & Communications Industry Association President Ed Black said. “While today’s ruling removes one tool used to manipulate the system, there are still others enabling the abuse of the patent system. It’s an area ripe for bipartisan cooperation as Congress looks for low cost and no cost ways to grow jobs and the economy.”

Acquiring Wave Broadband will let RCN Telecom Services expand its broadband-related services to the West Coast, RCN parent TPG Capital said Monday, announcing the $2.37 billion deal. In a news release, TPG said it expects to close on the takeover in the second half of 2017, pending regulatory approval. It said Wave and RCN combined will be the sixth largest cable ISP, operating in seven of the nation's 10 largest cities. It said Wave will continue to operate as a branded entity out of its Washington state headquarters, with founder and CEO Steve Weed becoming an RCN director. TPG bought RCN and Grande Communications last year (see 1611160023), with those transactions creating a regional operator in the East Coast, Chicago and Texas.