FCC special access regulation is needed to ensure competitors can lease access to incumbent telco facilities on reasonable wholesale terms, Windstream CEO Tony Thomas said at the Incompas Show Monday. About 77 percent of business buildings have just one facilities-based provider, 20 percent have two, and 2 percent have three or more, he said in Oxon Hill, Maryland: "That is the state of competition and it's not going to change overnight" due to the economics. Windstream is investing heavily to deploy fiber and upgrade its networks, but it's a "drop in the bucket," given the challenge of serving business customers with multilocation offices across the country, he said. Incumbent telcos said competitive fiber runs close to the vast majority of buildings and could be connected to them, and Thomas said long-haul connections are "pretty easy," but the "last half-mile" is "really hard and really expensive on both ends" of communications transmissions. Installing fiber underground in major cities such as Washington or Los Angeles is costly and difficult, particularly without existing rights of way, he said: "That's why we need a robust wholesale market." Thomas said the Ethernet market, which has been deregulated by FCC forbearance decisions, is "fundamentally flawed" with "staggering" problems, such as higher wholesale prices than retail prices and frequent "special construction charges" that constitute "back-door price increases meant to impede competition." Without more reasonable wholesale prices and related terms and conditions, business customers will often be left with just one provider, he said.

About 40,000 Communications Workers of America (CWA) and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) members in eight states and the District of Columbia plan to go on strike against Verizon starting at 6 a.m. Wednesday, they said. Major strikes have become a rarity, with only 12 strikes involving 1,000 or more employees last year, compared with 22 a decade earlier and hundreds annually being common before the 1980s, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. "We have tried everything, and I do mean everything," CWA President Chris Shelton said on a conference call with journalists Monday. "Verizon has forced us there. They have no regard for anybody but themselves." IBEW President Lonnie Stephenson said the union has proposed alternatives to the company's proposed health and retirement benefit changes, but Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam "has refused anything less than his full agenda of cuts." Union officials tied many of their complaints to Verizon's failure to build out its Fios network. "It's greed, just greed, plain and simple," said Ed Mooney, CWA District 2-13 vice president. The union has in the past pointed to Fios plans as an example of the company not living up to obligations (see 1601220013). Verizon has been preparing for more than a year in the event of a strike, with nonunion workers trained to handle job duties from repairs on poles to handling call center inquiries, it said in a statement Monday. “We’ve tried to work with union leaders to reach a deal,” Chief Administrative Officer Marc Reed said. “Verizon has been moving the bargaining process forward, but now union leaders would rather make strike threats than constructively engage at the bargaining table.” Verizon said the company's contract proposal includes a 6.5 percent wage increase over the life of the contract and a 401(k) with company match, along with "structural changes" to its legacy healthcare plans that would bring them in line with what it offers its non-union U.S. workforce. The current contract expired Aug. 1, according to the unions.

The new version of the Alternative Connect America Cost Model (A-CAM, v2.2) incorporates inputs and changes from the FCC's recent rate-of-return USF overhaul order (see 1603300065), said a Wireline Bureau public notice Friday in the Daily Digest, posted in docket 10-90. The bureau released illustrative results showing support amounts for carriers to assist their decisions on whether to opt in to the model-based support, but it said the model hasn't been finalized. The PN invited unsubsidized rural telco competitors to update information on their broadband-oriented deployments, which can be used to deny incumbent carriers new Connect America Fund support. Comments challenging competitor coverage data are due April 28.

Stakeholders in the planned local number portability administrator (LNPA) transition from Neustar to Telcordia/iconectiv can participate in a couple of "outreach and education events" being held by PwC, the transition oversight manager, said an FCC Wireline Bureau public notice Thursday in docket 95-116. Stakeholders can attend an in-person event on Monday and Tuesday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Hampton Inn & Suites National Harbor, Oxon Hill, Maryland, said the PN. PwC will also host its next webcast April 20 at 3 p.m., it said.

The Wholesale Voice Line Coalition urged the FCC to change the trigger for ending a wholesale platform service requirement for incumbent telcos in the transition from legacy TDM networks to IP-based systems. Backing a Granite Telecom request in docket 13-5, the coalition said the commission should tie the sunset of the "regulatory backstop for wholesale platform services to the conclusion of an examination of the relevant market for wholesale platform services, rather than the special access market." Coalition members "serve business customers across the United States, primarily focusing on providing voice lines to national companies and other entities that need a small number of voice lines at a large number of disparate, often suburban, rural and remote locations where facilities-based competition with the ILEC is uneconomical," said a filing posted Thursday. It was from Access Point, Birch Communications, BullsEye Telecom, Manhattan Telecommunications, Matrix Telecom, New Horizon Communications and Xchange Telecom. Without competitive service from the wholesale platform, customers would have no alternative to the ILEC, they said.

The FCC asked a court to suspend its review of a Telephone Consumer Protection Act case so the agency can rule on the regulatory definition of a "residential telephone line," which is central to the litigation. The FCC filed an amicus brief in response to a request from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that it weigh in on Todd Bank v. Independence Energy Group and Independence Energy Alliance, No. 15-2391. Bank sued the Independence defendants under the TCPA for a call they made to his home "without his consent and using an artificial or prerecorded voice," said the brief, posted on the FCC's website Thursday. The TCPA restricts such calls to residential telephone lines, but the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York said the restrictions didn't apply to Bank's home phone because it was held out for business purposes. The FCC said neither it nor the TCPA had defined the term "residential telephone line," including the extent to which a home line can support business uses and remain "residential." Bank petitioned the FCC to clarify that the TCPA restrictions apply to phone lines used for business purposes if they're registered with the service provider as a residential line, prompting an agency public notice with a comment period ending May 17 (see 1603310045). He also asked the 2nd Circuit to stay his appeal of the lower court ruling pending FCC resolution of the issue. The agency agreed: "The proper course is for this Court to grant Bank’s motion for a stay and, consistent with the doctrine of primary jurisdiction, hold this case in abeyance pending the Commission’s disposition of the petition. The term 'residential telephone line' is a fundamental element of the restrictions on artificial or prerecorded voice calls contained in the TCPA, a statute that the Commission implements and administers. It is accordingly appropriate for this Court to stay its hand to give the Commission an opportunity to address the meaning and scope of the term (as Bank has now requested) in the first instance."

CenturyLink said it was chosen as an authorized network services provider by the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency under its $4.3 billion Global Network Services (GNS) contract. Authorized providers can bid on orders for network transport services that support DOD operations, mostly outside the continental U.S., said a release Thursday from CenturyLink, which noted it could bid on a suite of services that includes "content delivery networks, virtual private networks, fiber-optic broadband, Wi-Fi, satellite, wave length, network security, colocation, cloud connectivity and software-defined networking services." GNS is a multiple-award contact with a five-year base period (and five one-year extensions possible) aimed at shifting the use of point-to-point circuits to "newer technical approaches" to consolidate DOD's "network for global voice, video, imagery and data transmissions" on a 100 Gbps backbone by 2020, it said.

The FCC removed U.S. TelePacific's planned buy of DSCI from streamlined review, the Wireline Bureau said in a public notice in Wednesday's Daily Digest. DOJ, backed by the departments of Defense and Homeland Security, asked the commission March 29 to defer action on the transaction while the departments do their review of national security, law enforcement and public safety issues, the PN said. Final FCC action should be expected after the departments provide notification that they have completed their evaluation, the bureau said, but not later than 180 days from a March 15 public notice opening the proceeding in docket 16-67 (see 1603150039).

The FCC teed up a Somos petition seeking a temporary waiver of a "first-come, first-served" rule for allocating toll-free numbers, said a Wireline Bureau public notice Wednesday in docket 95-155. The bureau sought initial comments by April 21 and replies by April 28. Somos, which used to be called 800/SMS, requested the waiver "to establish a fair system of allocating a large quantity of 800 numbers currently controlled by the Somos Help Desk," the PN said. "Somos seeks to conduct a limited release of the 800 numbers, restricting RespOrgs to 100 of these toll free numbers per day, for a period of five days. According to Somos, prior experience suggests that in the absence of an allocation system, a small number of entities will be able to reserve the majority of these numbers," it said.

Three telcos urged the FCC to provide interim USF support for voice service in extremely rural, high-cost areas not yet covered by Connect America Fund Phase II support. CenturyLink, FairPoint and Frontier Communications said they understand the commission is considering including the areas in a planned reverse auction of CAF II broadband/voice subsidy support, but for now a number of price-cap telcos are responsible for maintaining voice service without support. "Our specific request is that the Commission continue to fund voice services in the highest cost, remote areas where carriers have accepted CAF II support but where there are remaining rural customers that are not covered by CAF II support," they said in a letter to all five commissioners Tuesday in docket 10-90. "Voice access is critical to our customers in these areas for personal, professional and public safety reasons. Therefore, voice service funding should be maintained while these areas await the Commission’s actions to implement a workable broadband deployment solution."