FCC staff teed up FairPoint Communications' cost-assignment compliance plan for meeting its remaining statutory and regulatory obligations after receiving agency relief. The commission in 2013 approved price-cap carriers' forbearance from the application of rules that required them to assign network costs and revenue to regulatory categories. The relief was granted subject to certain conditions, including plans for complying with their continuing duties. Initial comments are due Aug. 8 and replies Aug. 22, said a Wireline Bureau public notice Thursday in docket 12-61.

VTCSecure asked the FCC to allow providers of direct sign-language support services to access the telecom relay service (TRS) numbering directory. About 10 percent of video relay service (VRS) calls, which use a sign-language (SL) interpreter to relay voice communications to the deaf and hard of hearing, go to just 100 customer-service phone numbers in large corporations and government agencies, said a VTCSecure petition for waiver and declaratory ruling filed in docket 03-123 Wednesday. Such interactions would more closely resemble regular phone conversations -- increasing "functional equivalence" mandated under the law -- if the customer-service representative and the deaf consumer could communicate directly using sign language rather than through an SL interpreter, said the petition. It said the service also would save the TRS Fund tens of millions of dollars annually and employ deaf persons as customer-service representatives. But providers of direct SL customer-support services need access to the TRS numbering directory to obtain routing information and so VRS providers will know calls to customer-service numbers should be handled as point-to-point video calls without an interpreter, the petition said. The commission also should require VRS providers to include direct SL customer-support service providers on their "white list" of known IP domain names they have agreed to recognize as valid for routing point-to-point video calls, it concluded.

An "Alaska Plan" for broadband "does not support middle mile" but "there will be improvements in the Alaska middle mile" during the plan's implementation, said General Communications (GCI). "These improvements can be accomplished, at least in part, because high cost support -- and thus the financial environment surrounding operating these networks -- is stabilized; moreover, middle mile purchases can stimulate deployment," said a GCI filing posted Thursday in docket 10-90 summarizing a discussion with an aide to FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. The agency is considering two draft Connect America Fund items targeting Alaska, one addressing the Alaska Plan for rate-of-return telcos and wireless carriers, and another to address CAF Phase II issues of price-cap carrier Alaska Communications (see 1607010060).

Windstream said its experience as both an ILEC and CLEC "offers a window into financial operations of these two business models" in the telecom market. "Overall margins are significantly higher for ILEC operations, as compared with CLEC enterprise operations," said a company filing Wednesday summarizing a meeting with FCC officials in the business data service rulemaking docket 16-143. "Windstream has few wholesale last-mile supplier alternatives available to the ILEC in most of the areas where Windstream purchases last-mile access to connect its fiber network to individual customer locations." Some information in the filing was redacted as highly confidential. The meeting included FCC General Counsel Jonathan Sallet and Wireline Bureau Chief Matt DelNero.

Sprint sought FCC permission to stop providing business wireline long-distance services and related features. The offerings to be discontinued are "Message Telecommunications Service (i.e., 1+ long distance) ('MTS'), Wide Area Telecommunications Service ('WATS'), Toll Free Calling a/k/a 800 Calling, Private Line a/k/a Clearline, Switched Data Services, Operator Services, Directory Assistance, and FŌNCARD," plus associated business pricing plans, said an application Tuesday. The company noted it received authority Jan. 5, 2015, to stop providing the services to new customers, and plans to discontinue its provision of the services to remaining customers on June 30, 2017, or soon thereafter, subject to regulatory approval. Sprint won Wireline Bureau authorization in October to discontinue residential wireline long-distance services (see 1509290071).

Securus said the FCC should condition the sale of ICSolutions to TKC Holdings on a requirement that TKC stop the payment of interstate site commissions to correctional authorities. Securus took no position on the merits of the deal, but said ICSolutions was making site commission payments on its interstate inmate calling services that were unlawful under a 2013 FCC order that capped interim interstate ICS rate caps and remains in effect after a federal court stayed the commission's 2015 permanent ICS rate caps. "The Commission ordered that 'site commission payments and other provider expenditures that are not reasonably related to the provision of ICS are not recoverable through ICS rates, and therefore may not be passed on to inmates and their friends and families.' The First Inmate Rate Order makes clear that friends and family must not be forced to assist the ICS carrier in recouping site commission payments,” Securus said in a Friday filing in docket 16-188 on TKC/ICSolutions. "In Securus’s experience, it is inescapable that an ICS carrier will pass through the cost of site commissions in its rates, particularly under the Commission’s interim rate caps. Securus believes that under the interim rate caps, it is economically impossible to continue paying commissions while covering the cost of service and without passing through commissions to end users in the calling rates. ... Any carrier that still can afford to pay site commissions must be drawing from call revenue to do so, and that call revenue is obtained through calling rates."

The FCC should take a "time-out" from phasing down E-rate support for voice service, said Funds for Learning, in comments filed Tuesday in docket 13-184 on the commission's eligible service list for the school and library telecom discount program in the funding year beginning July 1, 2017 (see 1606060008). FFL said schools and libraries "desperately need" voice service support and it proposed keeping the phasedown at its 40 percent reduction from the support level for "Category One" services, which are needed to provide broadband Internet access. "Applicants submitted more requests for discounts on voice service than for any other type of service," the E-rate-compliance consulting and web services firm said. "Applicants must have voice services to conduct school business and to keep everyone in their buildings safe and secure. ... In contrast, the Commission’s short-term target of 100 Mbps service per 1000 students and longer-term target of 1 Gbps per 1,000 students remains just that -- something for schools and libraries to aspire to, but which remains, as a practical matter, something that they would like to have." In other comments (due Tuesday), AdTec asked for "the expanded inclusion of cellular data service for key staff members without the requirement that such a service be directly compared to the cost of providing data service" through building Wi-Fi service, which the group said wasn't reliable in emergencies. Cox Communications urged the Wireline Bureau to make "Distributed Denial of Service ('DDoS') attack prevention and mitigation services" eligible for E-rate support, given "a marked increase" in such attacks, which "can cripple" school systems. The Illinois Department of Innovation and Technology recommended DDOS mitigation service be treated the same as firewall protection -- meaning it would be a Category One service if a standard component of a vendor's Internet access service but would be a Category Two service (for internal connections) if provided by other vendors or priced out separately. The department also recommended "that dark fiber obtained via lease or IRU [indefeasible right of use] as part of a construction project, with the goal of reducing the overall construction cost, be classified as special construction" under the program's terms.

FCC staff granted Frontier Communications' request for more time to comply with the agency's recent business data service (BDS) tariff investigation order (see 1604280057). Frontier was given until July 15, instead of July 1, to revise and/or remove certain language in tariff pricing plans the commission had found were unjust and unreasonable, said a Wireline Bureau order in docket 15-247 listed in Friday's Daily Digest. The Frontier plans required BDS customers to aggregate all of their purchases under a single plan and to pay penalties that the commission found were excessive for failing to meet volume and term commitments.

Securus officials again explored at the FCC whether an inmate calling service compromise could be reached to resolve disagreements over ICS rates and fees. CEO Richard Smith and others met Tuesday with an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, said a company filing Thursday in docket 12-375. "Securus reiterated the request, proposed to Commissioner Clyburn by several ICS carriers in October 2015, that the Commission consider the adoption of a per-minute additive rate to compensate jails," said the filing. "This additive rate would be part of a comprehensive solution on which the Commission can obtain comment." Clyburn spearheaded the FCC effort to limit ICS provider rates and fees, while discouraging but not prohibiting provider site-commission payments to correctional authorities (see 1510220059). The FCC decision is being challenged by Securus and others in court (see 1606070030). Clyburn's office and a Securus counsel didn't comment Friday. Representatives of Securus, Global Tel*Link, Pay Tel Communications and Telmate discussed the possibility of a compromise with agency officials in April (see 1604150054).

FCC staff adopted telecom relay service per-minute compensation rates that had been proposed by TRS fund administrator Rolka Loube Associates (see 1605100030). As proposed for the coming funding year, total annual funding was set at $1.14 billion, with carriers to contribute 1.86 percent of their interstate and international (long-distance) telecom revenue to the fund, said the order from the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau in docket 03-123 listed in Friday's Daily Digest. Starting July 1, "the per-minute compensation rates for interstate and Internet-based TRS, other than video relay service (VRS), shall be: (1) for interstate traditional TRS, $2.6245; (2) for interstate Speech-to-Speech relay service (STS), $3.7555; (3) for interstate captioned telephone service (CTS) and Internet Protocol captioned telephone service (IP CTS), $1.9058; and (4) for IP Relay, $1.30," said the order. "For VRS providers with more than 500,000 monthly minutes, the per-minute VRS compensation rates for the period from July 1, 2016, through December 31, 2016, are: Tier I (a provider’s 1st 500,000 monthly minutes), $4.44; Tier II (a provider’s 2nd 500,000 monthly minutes), $4.44; and Tier III (a provider’s monthly minutes in excess of 1 million), $3.68. The applicable per-minute VRS compensation rates for the period from January 1, 2017, through June 30, 2017, are: Tier I, $4.06; Tier II, $4.06; Tier III,$3.49. For VRS providers with 500,000 or fewer monthly minutes, the per-minute VRS compensation rates are: For the period from July 1 to October 31, 2016, $5.29; for the period from November 1, 2016, to April 30, 2017, $5.06; for the period from May 1 to June 30, 2017, $4.82."