The FCC suspended Oscar Enrique Perez-Zumaeta from participating in Lifeline activities, after he was convicted of money laundering in connection with fraudulent claims against the Lifeline USF program, said an Enforcement Bureau letter released Monday. Perez-Zumaeta owned and managed PSPS Sales, a California entity that recruited low-income people to apply for Lifeline-supported phone service through Icon Telecom, the bureau said. Icon pleaded guilty to knowingly making a false statement to the Universal Service Administrative Co. about fraudulent Lifeline claims, the letter said. "According to court records, you were charged with directing PSPS workers to enroll fictitious customers and falsify Lifeline recertification forms for use in Icon’s fraudulent scheme," the letter said to Perez-Zumaeta. "On November 7, 2014, you pled guilty to one count of money laundering for depositing a $52,390.00 check from Icon into a PSPS bank account, despite knowing that more than $10,000.00 of those funds was the result of criminal fraud against the Commission." Under FCC rules, the conviction requires the bureau to suspend Perez-Zumaeta from participating in any activities involving Lifeline, the letter said.

CenturyLink and ITTA urged the FCC to resolve the intraMTA (major trading area) intercarrier compensation dispute as soon as possible, according to an ex parte filing on a meeting they had with agency officials posted in docket 14-228. The LEC officials said the commission shouldn't wait for a U.S. District Court in Dallas to resolve litigation arising from the dispute, which is "creating massive and unnecessary uncertainty for the entire industry," the filing said. LECs say interexchange carriers (IXCs) should pay long-distance access charges for intraMTA traffic, but Sprint and Verizon say they're liable only for local reciprocal compensation, which involves lower costs (see 1505190056). The court won't hear oral arguments on LEC motions to dismiss IXC lawsuits making financial claims until September or October, with "no assurance of a prompt ruling" this year, the filing said. "With IXC withholdings continuing month after month, time is of the essence," the filing said. Meanwhile, Verizon officials told FCC officials recently there was no exception to an FCC intraMTA wireless traffic rule requiring reciprocal compensation payments when that traffic is carried by an intermediary carrier, such as an IXC, according to an ex parte filing on phone conversations they had. "The intraMTA rule says reciprocal compensation applies to wireless intraMTA traffic, and the Commission rejected the argument that access charges apply if intraMTA wireless traffic is routed through an intermediary interexchange carrier," the Verizon filing said. "We also said that it would have made no sense for the Commission to set a separate, higher, intercarrier compensation rate for some — but not all — intraMTA traffic at the same time the Commission put in a place a new intercarrier compensation system expressly designed to harmonize and reduce rates."

Frontier's recent compliance plan for taking advantage of cost-assignment deregulation under an FCC forbearance order drew no opposition or other responses in FCC docket 12-61 by the May 28 deadline for initial comments. "The fact that no comments in opposition were filed to Frontier's proposal perhaps is a sign that there is beginning to emerge a consensus that elimination of certain legacy regulations is so common-sensical that it is illogical to oppose them," Free State Foundation President Randolph May told us Monday in an email. Frontier on March 17 filed its plan for complying with continuing accounting requirements under the law and FCC regulations, which is a necessary step for gaining the partial cost-assignment forbearance relief granted to incumbent LECs. Frontier noted various actions it was taking to ensure it could provide certain accounting information to the commission in a timely manner, if requested, and that it was certifying its compliance with Section 254(k) of the Communications Act. In a blog Wednesday, Free State Foundation Research Fellow Seth Cooper said Frontier was seeking partial relief from Part 32 rules in particular, which include "nearly 70 pages of complex accounting requirements mandating maintenance of a separate accounting system" beyond its system using generally accepted accounting principles. "Yes, the FCC should certainly approve Frontier's compliance plan and grant partial forbearance relief from Part 32," Cooper said. "But in light of today's dynamic and competitive market conditions, no compliance plan should be required. Instead, the Commission should relieve carriers from costly duplicate accounting systems requirements altogether. The Commission has authority under Section 10 to act now and grant across-the-board forbearance relief from all cost accounting rules." Reply comments are due June 12.

The FCC plans to vote June 18 on a draft order to authorize VoIP providers to obtain phone numbers directly from numbering administrators, rather than from intermediaries, said the agency's tentative agenda released Thursday. Under FCC rules and precedent, generally only telecom carriers can obtain phone numbers from numbering authorities for assignment to end users. That means interconnected VoIP providers such as Vonage must use carriers, such as CLECs and affiliates, to obtain numbers. The draft order would establish a streamlined process that would allow interconnected VoIP providers to request and obtain numbers directly from administrators, an FCC official said.

Netflix continues to slowly increase its domination of North American fixed networks, generating 38.5 percent of downstream traffic in the peak evening hours, said a Sandvine report Thursday on North America and Latin America. In Latin America, Facebook and Google control more than 60 percent of total mobile traffic, said the provider of broadband monitoring services to ISPs. The release of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare -- Ascendance DLC caused a significant spike in bandwidth usage, and generated 12 percent of traffic on one North American fixed network on its release date, said the report, based on data from a selection of Sandvine’s 250-plus communications service provider customers.

The FCC Wireline Bureau said it's ready to authorize $12.6 million of provisional support for six bidders to conduct 15 rural broadband experiments targeting 2,091 census blocks in eight states. In a Wednesday public notice, the bureau said the provisional bidders must "submit at least one acceptable irrevocable standby letter of credit and Bankruptcy Code opinion from their legal counsel" by June 10. The provisional bidders are: Allamakee-Clayton Electric Cooperative, Consolidated Communications Networks, Delta Communications, First Step Internet, Northeast Rural Services and Skybeam.

The FCC Wireline Bureau sought comment on a proposed eligible services list for schools and libraries participating in the USF E-rate program for the funding year starting July 1, 2016, said a public notice in Friday's Daily Digest. Among the changes mandated by the December E-rate order are expanded use of services lighting up dark fiber, the notice said. Comments are due June 22, replies July 6.

Rural telcos reported progress but asked the FCC Wednesday for a couple more weeks to try to develop consensus proposals for reforming universal service funding for rate-of-return (RoR) carriers, said an ex-parte filing by WTA -- Advocates for Rural Broadband. Under prodding from the FCC to develop common proposals, representatives of WTA, the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance, the National Exchange Carrier Association, NTCA, USTelecom and others updated commission officials on the status of their efforts since April 16. That's when FCC officials asked the telco associations to develop a broad industry plan within a month, but it became clear recently that they hadn't reached a consensus (see 1505150046). In their filing, the groups said they had reached agreement on a number of issues but others remained unresolved for a variety of reasons, "including disagreements between certain representatives and insufficient time to work out the details of certain proposals and options." The groups asked for a two-week extension, until June 3, "to continue to negotiate a comprehensive plan for future RoR high-cost support," the filing said. FCC officials seemed receptive to the industry efforts, one telco official said. "Things are fluid. Hopefully we'll get a little more time to submit a framework," the official said. "We're trying to make sure the plan is all-encompassing," addressing proposals for carriers wanting to move to model-based support and rural group "data connection service" (DCS) proposals for carriers wanting revisions to the current mechanisms to facilitate stand-alone broadband support. The FCC has asked the groups to modify their DNS proposals by including some additional constraints, the telco official said. "So we're trying to make that happen."

Comcast and Level 3 agreed to a multiyear interconnection accord as part of a broader "multi-faceted arrangement that will help both companies meet their customer needs into the next decade and beyond," said a joint news release Thursday. Comcast and Level 3 executives hailed the mutual benefits of the agreement. The companies said the pact will enhance their network capacity, covering their existing networks and any expansion during the term of the agreement, which wasn't specified. Level 3 and other backbone providers have been reaching interconnection agreements recently with major cable and telco ISPs, with some saying the net neutrality order with its complaint process, including for interconnection, may be spurring more cooperation (see 1505010033).

Cablevision filed suit in federal court against Verizon Tuesday, seeking a declaratory judgment to allow it to continue running an ad that "exposes Verizon's false and misleading marketing claims" about its FiOS service. "Verizon has not been truthful to the public for nearly 10 years about FiOS," said a Cablevision news release. "Verizon FiOS is not all fiber and, in fact, uses regular coaxial cable inside the home. Cablevision ran an advertisement revealing that FiOS is not all fiber, and now Verizon is demanding that Cablevision stop running its ad. Consumers deserve to make informed decisions based on facts, and Cablevision is asking the court to intervene to stop Verizon from attempting to continue to mislead the public.” Cablevision said that in some cases, Verizon had used coaxial cable outside the home as well. Cablevision's complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York said that Verizon had "sent a cease and desist letter to Cablevision asserting that Cablevision’s television commercial 'must be immediately stopped' and asserted that commercial was false advertising "under Section 1125(a) of the Lanham Act and other federal and state laws." Verizon then filed a challenge to Cablevision’s advertisement with the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, but Cablevision had decided voluntarily not to submit to the NAD review, the complaint said. Verizon responded that "once again Cablevision demonstrates an unhealthy appetite for confusing consumers. Cablevision cannot compete with Verizon FiOS, or even come close to providing the Internet speeds and performance available from Verizon’s 100 percent fiber-optic network. Since their network can’t compete against FiOS, they resort to legal stunts, which we will challenge vigorously."