Frontier said its planned buy of Verizon's wireline properties in California, Florida and Texas received antitrust clearance under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act's early termination provisions from the FTC. The transaction still needs approval from the FCC and some state governmental authorities. The FCC is 60 days into its review under its nonbinding 180-day clock. Frontier expects the deal to close in the first half of 2016, according to a company release.

A petition filed by RB Communications seeking reconsideration of an FCC forfeiture order imposing a $408,668 fine against the company has been denied by the Enforcement Bureau, said an order from the bureau adopted Monday. The FCC imposed the penalty on the company, which does business as Starfone, because it allegedly provided interstate and international telecommunications services over a four-year period without first meeting important regulatory obligations, the bureau said. "Starfone’s Petition for Reconsideration fails to present information warranting reconsideration, and in fact simply reiterates arguments that the Commission fully considered and rejected in the Starfone Forfeiture Order," the bureau said.

Level 3 and AT&T said they signed a long-term IP interconnection agreement that would improve the efficiency of traffic exchanges and add new capacity and interconnection locations to the benefit of consumers. The agreement comes as AT&T has been sparring with Netflix and Cogent over interconnection and the potential fallout of AT&T’s proposed takeover of DirecTV on online video distributors (see 1505050028 and 1505070032).

The FCC seeks comment by July 7 on its process for carrying out rural broadband experiments as part of its tech transitions and rural broadband experiments orders. Comments on the necessity of the information collection is required under the Paperwork Reduction Act, said the commission in a Friday Federal Register notice.

The FCC Wireline Bureau sought comment on North American Portability Management's transition plan (see 1504290045 and 1504280031) to oversee the agency's conditional selection of Telcordia to replace Neustar as the next local number portability administrator. Comments are due May 21, replies June 1, a bureau public notice said Thursday in dockets including 09-109.

The FCC Enforcement Bureau dismissed Cox Communications Las Vegas' pole-attachment complaint against NV Energy Wednesday after the companies reached a settlement and filed a joint motion Tuesday for dismissal with prejudice. The Cox complaint was filed Dec. 18, noted the order of dismissal released Thursday.

Austin, Buffalo, Chattanooga, Los Angeles, Oakland and others including Qualcomm expressed interest in a Department of Housing and Urban Development broadband initiative to help low-income students and their families narrow the digital divide. The department plans to select about 20 HUD-assisted communities to participate in “digital opportunity demonstrations” aimed at improving tenants’ educational performance and economic outcomes through better Internet access. HUD hasn’t specified a project budget or timetable, but is seeking to stimulate public-private collaboration to boost broadband adoption and use, and at some point is expected to formally invite applications. In comments that were due Friday and posted this week, various localities and others voiced general enthusiasm for the initiative, with a few concerns sprinkled in. Chattanooga and related institutions filed the most extensive comments, noting their broadband efforts, including the 9,000-mile fiber network built out by EPB, the municipal electric power distributor. As of April, the city said, over 5,000 homes were using EPB’s $70/month gigabit offering, and “tens of thousands” were subscribed to its $58/month Mbps offering, with a new $27/month 100 Mbps offering just announced for families with students qualifying for free or discounted school lunches. Qualcomm was the only industry party to comment, saying it wanted to participate in the program to help close a growing “Homework Gap” between students with good Internet access at home and those without it (see 1505070013). “We hear too many stories of students sitting on their school steps late at night in order to complete and submit homework assignments as well as stories of parents having to drive to a local fast food restaurant late at night so their child can access the Internet,” Qualcomm said. It urged HUD to look to provide low-income students with mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets) with embedded connectivity to give them 24/7 access. Some commenters voiced concerns the HUD section criteria were too restrictive, including that communities already be participating in two or more federal “place-based” initiatives. Oakland said it wouldn’t be able to participate in the digital demonstration unless changes are made. The National Housing Conference said the initiative should do more to focus on rural areas to “avoid an unintended bias toward urban communities.”

The FCC Wireline Bureau asked parties to refresh the record on a cable/CLEC 2011 petition to revise a telecom rate formula to better allocate costs among carriers attaching lines to poles, which are most often owned by electric utilities. In a 2011 order, the FCC took steps to drive down the pole-attachment rates paid by telecom carriers to levels comparable to what cable broadband providers paid. Crafting a new telecom formula, the FCC assumed there would generally be five entities attaching to poles in urban areas and three in rural areas, which when combined with other assumptions, yielded a telecom rate equal to the cable rate. But the telecom formula didn't further lower costs -- and, thus, rates -- when more entities attached lines to poles than assumed. Comptel, NCTA and tw telecom (now Level 3) filed a reconsideration petition asking that the telecom rate rules "be clarified or amended by specifying [that] the cost allocator to be applied [will be] based on the number of attaching entities." Cable broadband providers used to be able to claim the lower cable pole-attachment rates but over time were sometimes subjected to the telecom rates, and now appear to be squarely covered by the telecom formula under the FCC reclassification of broadband Internet access as a Communications Act Title II telecom service, an industry official said. Comments are due 21 days after the notice appears in the Federal Register, replies 10 days later, the Wednesday notice said.

Securus Technologies accused ICSolutions, another inmate calling service (ICS) provider, of paying "site commissions" to correctional facilities in violation of the FCC 2013 prison phone rate order. In a letter posted Tuesday to docket 12-375, Securus said the order prohibited site commissions -- fees paid by ICS providers to correctional authorities to win exclusive phone contracts -- from being paid out of interstate calling rates. It said the Wireline Bureau had found FCC site-commission determinations hadn't been disrupted by a 2014 court partial stay of the order. Securus said it stopped paying site commissions on interstate calls, but it said ICSolutions was still making the payments on interstate calls to all of its correctional facility customers, citing a certified transcript of comments by ICSolutions Vice President Brendan Philbin to San Bernadino County officials: "All our calling is commissionable. [There's a] lot of confusion in the industry. A lot of suppliers are not paying commission on interstate calling. Not ICS. We have honored every single contract, and we continue to pay commissions on interstate. ... The FCC has done nothing forbidding payment of commission at all." The FCC said site commissions were "not part of the cost of providing ICS and therefore not compensable in interstate ICS rates." Reached by phone, Philbin had no comment.

FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly assured the WTA spring meeting Tuesday that he will make finishing “the remaining pieces” of USF reform, especially those related to the Connect America Fund for rate-of-return carriers, a top priority. “Everything else that the Commission may want to do with universal service -- make service more affordable for low-income consumers, wire schools and libraries, and connect rural health care facilities -- depends on having … infrastructure in place,” O’Rielly said in written remarks. “I have been dismayed by the haphazard approach that the Commission has taken to USF reforms, ratcheting up spending and expected broadband speeds while leaving millions of Americans unserved.” The FCC’s two E-rate orders expanded the program but offered little actual reform, O’Rielly said. The first order “just tacked on new spending for Wi-Fi within facilities regardless of whether they need the additional capacity or have adequate bandwidth to the building,” he said: The second “made it easier for entities to build their own fiber networks with no meaningful checks or limits to ensure that the funding will be targeted to truly unserved areas or used cost-effectively.” The FCC increased the E-rate cap by another $1.5 billion per year, he said. “At the time, there were assurances that we would not actually reach the new cap for several years,” he said. “But the window just closed, and I suspect that we may be very close to if not already at the new cap.” WTA members are already paying a price for so-called USF reform, he charged. “Without proper notice, the Commission decided that you will have to bid to provide service at rates to be determined at a later date as part of your Connect America Fund obligations,” he said. “Because that task was delegated to the [Wireline] Bureau, I won’t even get a chance to weigh in on their decisions.”