Cogent sued Deutsche Telekom in a U.S. court for alleged breach of contract, charging DT was "congesting its Internet connections with Cogent." DT "has interfered with the free flow of Internet traffic between Cogent customers and Deutsche Telekom customers by refusing to increase the capacity of the interconnection ports that allow the exchange of traffic,” said Robert Beury, Cogent chief legal officer, in a news release Tuesday evening. “The congestion results in degraded service to customers of both companies. Deutsche Telekom is using its market power as the dominant provider of residential Internet service in Germany in an attempt to extract a toll, directly or indirectly, from companies in the U.S. that provide Internet services that Deutsche Telekom’s customers want to use. This particularly harms smaller U.S. companies that cannot afford to locate Internet servers in Europe where they can directly connect to Deutsche Telekom and avoid the congestion.” The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Virginia Tuesday. DT didn't comment.

The FCC Wireline Bureau gave an interim USF waiver extension to Allband Communications Cooperative. In an order released Monday and included in Tuesday's Daily Digest, the bureau extended by six months Allband's waiver to continue to receive the lesser of high-cost USF support based on its actual costs or the annualized total high-cost support that it received in the first six months of 2012. The bureau gave Allband a three-year waiver in July 2012, and in December 2014 Allband filed a petition for a further, 12-year waiver. In June of this year, the bureau extended the original waiver until the earlier of Dec. 31 or until action is taken on its 12-year waiver request.

The FCC asked a court to continue to put off consideration of a Securus Technologies challenge to its 2013 order capping interstate inmate calling service rates. In a motion filed Monday, the commission asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to continue to the hold the earlier case in abeyance until it resolves any petitions for review to the agency's recent broader ICS order, or until the filing period for such petitions expires. In October, the FCC voted to cap interstate and intrastate ICS rates at even lower levels, restrict ancillary fees and discourage ICS provider "site commission" payments to correctional authorities (see 1510220059).

The FCC should further modernize its Rural Health Care program to "address disparities in health[care] availability and health outcomes between rural and non-rural areas," said a joint filing from the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition (SHLB) and several regional telehealth organizations. The filing was posted by the commission Tuesday in docket 02-60. The groups proposed an increase in the discount percentage in the Healthcare Connect Fund for rural healthcare providers, the establishment of mechanisms for short-term relief if program demand exceeds the set cap, and an expanded definition of the word "rural." The groups also suggested the commission update its analysis of eligible healthcare providers, consider minimum levels of connectivity needed by the providers and recalibrate the Rural Health Care Program cap based on the analysis. The filing said rural healthcare providers face the highest costs for connectivity and are the least able to afford such connections, that a higher subsidy under the Healthcare Connect Fund is needed and that the fund doesn't "adequately promote and sustain open consortia." In "this rapidly evolving environment, it is vital for the Commission to ensure universal service for rural health care continues to efficiently and cost effectively promote access to affordable modern broadband," the filing said.

AT&T plans to expand its gigabit Internet service to homes, apartments and small businesses in parts of 38 additional metropolitan areas across the country, the company said in a Monday news release. The 38 metro areas include cities in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin.

Competify, seeking new special-access regulation, released three "educational videos" that attempt to help consumers understand the impact of high-capacity broadband on their lives, a spokeswoman emailed Monday. The videos, which are available on a YouTube Web page, explain the impact of broadband access on social media, online shopping and online gaming.

The FCC Wireline Bureau granted in modified form an ILEC motion to allow parties in its investigation of incumbent telco special-access tariff terms and conditions to use sensitive market data collected in the broader special-access rulemaking. The bureau said it was granting the motion "to the extent described” in an order from Monday’s Daily Digest. In the order in dockets 15-247 and 05-25, the bureau included two protective orders to permit tariff investigation parties “appropriate access” to confidential and highly confidential information submitted by companies in the special-access rulemaking. “In addition, the Bureau on its own motion permits the confidential and highly confidential information to be submitted in the tariff investigation to be used by participants in the rulemaking proceeding,” it said. “That information will be protected by the protective orders previously issued in the rulemaking proceeding.” AT&T, CenturyLink, Frontier and Verizon had filed the motion to use the rulemaking data in the tariff probe (see 1510260061). Level 3 opposed the motion (see 1511050053).

Securus Technologies "mischaracterized" the FCC inmate calling order in a letter apparently sent to correctional authorities that are customers of its ICS services, Wireline Bureau Chief Matt DelNero said. “Contrary to the suggestion of the Securus Letter, the Commission has not sanctioned any proposal for correctional facilities to continue collecting site commissions ‘over and above the rate cap’ by ‘get[ting] a Mandatory Fee authorized and assessed ... that can be passed on to consumers,’” DelNero wrote to Securus President Robert Pickens in a letter Thursday. Pickens wrote a letter Nov. 13 addressed to correctional customers, which was placed into docket 12-375 by the Martha Wright Petitioner group in a recent filing. Also contrary to the Securus letter, the commission's decision to allow providers to pass universal service fees and similar government taxes and fees on to users "did not invite the creation of an alternative means for correctional facilities to 'generate some level of funding through inmate calling services,'" DelNero said. “I note that, as the Commission stated in the 2015 ICS Order, ‘We will be vigilant in monitoring the [ICS] industry. ... If we observe or are made aware of evidence of price gouging or other harmful behavior through, but not limited to, increased rates, ancillary service charges, and/or site commissions, we will not hesitate to take appropriate remedial action up to and including enforcement action pursuant to our legal authority under sections 201 and 276 or referral to another appropriate agency.’” DelNero said he hoped his letter cleared up any misunderstandings that led to the Securus letter. A company representative didn't comment Friday.

Incompas disputed AT&T arguments that the FCC must overcome high hurdles before revising policies on packet-based services, such as switched ethernet, in the special-access business market (see 1509290036). “There is no basis for AT&T’s arguments” because commission policies “have not engendered ‘serious reliance interests’” for ILECs “even for those services encompassed by the Commission’s grants of forbearance,” Incompas said in a letter posted Wednesday in docket 05-25. “Reversing forbearance from applying dominant carrier and other regulations to these services would not require that the Commission overcome unusually difficult administrative or legal obstacles.” The FCC’s forbearance grant doesn’t even apply to all incumbent telco packet-based special-access services, the group said. When the FCC in 2007 gave AT&T forbearance relief from various duties, it limited the deregulation to its "existing non-TDM-based, packet switched services capable of transmitting 200 kbps or greater in each direction," and "existing non-TDM-based, optical transmission services," said Incompas, which said other agency relief orders were also limited to existing services. At the time, AT&T offered "OPTical Ethernet Metropolitan Area Network" switched ethernet service in special-access tariffs, but in 2010 it introduced an upgraded service called "AT&T Switched Ethernet Service" (ASE) that was functionally different, Incompas said. The FCC forbearance relief thus didn't apply to ASE, said Incompas, which called for reviewing the regulatory treatment of other newer ILEC packet-based services. "Perhaps even more importantly, forbearance would not apply to any packet-based special access services that the incumbent LECs introduce in the future," the group said. "This fact puts the lie to any incumbent LEC claim that they are relying on the absence of regulation as a basis for making investment decisions for packet-based special access services to be introduced in the future." A "comprehensive reassessment" is in order, it said.

The FCC should expand a proposed video relay service (VRS) rate freeze to cover other "small providers," Purple Communications said in a filing summarizing a meeting with agency officials. Purple noted a recent Further NPRM proposed to temporarily freeze VRS compensation rates for providers with 500,000 calling minutes or fewer per month, while other providers will continue to have their rates cut under a previous order (see 1511030064). Purple said the commission should raise the threshold for a rate freeze to 2.75 million minutes/month, to cover all small providers. “The VRS market does not, as the Commission characterizes it in the FNPRM, consist of three large and three small providers,” the company said. “The market includes three very small providers, two small providers (including Purple), and one near-monopoly provider. … Continuing the current rate decrease for any small provider would only serve to further concentrate the market in the dominant provider.” Purple submitted VRS “market distribution and cost structure analysis” -- much of which was blacked out as confidential -- in the filing posted Monday in docket 10-51. The three smallest VRS providers are seeking immediate implementation of the proposed freeze (see 1511270011). VRS provides video-connected interpreters for the deaf and hard of hearing to communicate with phone callers.