Oral argument is set for April 1 on Great Lakes Comnet's challenge to an FCC decision siding with AT&T in an access charge dispute, said an order Wednesday of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (Great Lakes Comnet v. FCC, No. 15-1064). GLC and subsidiary Westphalia Telephone say the FCC erroneously concluded GLC was a “competitive local exchange carrier” (CLEC), and even if GLC were a CLEC, the agency should have found it exempt from related regulations as a “rural CLEC,” among other arguments (see 1508190065).

The FCC Wireline Bureau approved the takeover of Great Lakes Comnet and four subsidiaries by Ace Telephone Association and Ace Telephone Co. of Michigan. The GLC subsidiaries are Clinton County Telephone, Comlink, Westphalia Broadband and Westphalia Telephone, said a bureau public notice Tuesday in docket 15-224.

Cable is capable of providing broadband service to 77.1 percent of business customers, and probably more, in five Verizon markets, said a consultant hired by the telco. “Cable companies are now a ‘disruptive wild card’ in the marketplace," said Verizon in a filing posted Friday in FCC docket 05-25 on special access, which included a sworn declaration from Arthur Menko, president of Business Planning Inc. Menko said he studied cable business broadband offerings and capabilities in “core-based statistical areas” of the greater Albany (New York), Boston, Philadelphia, Virginia Beach and Washington, D.C., markets. “If a cable company is both DOCSIS 3.0-enabled and is providing voice service to a business customer in a Census Block, I used that as a proxy to demonstrate that business customers have access to business broadband services from that cable provider throughout the Census Block,” Menko said. He called his approach "conservative" because it didn't necessarily pick up areas where cable companies provide data-only services to business customers. Initial comments informed by industry data collected in the FCC’s special access rulemaking are due by Friday.

Advocates for the deaf and hard of hearing said they are concerned about the potential impact of ongoing compensation rate cuts on larger video relay service (VRS) providers, despite the agency's proposed temporary freeze on rates for smaller providers (see 1511030064). "We have seen and been alarmed by the deterioration of the quality of interpreting in VRS calls across the board, which appear to be exacerbated each time the Commission reduces the rates," said the National Association of the Deaf and Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, in a filing Tuesday in docket 10-51 on a meeting with commission officials. "Any decision by the Commission to cut rates has the unintended consequence of cutting the quality of services. Instead, rates should be tied to the level of quality of services through the establishment of quality measurements." VRS provides video-connected interpreters for the deaf and hard of hearing to communicate with hearing phone callers. The groups noted commission officials said they hadn't seen a significant number of complaints about VRS service quality. "As consumers unfortunately do not have confidence in the complaint process, we responded that the FCC’s continued reliance on complaints to decide what to do here is vexing, especially given the lack of private rights of action," they said. "Although we are not in a position to objectively determine specific VRS compensation rates and measure whether the rates are reasonable or not, our stance remains that VRS providers must be compensated sufficiently to improve the quality of VRS through innovation, and to adequately train and pay their interpreters."

Comcast of Indianapolis and Duke Energy of Indiana settled a pole attachment dispute, the companies told the FCC Friday. In a joint motion filed in docket 15-290 Thursday, the companies asked the commission to dismiss a related Comcast complaint that said the dispute hurt broadband deployment (see 1511190006 and 1511200026).

CenturyLink asked to intervene in support of Global Tel*Link's court challenge to an FCC inmate calling service order and in cases consolidated with it. The order restricting ICS rates will require providers such as CenturyLink to operate at a loss, the telco said in a motion Friday to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. CenturyLink said its harm would be redressed by GTL's challenge. The D.C. Circuit Thursday consolidated GTL's case with a Securus Technologies case (Global Tel*Link v. FCC, No. 15-1461, and Securus Technologies v. FCC, No. 15-1498) (see 1601140068). Both companies and Telmate have asked the FCC to stay its rules pending further judicial review.

Google and Level 3 signed a settlement-free multiyear interconnection agreement for their global backbone networks, the companies said in a news release Friday. Seeking "bit mile balance," the companies "commit to carrying equitable amounts of bit miles," factoring in both traffic amounts and the distance traveled over each network, they said, noting either side can improve its balance by delivering traffic to the other network closer to its end users. The accord also will facilitate growth in interconnection locations, they said. In a note to investors, Wells Fargo analysts said Level 3 had entered into interconnection pacts with AT&T, Comcast, Telefonica and Verizon in 2015. "We view this announcement as an incremental positive for LVLT," they said, referring to Level 3's stock symbol. "We continue to believe Google is an important and growing customer for LVLT in many facets of its business (IP transport, fiber, data center and cloud connectivity, among others)."

The National Exchange Carrier Association backed a FairPoint Communications request for an FCC declaratory ruling on cost recovery the telco said it's due under Connect America Fund (CAF) and intercarrier compensation (ICC) transition rules. "NECA agrees the specific CAF-ICC rules governing such calculations are unclear, and supports issuance of a ruling by the Commission clarifying application of the rules in the particular circumstances faced by FairPoint," said a filing posted Friday in docket 10-90 from the group, which administers certain telco cost-recovery pooling mechanisms. "NECA stands ready to revise and refile with the Commission FairPoint’s [eligible recovery] amounts for the periods beginning January 1, 2015 and forward as directed by the Commission, should the Commission agree with FairPoint." FairPoint, which receives USF support as a price-cap telco but is regulated as a rate-of-return carrier under the ICC transition, said rules to prevent double recovery are unjustly preventing it from collecting $4.2 million in annual revenue it formerly received from local switching support (LSS) (see 1512110070). If the FCC disagrees with FairPoint's interpretation, NECA asked it to clarify that FairPoint isn't entitled to recover LSS-related revenue requirements through NECA pools. The FCC invited comments by Tuesday (see 1512180033).

Global Tel*Link and Securus challenges to the FCC's inmate calling service order were consolidated in a one-sentence order issued Thursday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on its own motion (Global Tel*Link v. FCC, No. 15-1461, and Securus Technologies v. FCC, No. 15-1498). The companies have asked the FCC to stay the order pending judicial review.

The FCC teed up a Global Tel*Link waiver petition seeking an extra 90 days to implement a "no minimum balance requirement" for prisons so it corresponds with the implementation deadline for jails -- duties that were imposed in the agency's inmate calling service order (see 1510220059). The current ICS provider deadline for implementing the requirement for prisons is March 17. "If the waiver were granted, GTL would have until June 20, 2016, to comply with rule 64.6100(a) for both prisons and jails," the Wireline Bureau said in a public notice Wednesday in docket 12-375. Initial comments on the petition are due Jan. 25, replies Feb. 1. The rule says "no provider shall institute a minimum balance requirement for a Consumer to use Debit or Prepaid calling."