Telecommunications Industry Association representatives encouraged the FCC to require compliance with provisions in Kari’s Law, meeting Public Safety Bureau staff. Commissioners approved 4-0 an NPRM on those issues with 911 calls from multiline telephone systems (MLTS) at their September meeting (see 1809260047). “Industry needs to know as soon as possible what the requirements will be in order to meet” a Feb. 16, 2020, deadline, said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 18-261. “We raised potential issues with requiring MLTS solutions to dial directly to 911 ‘out of the box,’ particularly for MLTS where there is no physical equipment to purchase and configure.” Staff from Cisco, Panasonic and the Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications Forum also attended.

The IEEE Standards Association approved Panasonic’s broadband over powerline communication technology for the IoT as the IEEE 1901a standard, said the company Monday. Panasonic proposed the technology, said to meet various demands for IoT-related services, in June. It’s based on its HD-PLC Wavelet orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing technology.

Sprint met Wireline Bureau staff on its proposal the FCC defer Lifeline de-enrollments and national verifier "hard" launches until Universal Service Administrative Co. gets more automated access to Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program databases (see 1903190048). Sprint said Monday in docket 17-287 its proposal was discussed in greater depth in the ex parte filing last week. Texas regulators are also reviewing Lifeline issues (see 1903250043).

Questions of what end-office switching rates apply when calls involve a competitive LEC and an over-the-top VoIP provider, whether a competitive LEC can charge for end-office switching when it hasn't assigned the calling party's phone number, and whether end-office switching rates apply to Teliax will be referred to the FCC, U.S. District Court Judge Raymond Moore of Denver said in an order Friday (in Pacer). It responded to a motion by defendant by MCI Communications Services asking for a stay while the FCC considers near-identical issues through an open proceeding and for primary jurisdiction referral. Moore said he wasn't referring an MCI question of whether Teliax can charge tandem switching rates since Teliax hasn't charged those, and he's staying only issues pending before the FCC but otherwise the case can proceed. MCI outside counsel didn't comment Monday.

USTelecom proposed creating a "Broadband Serviceable Location Fabric" (BSLF) as a "uniform foundation for dramatically more accurate FCC Form 477 reporting" to pinpoint unserved areas, said a filing in docket 11-10 on the mapping initiative it announced with partners Thursday (see 1903210041). "Multiple data sources, scoring routines, and managed visual review are required," including "parcel boundaries, parcel attributes (e.g., land use, assessed value, number of units, etc.)." With CostQuest, USTelecom plans a pilot in Virginia and Missouri lasting four to six months using "open source" and commercial data. Because some data is scarce or conflicting, CostQuest "will use a managed crowdsourcing visual review process to, for example, inspect satellite imagery to align building data with visible structures or to validate an incomplete attribute record," said USTelecom, projecting up to 75,000 such reviews per state. Carriers will provide confidential data on addresses they serve or have served with fixed service, and will be able to compare their lists with the final BSLF, helping them with Form 477 filings, it said. If the FCC agrees results show the methodology is applicable, it could take one to two more years to finish a nationwide fabric costing $10 million to develop and $2.5 million annually to update, the association said. NCTA highlighted its proposal "that can be implemented nationwide very quickly, without any need for a pilot, and would result in the granular data needed to more accurately identify areas ... not served by" fixed broadband. Providers would submit "shapefiles" -- electronic maps showing actual service contours -- that the FCC would compile into a national map, augmented by crowdsourcing.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai visited Georgia Power's storm center at its Atlanta headquarters Monday. Representatives "explained how its storm center works and how Georgia Power prepares for and responds to disasters," said a filing posted Thursday in docket 11-60. A 22-page slide deck noted Hurricane Irma caused outages affecting 1.63 million customers (67 percent of its 2.5 million customer base) while Michael in 2018 and Matthew affected 422,000 and 371,600, respectively. It said the hurricanes resulted in 4,625 broken poles.

The FCC is closing access Friday to a secure data enclave with highly confidential data on price-cap carrier business data service, unless an interested party shows continued access is necessary to meaningfully participate in the proceeding, said a Wireline Bureau public notice in Thursday's Daily Digest and docket 16-143. Parties' data and work product stored in the enclave will be saved and archived, pending judicial or administrative review. The University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center hosts the enclave.

GCI said rate guidance in a February FCC Wireline Bureau public notice on a rural healthcare telecom program doesn't "reflect sound or consistent economic principles, and is therefore counterproductive and could both increase costs to [USF] and decrease participation," in a meeting with Office of Economics and Analytics staff including acting Chief Giulia McHenry. The letter was attached to one posted Thursday in docket 17-310 on meetings with Commissioners Mike O'Rielly and Jessica Rosenworcel, where the same points were discussed. GCI petitioned the bureau Monday to reconsider the PN's guidance (see 1903190019).

Advocates for the deaf endorsed an IP captioned telephone service provider proposal to maintain a $1.75 per minute compensation rate for another year, rather than cutting it again, to $1.58 as planned July 1. "Reimburse IP CTS providers at a rate sufficient to ensure a robust and competitive marketplace" and "high level of service quality," filed Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, the Hearing Loss Association of America, National Association for the Deaf and California Coalition of Agencies Serving the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, posted Wednesday in docket 13-24. Hamilton Relay, Sprint, CaptionCall and Mezmo (InnoCaption) urged the commission to nix the 10 percent cut (see 1903010005); a 10 percent cut took effect last July 1.

In an effort to stop fraudulent robocalls, AT&T and Comcast said Wednesday they will offer call authentication between their voice networks. The companies said they completed what they believe is the first exchange of authenticated calls in the U.S. between two separate voice networks. “Customers could soon start to see verified calls not only from callers using the same provider, but more importantly, from other participating providers,” the companies said. The test used phones available to consumers, “not in a lab or restricted to special equipment,” they said: The call was conducted March 5, between AT&T’s digital home service and Comcast’s Xfinity Voice home service. The FCC targeted caller ID rules to help curb spoofed robocalls (see 1902140039) and some members want carriers to offer call authentication.