USTelecom urged OMB to ease permitting for broadband deployment on federal lands and loosen requirements for the BEAD program, in comments filed Monday in response to OMB’s April request for information on deregulation opportunities. Permitting processes “are the single most time-consuming aspect of a broadband build and create unnecessary delays,” USTelecom said. OMB should work with other federal agencies to create uniform categories, so such permits would be deemed granted if they satisfy consistent conditions, such as when permits are sought for previously disturbed land. “Requiring further review for previously disturbed or analyzed areas simply squanders the resources of government and businesses, while needlessly driving up costs and delaying broadband deployment."
Keep the 25-year licensing term for submarine cable systems, and don't extend licensing requirements to non-owners such as cable capacity lessees, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told the FCC Monday in docket 24-523. It said subsea cable licensees need a clearly established process for license revocation, and the agency should make clear that new cable landing license regulations won't retroactively apply to existing licenses.
Representatives of WTA, Lict and Totah Communications met with Wireline Bureau staff on the enhanced-alternative connect America cost model, seeking an update. The representatives “raised concerns about some ambiguities in how this adjustment process would be applied, and the potential for significant adverse consequences,” said a filing last week in docket 10-90. Bureau staff “indicated that they are on track to complete the adjustment determinations by the end of the year, and that they intended to issue a preliminary data set of the changed locations and support adjustments for the rural broadband providers to review (and seek to correct) before the process is finalized.”
NCTA representatives downplayed USTelecom's objections to new rules on pole attachments in a meeting with FCC Wireline Bureau staff (see 2504220015). USTelecom's claims are “either factually inaccurate and/or incorrect,” cablers said. Representatives of NCTA, Comcast, Charter Communications and Cox Enterprises attended the meeting.
Talton made its case at the FCC for why its petition seeking a waiver of the agency's rules capping the rates for audio and video for incarcerated people should get confidential treatment. Talton serves U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and “compelling disclosure of sensitive material on such a flimsy basis as seen here risks chilling petitioners from confidently disclosing their protected information to the FCC,” the company said in a filing posted Friday (docket 23-62).
Reply comments are now due May 19 on proposed changes to submarine cable rules (docket 24-523), the FCC Office of International Affairs ordered Friday. The seven-day extension will allow parties more time to gather information needed for replies, it said. The subsea cable NPRM was adopted unanimously by the FCC commissioners in November (see 2411210006).
The Irregulators raised questions about the retirement of copper lines by major providers in a filing posted Friday in docket 80-286. The group pointed to a regulatory accounting filing that Verizon made in New York, suggesting that the costs of copper networks are often overstated. LTC Consulting and X-labs are among those supporting the Irregulators' work (see 2505070017).
Utility companies Dominion Energy and Xcel Energy this week slammed comments in an NCTA letter last month on pole attachments. “NCTA demands a thirty day timeline for approval of all attacher-proposed third-party contractors, coupled with a ‘deemed approved’ remedy applicable in any case where the requested timeline is not met,” said a filing in docket 17-84. “NCTA’s proposal is contrary to critical factual determinations made by the Commission in its 2018 Pole Attachment Order, unnecessary, and completely at odds with the safety practices, processes, and policies of electric utility companies.”
The National Consumer Law Center and others representing the interests of prisoners and their families filed in support of the FCC’s July order implementing the Martha Wright-Reed Act of 2022 in an amicus brief filed Thursday at the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (24-8028).
The FCC Wireline Bureau suspended “indefinitely” deadlines to file public comments and reply comments on a Talton petition seeking a waiver of the commission’s rules capping the rates for audio and video for incarcerated people provided to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The suspension came after the United Church of Christ (UCC) Media Justice Ministry protested Talton’s failure to provide data that the ministry needs to comment on the petition (see 2505020024).