An Alabama Public Service Commission official said he was working solo and "in a hurry" when he mishandled proprietary company data in the inmate calling service proceeding, but he denied the ICS breach would benefit competitors. Darrell Baker, director of the Alabama PSC Utility Services Division, said he had labeled the proprietary version of a filing as proprietary but submitted it “through the wrong channel,” resulting in its brief, inadvertent release through the FCC’s electronic comment filing system. “To be frank, I am the only one here that has provided any input into this proceeding. Additionally, we have zero clerical staff. Everything I did was on my own. I did all the writing,” Baker said in an email posted in docket 12-375 Friday, responding to a Sept. 21 email from an FCC Wireline Bureau official noting a bureau order that barred Baker from participating in the ICS proceeding until further notice (see 1509220007). “I got into a hurry, assumed I knew the correct filing procedures which I should have researched before submitting. I learned the hard way and submitted the follow up proprietary Ex Parte using the correct procedures.” Baker said the proprietary data itself wasn't released in his filing, only averaged and aggregated data. “I realize it is still proprietary data and was handled incorrectly but there was nothing in that Ex Parte that could benefit a competitor,” he said. Responding in July to Global Tel*Link's request that the FCC sanction him and the PSC for the breach, Baker had previously pleaded ignorance of the rules and apologized for his mistake (see 1507200030).

Fiber Technologies Networks and Duke Energy resolved a pole-attachment dispute, they said in asking the FCC to dismiss FTN's associated complaint against Duke. Their joint motion was posted Friday in docket 14-227.

The FCC has given itself 90 more days to review a USTelecom forbearance petition seeking regulatory relief the ILEC group says would promote next-generation networks, the Wireline Bureau said in a Friday order in docket 14-192. The new due date for deciding the petition is Jan. 4, the bureau said in exercising the agency's discretion to extend forbearance deadlines one time. USTelecom describes the relief it wants from Communications Act and FCC rules as "addressing section 271/272 and equal access obligations, rule 64.1903 structural separation requirements, the requirement to provide a 64 kbps voice channel where a copper loop has been retired, section 214(c) obligations where a price cap carrier does not receive high cost universal service support, Computer Inquiry rules, the requirement to provide access to newly deployed entrance conduit at regulated rates, and the prohibition against using contract tariffs for business data services in all regions," the bureau said. Granite Telecom, a CLEC, opposed USTelecom's proposed relief from Section 271 Bell long-distance entry duties and the 64 kbps requirement. Granite said it needs those provisions to gain Bell wholesale access to provide voice service to retail business customers. "Absent the § 271 and the 64 Kbps requirements, the [Bells] would have the incentives and ability to re-monopolize the portion of the business market served by Granite and other competitive carriers," the CLEC said in a filing posted Wednesday. "The [Bells] could accomplish this by imposing substantial wholesale price increase[s] or by simply refusing to renew current wholesale agreements."

USTelecom disputed CLEC assertions that the FCC has broad latitude to reimpose regulation on ILEC special-access business services (see 1509100050). A recent letter from Birch Communications, BT Americas and Level 3 "distorts the scope of the agency's discretion, which is constrained by the Communications Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the Commission's own decisions, and mischaracterizes the level of deference that courts typically afford agencies under Chevron," USTelecom said in a filing posted Friday in docket 05-25. The CLECs seek reregulation "of enterprise broadband services such as Ethernet and increased regulation of ILEC special access" services given pricing flexibility some time ago, USTelecom said. The commission "cannot upend forbearance and other deregulatory decisions with little or no data analysis" and must address ILEC deregulatory "reliance interests" built up over the years, the ILEC trade group said. "The FCC cannot step in and set prices without a fact-specific, full and fair analysis of the competitive landscape," USTelecom said. "Nor would the FCC be entitled to deference from the courts if it takes the procedural shortcuts suggested [by CLECs]." USTelecom said that the record doesn't support the CLEC relief, and it added: "The Joint CLEC Letter, at bottom, suggests that the FCC can aim low, that close enough for government work will survive court review. But the standard is higher, and the FCC must take into account the full record in the special access proceeding, including the data collection to the extent that it is sufficient and reliable. It must also take into account more recent information that further demonstrates robust competition in the marketplace." Separately, TDS Telecom said its CLEC subsidiaries are struggling to deliver retail services to business customers. "These difficulties are due in large part to challenges in obtaining competitive wholesale pricing for last mile access facilities," TDS said in a filing that attached confidential cost data. And TransWorld Network objected to FCC release of its confidential business data subject to a protective order, noting it still had concerns about the specific purposes that parties might have in seeking to review its data.

The FCC is promoting "phony competition" through wholesale regulation efforts, said Fred Campbell, executive director of the Center for Boundless Innovation in Technology. "The FCC’s plan to impose monopoly regulation on new fiber deployments to businesses indicates the agency has forgotten what 'competition' actually means," said Campbell, in a Forbes online commentary Thursday. Regulating the wholesale rates that large telcos charge competitors for business special-access services to create "synthetic competition" may have made sense in the previous "natural monopoly market," he said, but that approach was "discredited" by the emergence of "real competition" in the late 20th century. Giving upstarts the "legal right to piggyback" on incumbent networks robs them of the motivation to deploy their own facilities to compete more robustly, he said: "The alleged need for wholesale access regulation to remedy natural monopoly thus becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once the FCC imposes wholesale access regulation, it creates perverse incentives for the formation and maintenance of an infrastructure monopoly that would otherwise not exist." While the FCC lifted wholesale regulation of fiber more than a decade ago, Campbell said, Europeans embraced such regulation, only to reverse course recently after finding their network investment lagged in the U.S. and parts of Asia." The FCC is now proposing to take the U.S. back in the opposite direction," he said, noting the agency's recent IP transition actions requiring incumbents to offer competitors wholesale fiber access on an interim basis.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler named Stephanie Weiner senior legal adviser in charge of wireline issues, replacing Daniel Alvarez, who is departing after serving as adviser for wireline, public safety and homeland security issues since 2013, an agency release said Thursday. Weiner has been FCC associate general counsel and special adviser to Wheeler on Internet law and policy, and before that had served in senior legal positions with Neustar, the Department of Energy, the FCC Wireline Bureau and as an associate at Harris Wiltshire.

Frontier Communications’ Frontier Secure added Nest’s IP camera and smoke detector to its Nest lineup that also includes the third-generation Nest Learning thermostat. Frontier has been offering the Nest thermostat, valued at $249, for $99 to customers who upgrade their high-speed Internet package, said the telco in a Tuesday news release. Bringing the trio of Nest products into the Frontier portfolio adds value to the broadband experience “by offering products that work wonderfully on their own and seamlessly together,” said Kelly Morgan, Frontier Secure general manager.

A federal court pushed back remaining briefing in its review of an FCC VoIP symmetry order on intercarrier compensation. In a one-page order Tuesday in AT&T v. FCC (docket 15-1059), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit granted the unopposed motion of the Department of Justice and the FCC to delay the timetable a few weeks (see 1509180064). The D.C. Circuit set an Oct. 5 due date for the DOJ/FCC brief responding to AT&T's opening brief, which has already been filed (see 1507310057). The brief of intervenors supporting the commission will be due Oct. 26, the reply brief of petitioner AT&T Nov. 9, and briefing will close Dec. 7.

The FCC Wireline Bureau teed up Windstream's petition for a limited waiver to collect more access charge revenue to offset charges it couldn't collect from Halo Wireless (see 1509020059). In a public notice Monday, the bureau set comments for Oct. 21, replies Nov. 5.

The FCC held up Sprint's application to discontinue long-distance services to domestic wireline customers, saying it needed more time to review comments from 11 parties. In a public notice issued Friday, the commission said Sprint's application under Section 214 of the Communications Act wasn't automatically granted, emphasizing that the action shouldn't be considered a final determination. The Oglala Sioux Tribe Utility Commission (OSTUC) had said the application shouldn't be granted until Sprint complied with obligations to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation (see 1509140033). In other comments filed in docket 15-186, 10 individuals objected to, or voiced concerns about, Sprint's plans to discontinue the long-distance services. Sprint had no comment Monday. Sprint said in a filing that the OSTUC comment was "untimely and substantively flawed," noting that although the comment was dated Sept. 1, it wasn't received until Sept. 11. Sprint said OSTUC's concerns largely weren't relevant to the FCC's discontinuance process and were otherwise "meritless." In a separate response to the filings of the 10 individuals (most of which were hand-written), Sprint noted that all seemed concerned about the difficulty of finding inexpensive alternatives. The company said it had reached out to all of them with additional information regarding "the numerous available options for obtaining replacement services at acceptable rates from alternative providers." Several of them indicated they had already transferred their service to new providers, "demonstrating the availability of acceptable alternatives," Sprint said. While the others expressed reservations about changing service, "generally due to their positive experiences with Sprint, none of the commenters requested a delay in the discontinuance of service, and many of them expressed appreciation that Sprint reached out to discuss the matter," the company said. The telco asked the commission to approve its application.