Rates for intrastate inmate calls should be capped (CD May 5 p8), Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC) Executive Director Paul Wright told FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn aide Rebekah Goodheart and Wireline Bureau officials during a Sept. 12 conference call, said an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1mi58Od) posted Wednesday in docket 12-375. Commissions that inmate calling service providers pay to correctional facilities and ancillary charges levied on top of calling rates should be eliminated, Wright said, according to the filing. Also involved in the call were HRDC Associate Director Alex Friedmann; Lance Weber, general counsel; David Ganim, prison phone justice director; Carrie Wilkinson, Washington prison phone justice director; and Drinker Biddle’s Lee Petro, counsel for Martha Wright, the Washington, D.C., grandmother who asked the FCC to regulate high inmate calling service rates. The agency is considering limits on inmate call commissions and rates (CD July 10 p4) after adopting an order last year that responded a decade after the fact to Wright’s petition to cut rates.

Current E-rate funding is “not sufficient” and the FCC should go beyond indexing program funding to inflation and make “sizeable additional investments in a program that has only grown in importance in the 18 years since it was established,” said Boston Mayor Martin Walsh, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and Portland, Oregon, Mayor Charlie Hales in a letter to Chairman Tom Wheeler Monday. The letter was provided to us by Best Best attorney Gerry Lederer, who represents Boston and whose firm represents Los Angeles and Portland. Los Angeles also supports a “meaningful increase in overall funding” for the program, Mayor Eric Garcetti wrote in a separate letter to Wheeler and FCC commissioners provided by Lederer. All those mayors are Democrats, except Hales, whose office is nonpartisan. Members of the U.S. Conference of Mayors met in New York City Aug. 11 to form a Cities of Opportunities Task Force, with New York’s de Blasio named chairman and Boston’s Walsh, vice chairman, said the letter from Boston, New York and Portland mayors. The task force backed strategies to “achieve digital equity and avoid educational disparity,” including ensuring that broadband services are available to lower-income residents and startup businesses; backing federal programs that bolster technological innovation and provide tech job opportunities for low-income people and minorities, and dealing with inequality in school systems, the letter said. Education interests and libraries are urging more E-rate funding but are running into opposition from telcos (CD Sept 18 p11).

An “unprecedented” detailed analysis of AT&T phone service in Illinois that the company shared with FCC Wireline Bureau officials Sept. 11 “supports AT&T’s assertion that there is no reason in law or policy for the FCC to continue its current overly-broad ETC [eligible telecom carrier] regime or its mandatory Lifeline requirements” for ILECs, said an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1qYj5kB) posted in docket 10-90 Tuesday. Mary Henze, AT&T assistant vice president-federal regulatory, was among those representing the company. The data showed that about 80 percent of households in census blocks that do not qualify for Connect America Fund support get wireline services from other providers, the filing said. The figure “is a clear indication that customers have many attractive options for obtaining voice service,” AT&T said. As part of CAF Phase II implementation, ETC rules should be changed so they apply only to carriers that willingly accept CAF support and only for the geographic areas where such support is provided, said AT&T. Existing price-cap ILEC ETC designations in areas where no CAF support is received should automatically sunset, and Lifeline participation should be de-linked from the high-cost ETC designation and be made voluntary for ILECs, AT&T said.

The FCC should craft net neutrality rules that “encourage investment in abundant bandwidth,” but allowing paid prioritization could “create incentives for providers to maintain scarcity and congestion on their networks, in order to sell services,” Google executives told Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel and aide David Goldman. Google Fiber’s deployment “suggests that it is both workable and economically desirable to manage a broadband network without prioritization and consistent with open Internet principles,” Google said at the meeting in Mountain View, California, where the company is based, recounted a filing posted Tuesday to docket 14-28 (http://bit.ly/1u1bHY4). Company attendees included Craig Barratt, senior vice president-access and energy. Communications Act Title II is a “flexible, light-touch approach for the preservation of open communications networks,” Free Press said in net neutrality reply comments (http://bit.ly/1ASdX2E). Common-carrier principles are “perfectly suited and absolutely necessary to maintaining nondiscrimination principles and nondiscriminatory outcomes” for all telecom services, “not just those delivered on copper telephone wires,” the group said. The FCC has “tremendous ability to tailor Title II,” and “extraordinary power to forbear not only from its own rules, but even from statutes and congressional acts themselves.” Section 706 “will not work for the protections contemplated,” Free Press said. Some want a Section 706 approach, as other replies to the net neutrality NPRM showed (CD Sept 17 p11).

The FCC Wireline Bureau inquiry into Telcordia and parent Ericsson’s business connections with other telecom companies (CD Sept 16 p14) in the selection of the local number portability administrator is consistent with the commission’s “diligent efforts to bring this process to its logical conclusion,” said Telcordia CEO Rich Jacowleff Monday. The North American Numbering Council “has already reviewed Telcordia’s proposal and found that it meets or exceeds the criteria set out by the industry and NANC, including neutrality, and that it offers a compelling price, which ultimately benefits consumers and carriers,” Jacowleff told us.

Special access market data (CD Aug 19 p2) are due at the FCC Dec. 15, the agency said in an order on reconsideration Monday (http://fcc.us/1BJ8KfX). The agency amended its 2012 data collection order to reflect changes ordered by the Office of Management and Budget. The data will let the agency “analyze competition in the market for a service that is key to broadband and competitive voice services: special access,” said Chairman Tom Wheeler in a statement (http://fcc.us/1uR1RVN). The effort was hailed by the NoChokePoints Coalition, made up of special access users, which has been pushing for the data collection. “We believe the data submitted in response to this order will show that this marketplace is indeed broken and in need of reform,” the coalition said in a statement.

The FCC “must tackle long overdue” USF contribution reform before thinking about expanding the E-rate budget to meet the goal of spending $1 billion annually for E-rate Wi-Fi connections in schools and libraries, ITTA said in comments filed Monday in docket 13-184. “Universal service contribution rates have jumped 60 percent under the current Administration,” it said, and the commission “can no longer ignore the pressure its decisions put on the” USF. Doing so would jeopardize other agency goals, including broadband development, and would increase costs “that are ultimately borne by consumers,” ITTA said. The FCC’s $2.30-per-square-foot E-rate funding formula for libraries “would result in the inequitable distribution” of funds, said a study commissioned by the Urban Libraries Council submitted in the same docket. The study found that unlike for rural, town and most suburban libraries, square footage is not an accurate indicator of library users or Wi-Fi costs, ULC said (http://bit.ly/1qZ6GM4).

Comments are due Sept. 30, replies Oct. 10, in docket 05-196 on Sprint’s petition for a limited waiver of the FCC rule regarding access to the Internet-based telecom relay service (TRS) numbering directory, said a notice (http://1.usa.gov/1y6Jzp6) in Monday’s Federal Register. It said Sprint seeks access, as the provider of federal relay services, to load phone numbers for its federal video relay service, including “front door” toll-free phone numbers and 10-digit numbers, into the TRS directory.

Comments are due Nov. 14, replies Dec. 15, in docket 14-130 on a proposed FCC rule to review the Uniform System of Accounts (USOA) to consider ways to minimize burdens on carriers while ensuring the agency retains access to information it needs to fulfill regulatory duties, said a notice (http://1.usa.gov/1BG7ie7) in Monday’s Federal Register.

CenturyLink was asked by FCC Wireline Bureau Chief Julie Veach for more information, including about its marketing efforts, in response to the company’s petition seeking forbearance from dominant carrier regulation and the Computer Inquiry tariffing requirement, said a letter (http://bit.ly/YLHDD6) sent to the company and posted Friday in docket 14-9. CenturyLink’s request deals with packet-switched and optical transmission services that are subject to the regulations. The company has until Oct. 14 to respond.