ACA International's "substantial and justified win" in its federal court challenge of the FCC's 2015 robocalling order (see 1803160006) hasn't made the Telephone Consumer Protection Act landscape any clearer, Commissioner Mike O'Rielly said at an ACA conference Thursday, per prepared remarks. With the court having rejected the agency's definition of an automatic telephone dialing system, the FCC has to re-define ATDS "in a clear and rational manner." He said it should adopt clear rules regarding revocation of consent, even though the court hadn't invalidated those standards. It said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decision didn't slow growth of TCPA lawsuits that came after the 2015 order. The FCC "is not sitting on its hands unaware" of the TCPA morass "but we are a busy agency" and there needs to be greater advocacy by "everyone else caught in the TCPA spider web" to get reforms moving, he said. In the meantime, the FCC can provide some relief through dealing with various pending TCPA petitions, which would, for example, provide courts with better guidance of what constitutes an advertisement under the act, he said.

The FCC should conduct further testing and adopt standards on exclusively automated speech recognition (ASR) IP captioned telephone service (CTS) before allowing providers to receive telephone relay service funds, said a coalition representing advocates for the deaf and hard of hearing. ASR, which doesn’t involve human communications assistants, would provide a lower quality service, said the Clear2Connect Coalition in a Wednesday posting in docket 13-24. Clear2Connect raised concerns that the platforms that would provide ASR-only services “are companies that have very problematic histories when it comes to protecting privacy.” If the companies aren’t required to account for “implicit bias,” taking into consideration such things as accents and vernaculars, “they will develop engines that perform less well for calls involving individuals who are not white, educated, upper-middle-class, native-born Americans,” it said. The coalition recommended the FCC develop IP CTS standards based on advice from the Disability Advisory Committee, consumers groups and industry. Clear2Connect includes the Hearing Loss Association of America, National Association of the Deaf, National Disability Rights Network and Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

The FCC will put on a webinar June 17 regarding network reliability and security best practices for small and rural communications providers, it said Monday. The 70-minute webinar starts at 11 a.m. and will cover such issues as updates to the small business cybersecurity planner and the FCC's network outage reporting system as well as recommendations from the Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council regarding transition to Next Generation 911.

Funding is starting now for the first wave of support from last year’s Connect America Fund Phase II auction, the FCC said Tuesday. The regulator authorized almost $111.6 million in funding over the next 10 years to expand broadband to 37,148 unserved rural homes and businesses in 12 states. “Over the coming months, the FCC will be authorizing additional funding waves as it approves the final applications of the winning bidders from the auction,” it said.

The FCC will host a summit July 11 to look at carrier progress implementing Secure Telephony Identity Revisited and Secure Handling of Asserted information Using Tokens caller ID authentication standards, it said Monday. Discussion items will include technical hurdles to deployment. The event will be in the Commission Meeting Room. Times, participants and other details will be announced later. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai "expects major phone companies to implement SHAKEN/STIR caller ID authentication standards this year," the agency noted.

An FCC webinar Wednesday will focus on consumer information for older adults, including on caller ID spoofing scams. Another topic in the 2 p.m. EDT program: "Keeping up with broadcast TV stations in transition." Outlets are moving channels in the post-incentive auction reshuffling.

DOJ, with concurrence of the Department of Homeland Security and DOD, asked the FCC to defer action on an application to transfer companies to Macquarie subsidiary MIP IV Midwest Fiber (see 1901150052). One of the deals would transfer fiber network PEG Bandwidth from Uniti Fiber to Midwest, which is contingent on a second transfer to Midwest of Missouri Network Alliance (dba Bluebird Network) from MNA Holdings. “The Agencies will review the petition and related materials for national-security, law-enforcement, and public-safety issues,” said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 19-49. “After the Agencies complete the review of the petition and related materials, the Agencies will notify the Commission and, based on the results of the review, request appropriate action by the Commission.”

Comments are due June 7, replies June 24 on the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology seeking comment on updating rules to reflect changes to ANSI C63.4a-2017 “American National Standard for Methods of Measurement of Radio-Noise Emissions from Low-Voltage Electrical and Electronic Equipment in the Range of 9 kHz to 40 GHz, Amendment 1: Test Site Validation” and ISO/IEC 17025:2017(E) “General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories” (see 1904020052). So says a notice for Wednesday's Federal Register.

The FCC Wireline Bureau designated four providers eligible telecom carriers for last year’s Connect America Fund Phase II auction: Bloosurf, Hankins Information Technology, Wind River and Tombigbee. “Designation is conditioned upon and limited to petitioners’ authorization to receive Connect America support awarded through the … auction (Auction 903) and effective only upon such authorization,” the bureau said in docket 09-197.

The FCC's coming Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, "a natural evolution" of the USF serving high-cost areas, is "promising," but more may be needed from stakeholders, an observer blogged for the American Enterprise Institute. It's good Chairman Ajit Pai would use "the reverse auction methodology that proved successful during Connect America Fund Phase II," wrote Boston College Law School professor Daniel Lyons, and it appears "technologically neutral." Lyons seeks "greater cooperation with state regulators." They "have valuable insight regarding the location and prioritization of broadband gaps," so the FCC "should leverage states’ expertise and interest by partnering with the states to deploy buildout funds," he said, as occurred with New York. Lyons' "biggest critique" is the plan "appears primarily to be repurposing existing High-Cost Fund dollars, rather than providing new sources of buildout funding." Congress could "replace the outdated surcharge-based universal service program with a more traditional program funded directly by an annual grant from the Treasury," Lyons said. The FCC and NARUC declined to comment. Lyons, who noted he's long been a USF contribution system critic, thinks the entire program "should be moved on-budget" and so funded by congressional appropriation, he emailed us. "The existing contribution mechanism is structurally flawed and unsustainable, and each part of the program would benefit from explicit congressional oversight. I don't have any recommendations for total dollars, though it seems the current amount is probably a good starting point for analysis." Lyons noted he has no business relationships with recipients of USF money. No imminent FCC action is seen on the fund (see 1905010188).