The Satellite Industry Association urged technological and competitive neutrality in the FCC's planned Connect America Fund reverse auction of broadband-oriented support. SIA "reiterates its support for a CAF framework that does not favor any one technology over others," the group said in a Thursday filing in docket 10-90. "SIA strongly supports the FCC’s longstanding policy of technology neutrality," it said, with a draft CAF Phase II auction order on the tentative agenda for the commission's May 25 meeting (see 1605050036). "Innovations in the satellite industry, including high-throughput satellites, present important potential solutions for the problems that the CAF seeks to address," said SIA, which also backed continued FCC "commitment to the longstanding policy of competitive neutrality." Hughes Network Systems and ViaSat recently made similar arguments (see 1605120029 and 1604150040).

Atlantic Tele-Network cited progress in winning regulatory approvals of its planned buy of subsidiaries of National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corporation (CFC). "ATN and CFC have already received many of the regulatory consents necessary for consummation of the Transaction and are nearing receipt of the others," said an ATN filing posted Wednesday in FCC docket 15-264 that updated commission staff. ATN -- a mobile wireless provider in 10 Western states and the U.S. Virgin Islands and a CLEC in three Northeastern states -- is proposing to buy CFC's DTR Holdings and its telecom and cable TV units operating in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The transaction received "early termination" U.S. antitrust approval Feb. 2 and was cleared by government entities in the British Virgin Islands and St. Maarten, ATN said. The U.S. Virgin Islands Public Services Commission scheduled June 14-16 hearings on the deal and a hearing examiner is to issue a decision July 25, triggering final review by the PSC, ATN said.

ESPN ended its skinny bundle legal fight against Verizon. In joint statements Tuesday (see here and here), the companies said they settled ESPN's 2015 lawsuit about Verizon's offering programming packages that excluded some ESPN channels, allegedly in violation of contractual agreements (see 1504270071), but terms of the settlement won't be disclosed. Terry Denson, Verizon vice president-content strategy and acquisition, said the company "look[s] forward to further collaborating with them to deliver customers content across all of our platforms."

The FCC set the pleading cycle for proposed telecom relay service funding and payment formulas for the program year beginning July 1. Comments on the proposal from TRS administrator Rolka Loube Associates are due May 24 and replies June 3, said a Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau public notice in docket 10-51 listed in Tuesday's Daily Digest. Rolka proposed $1.14 billion in funding and an industry contribution factor of 1.86 percent of carrier interstate and international telecom end user revenues. It proposed per-minute compensation rates of $2.62 for interstate traditional TRS, $3.76 for interstate speech-to-speech relay service and $1.91 for interstate captioned telephone service and interstate and intrastate IP captioned telephone service, all of which are subject to a multistate average rate structure methodology. It also proposed a cut in the $1.37/minute IP relay service compensation rate to $1.21/minute. Rolka didn't make a proposal on video relay service rates because the commission already established a schedule of declining rates, as modified in March, to provide some relief for small, Tier 1 video relay service (VRS) providers with fewer than 500,000 calling minutes per month (see 1603020033 and 1603030065). But it said the weighted average of VRS provider reported projected costs (excluding outreach) of $2.72 per minute remains "well below" the FCC's related compensation rates for the coming year. Providers have disputed FCC cost assessments. The PN sought comment on various other questions and issues related to the TRS program.

The FCC said it received prohibited written presentations in the Lifeline USF proceeding in which the commission adopted an order overhauling the low-income subsidy program at its March 31 meeting (see 1603310056). The presentations in docket 11-42 were from the American Enterprise Institute, National Association of Counties and six individuals, said a public notice, saying presentations to decision-makers are generally not allowed from the day after release of the meeting's Sunshine agenda until the text of the item is issued (see 1604270028), which in this case was from March 25 until April 27. The presentations "will be associated with, but not made part of the record," said the PN in Tuesday's Daily Digest.

The FCC would extend the National Deaf-Blind Equipment Distribution Program another year while it completes a rulemaking to make the program permanent, the commission told us Tuesday, responding to our query about a draft item on its circulation list. The FCC has operated for several years a $10 million pilot program (also called iCanConnect), running from July 1 to June 30, to distribute communications equipment to low-income deaf-blind people under the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act. Commenters in the pending rulemaking last year supported the FCC proposal to make the program permanent but diverged on some details (see 1507290063).

The FCC Public Safety Bureau will introduce a new version of the FCC Network Outage Reporting System (NORS) for "testing and, ultimately, operational use,” over the next two months, the FCC said Monday in a public notice. The new version of NORS is to be online as early as Tuesday, the notice said. Part 4 of the FCC’s rules require providers of voice and paging communications providers to report significant disruptions or outages to their communications systems. The FCC is to consider an order on changes to NORS at its May 25 meeting, along with a rulemaking on expanding the requirements to cover broadband providers (see 1605050053). “The new platform contains improvements that will enhance the overall security and reliability of NORS and allow future evolution to best support new communications technologies and analytic methods,” the notice said.

Broadband and information communications technologies (ICT) produced $1.02 trillion in value to the U.S. economy in 2014, or about 5.9 percent of gross domestic product, but that likely understates the impact, said a study issued Thursday by the Internet Innovation Alliance. Broadband and ICT companies employed 4.93 million workers (full-time equivalents), with an average annual compensation of $104,390, said the study by Kevin Hassett, an American Enterprise Institute resident scholar, and Robert Shapiro, chairman of Sonecon, an economic advisory firm. “The large economic gains associated with the broadband and ICT sector have flourished in an environment of light federal regulation,” said Hassett and Shapiro. They said recent FCC regulatory moves targeting "broadband ISPs and their service offerings would stifle broadband/ICT sector investment, growth and employment, negatively impacting the American economy.”

Billing Services Group (BSG) agreed to pay $5.2 million to resolve FTC contempt charges that the phone-billing company and its business entities violated a 1999 court order that had settled cramming charges, the commission said in a Wednesday news release. Commissioners voted 3-0 to approve the proposed stipulated final order filed in the U.S. District Court in San Antonio. The FTC said the company must make 10 payments of $520,000 each, the first due in 30 days, followed by an equal payment every 90 days, to satisfy the judgment, but if BSG fails to make a payment a $17 million judgment will be imposed. The 1999 order with the FTC had barred BSG defendants from "unauthorized billing, misrepresentations to consumers, and billing for vendors who fail to clearly disclose the terms of their services." The commission said the defendants operated as a phone billing aggregator for years, and placed third-party charges on consumers' telephone bills without authorization. In the proposed settlement, BSG and its business entities admit to violating the 1999 order, and failing to vet charges before processing them and to investigate consumer complaints about unauthorized charges, FTC said. Defendants would also be banned from placing charges on consumer phone bills for enhanced services like email or voicemail and barred from placing unauthorized charges on any type of consumer bill, the commission said. "In the defendants’ current business, which involves providing wireless intermediary services to telephone companies and Wi-Fi providers, the proposed order will require them to monitor their servers’ traffic for possible fraud," the commission said.

Broadband adoption will reach 84 percent of U.S. households this year, up from 50 percent in 2006, said a Parks Associates report Wednesday, while ownership of smart home products grew from 16 percent to 19 percent of U.S. broadband households in the past year. Some 44 percent of households without a smart home device plan to buy one in 2016, and by 2020 half of North American broadband households will be smart homes, it said. "Adoption of the connected lifestyle continues to expand” as supporting technologies mature and consumers better understand the value of connected devices, said analyst Brad Russell. Increased access to fixed and mobile broadband and improved interoperability between “collaborative, though fragmented" communications networks will facilitate smart home adoption, he said. Russell cited efforts by big players including Amazon, Apple and Facebook and said their leadership positions and ecosystems will “help accelerate growth in established categories and emerging technologies such as wearables, smart fabrics, and virtual and augmented reality."