Even after completion of the IP transition, the wholesale wireline provisions of the Communications Act will continue to be necessary and important, Comptel told an aide to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. Regardless of the technology used, “access to consumers is required” to ensure competition isn’t stifled, Comptel said. “It is not economically viable for competitors to replicate the ILEC network in its entirety,” the association of competitive providers said. “Competitors must supplement their reach” by “purchasing from large ILECs wholesale last mile access,” it said. The commission could speed the IP transition by “confirming that IP interconnection for voice services falls under Sections 251 and 252 of the Act,” Comptel said.

President Barack Obama nominated Elisabeth Cook to continue her membership on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Cook is an attorney with Wilmer Hale and has sat on PCLOB since August 2012. Cook’s reappointment nomination, sent to the Senate Tuesday night, would place her on the board through Jan. 29, 2020. PCLOB, an independent body within the executive branch, has four part-time members and a full-time chairman and is investigating surveillance practices, with the intent to submit recommendations to Obama.

AT&T’s $2 billion sale of its Connecticut wireline operations to Frontier Communications (CD Dec 18 p9) shouldn’t have a “material impact” on AT&T’s free cash flow, Credit Suisse said in a research note Tuesday. The assets being sold generate roughly $1.2 billion of AT&T’s annual revenue, which is less than 1 percent of the telco’s total sales, the report said. “While the deal in itself has little impact on AT&T’s financials, we view the move to monetize these fixed line assets as a small positive, as we believe the capital could be used to ramp Project VIP.” Project Velocity IP is AT&T’s plan to invest $14 billion in upgrades to its wireless and fiber network (CD Nov 8/12 p11). The transaction is “attractive” for Frontier, said Andrew Spinola, analyst at Wells Fargo, in a research note Tuesday. “This is a significant transaction, but FTR has experience with these types of transactions and should be well-positioned to manage the process,” Spinola said. “The transaction is also financially attractive as it improves the payout ratio, creates $200MM in synergy opportunities, and increases the scale of the business,” he said. UBS expects Frontier to implement its “local engagement and simplified pricing plans” in Connecticut to drive penetration higher in residential and small and medium enterprises, said analysts Batya Levi and John Hodulik in a research note Tuesday. “We believe wireless backhaul will be a growth driver” of revenue and free cash flow, “as most of the towers had already been upgraded,” while regulatory revenue remains relatively stable, said the UBS analysts.

Michigan’s Merit Network and the Ohio Academic Resources Network completed construction of a fiber connection between their networks, they said in a news release Wednesday. The new connection will help provide increased redundancy for the networks, they said.

Iridium’s petition for reallocating Globalstar’s Big low-earth orbit spectrum will ensure sufficient spectrum to promote continued development and innovation in essential mobile satellite service (MSS), Iridium said in FCC RM-11685 (http://bit.ly/18z3Bwu). The petition is neither anticompetitive “nor would it hinder Globalstar in pursuing its MSS or TLPS business plans,” Iridium said of Globalstar’s proposed terrestrial low-power service. Iridium’s growth is expected to continue, “driven by the introduction of new products and services enabled by upgrades in Iridium’s constellation and its innovative vendor partnerships,” it said. As Iridium prepares for the launch of Iridium Next, its next-generation network, “it will be increasingly important to ensure that it has sufficient spectrum available to support this expansion as well as sustain its core business,” it said. “Iridium offers nothing new in its response and nothing supports its request to take almost 3 MHz of Globalstar’s L-band spectrum,” said Barbee Ponder, Globalstar general counsel.

The California Public Utilities Commission asked the FCC for an extension of time to implement a third-party identification verification process for its Lifeline program (http://bit.ly/JIdsVK). An extension to May 1 would help the PUC comply with an FCC requirement that the state implement the verification process, it said. The FCC had made the verification requirement a condition on the PUC’s being able to opt out of the National Lifeline Accountability Database, said the PUC’s Tuesday petition.

Several telecom associations asked the FCC for a stay of rules requiring their members to “reconcile and revise study area boundary data” that will ultimately be published in an online map of study area boundaries (http://bit.ly/JIaL6y). NTCA, USTelecom, the Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance, Western Telecommunications Alliance and Eastern Rural Telecom Association asked Wednesday for a stay or a six-month extension to let the companies gather the information. The Wireline Bureau’s study area boundary order said the data would be used to implement the USF/intercarrier compensation benchmarking rule, which uses quantile regression analysis to generate capital and operating expense limits for each rate-of-return carrier study area. “The Chairman has indicated that consideration will be given by the Commission to the elimination of the quantile regression analysis ... mechanism in the near future,” the petition said. “Absence of the QRA would remove the stated reason for the study area boundary process, and particularly for the burdensome and time-consuming efforts that will be involved in reconciling many hundreds of overlaps and voids.” If the boundary data are still required, the groups said, a six-month extension is necessary to ensure accuracy. The groups are awaiting details of the QRA replacement FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler told Congress the agency is working on (CD Dec 18 p2).

Gannett may get a retransmission consent and cost-savings boost from buying Belo Corp. after the Department of Justice OK'd it with a divestiture (CD Dec 17 p6), a stock analyst wrote to investors Wednesday. The acquirer “could see modest multiple expansion, benefiting from ramping retrans and increased synergies along with strong political inflows helping boost total cash flow and offsetting ongoing weakness in print,” said Ed Atorino of Benchmark. He said Belo means “higher margin revenue streams” for Gannett, which also owns daily newspapers including USA Today.

The Nebraska Public Service Commission asked the FCC for a permanent waiver of rules requiring it provide a copy of the Lifeline subscriber’s certification form to eligible telecom carriers (http://bit.ly/JIcKYL). Ongoing compliance will “result in a significant burden” for the state commission, and a delay in bringing Lifeline benefits to eligible subscribers, said the PSC in a petition Tuesday. “Special conditions” in Nebraska warrant the waiver, it said: The Nebraska PSC “oversees the application verification process, ensures that a compliant certification form is executed by each subscriber, then provides written notification to each affected ETC.” This “should be considered more than sufficient” to ensure compliance with Lifeline program requirements, it said.

Ex-Commissioner Deborah Taylor-Tate and Education Networks of America met Nov. 13, 14 and 15 with FCC Wireline Bureau staff and aides to several commissioners, they said in an ex parte filing posted online Tuesday (http://bit.ly/18RnrOi). The group said it supports the FCC’s goals for modernizing the E-rate program, and offered ideas on streamlining the application process for E-rate funds. The E-rate program should also be able to provide partial funding “in situations that merit such treatment,” they said in a presentation that was included with the filing(http://bit.ly/18RnARR). They recommended exemption of schools, libraries and their underlying providers from paying into the Universal Service Fund on services and service components. They also suggested a standing committee of “E-rate constituents” to help ongoing improvement of the rules.