Joan Marsh

We are notifying the Federal Communications Commission that we are “opting-in” to the forbearance granted in the Commission’s 2016 Lifeline Modernization Order. By opting in to forbearance today, AT&T will not offer a Lifeline discount on our broadband products at this time except where we deploy broadband as part of a high-cost funded public interest commitment. Again, opting in to forbearance will still allow us to offer Lifeline-supported broadband in the future, should we choose to do so. We will continue to assess our options as the current Lifeline program reforms are implemented and further updates are adopted.

The week of Oct 3, I am privileged to take over leadership of AT&T’s Federal Regulatory team in AT&T’s DC office. I take the reins from my mentor, boss and friend, Bob Quinn, as he rises to succeed Jim Cicconi, who leaves us for the next chapter of his life and a richly-deserved retirement.

This opportunity comes to me at an important inflection point for our company, our industry and our country. We are on the precipice of a Presidential election that will, in all events, herald change during a time when communications companies are increasingly scrutinized through the lens of a dated regulatory code that is more and more untethered from the realities of today’s modern networks. We have moved well beyond trying to fit a square regulatory peg into a round regulatory hole to fundamental questions about whether pegs and holes are an adequate regulatory framework at all. While I don’t know what issues will dominate the regulatory stage next year, I plan to proceed in my new role consistent with the high standards established by Jim and Bob – to engage in honest and fact-based debate, to listen in good faith to opposing viewpoints and to seek consensus wherever it can be found.

Building reliable, ubiquitous high-speed broadband connectivity is tough. It takes an enormous commitment of capital and resources and a highly-skilled and capable work force. Yet AT&T has been at it for over 140 years. Between 2011 and 2015, while Google Fiber was cutting its teeth on fiber, AT&T invested over $140 billion in its network, building to over one million route miles of fiber globally and deploying ultra-high-speed fiber-fed GigaPower broadband services, reaching over a hundred cities. Along the way, AT&T spent over $13 billion with minority, women and disabled veteran-owned suppliers in 2015 alone. Google Fiber will no doubt continue its broadband experiments, while coming up with excuses for its shortcomings and learning curves.

Google Fiber still complains it’s too hard…and costs too much…and takes too long… even as it’s reported that Google Fiber will now try to do all this with half its current workforce. Meanwhile, without excuses or finger-pointing, and without presenting ultimatums to cities in exchange for service, AT&T continues to deploy fiber and to connect our customers to broadband services in communities across the country. Welcome to the broadband network business, Google Fiber. We’ll be watching your next move from our rear view mirror. Oh, and pardon our dust.

AT&T filed its response to a July 27 Notice of Apparent Liability (NAL) issued by the Federal Communications Commission for alleged violations of the lowest corresponding price (LCP) requirements of the E-rate program. These rules say that in order to participate in the E-rate program, a carrier must charge a participating school, library or consortium no higher than the lowest price that it charges to any similarly situated non-residential customer for similar services. To be clear, AT&T wholeheartedly supports the E-rate goals of providing schools and libraries with affordable broadband and telecommunications services. The FCC’s arguments, however, that AT&T applied the LCP rule incorrectly are factually wrong, they deviate from the FCC’s own rules and existing precedent, and they continue the FCC Enforcement Bureau’s troubling pattern of “rulemaking through enforcement.” The facts of the case aptly demonstrate that no actual FCC rules were violated.

The latest chapter of the Wi-Fi vs. LTE-U saga unfolded this month as the Wi-Fi Alliance (WFA) announced that, after many months, it was finally closing in on an approved LTE-U coexistence test plan but surprised everyone by suggesting that the test plan should also include LTE-LAA. To understand why this is so aggravating, we need to take a little trip in the not-so-way-back machine.

Let me be clear on one point – AT&T has no interest in undermining the vibrant Wi-Fi ecosystem that exists today. Well over 100 million devices connect to our network and the vast majority of those devices include a Wi-Fi client. But with LTE-LAA, the “mother-may-I” paradigm must be rejected so the wireless industry can move forward. Make no mistake, the rest of the world is not waiting for permission – Deutsche Telecom conducted the first LTE-LAA over-the-air trials last November in Germany. With LTE-LAA, the asserted objections to LTE-U have been fully addressed. Any pending or future application for equipment authorization for a LTE-LAA device that otherwise meets the Part 15 requirements should be granted in normal course. Any other result could do permanent damage to the incredibly successful Part 15 paradigm, result in the U.S. falling behind the world in the development of LTE unlicensed technologies and deny American consumers important advancements in mobile broadband.

T-Mobile, which advertises itself as the “un-carrier,” has asked the Federal Communications Commission to “un-do” its data roaming rules, which were established in 2011 to facilitate reasonable data roaming arrangements while continuing to incent network investments.

T-Mobile now asks for a “declaratory ruling” which would effectively eviscerate that FCC decision and run afoul of the DC Circuit case which upheld it. There is no justification for granting T-Mobile’s petition -- in fact, according to T-Mobile’s own economist, wholesale roaming rates have trended “downward strongly” in recent years, and the average wholesale roaming rates paid by T-Mobile have fallen nearly 70 percent since 2011 and continue to decline.

There is also evidence that commercial negotiations are producing a variety of terms to meet differing needs, including the highly-touted LTE roaming hub T-Mobile’s own trade association (CCA) has established with scores of rural carriers to “help Sprint and T-Mobile fill the holes in their network[s].”

TruePosition recently commissioned and produced a test report purporting to show that its proprietary technology can meet the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed benchmarks for locating wireless 911 callers horizontally and vertically indoors.

The tests were run on a test bed in Wilmington, Delaware outside the context of the established CSRIC process specifically designed to assess new “911” location technologies.

And although TruePosition claims the test relied on commercial off-the-shelf technologies, it did not and the technologies used by TruePosition are not fully supported in any wireless network today. Moreover, the technology used would not provide complete location information in that it does not have the capability to provide a vertical estimate of location.

Beyond these significant limitations, the testing highlights even bigger concerns. The fact is that the approach proposed by TruePosition is, at the core, antithetical to the design of modern 3G and 4G networks.

TruePosition’s proposed solution depends on hardware installed at each base station seeing the handsets being served by other base stations. They also ignore the potential for the untenable interference that such an approach would likely create.

[Marsh serves as the AT&T Vice President of Federal Regulatory]

[Commentary] As the debate about auction limitations and restrictions rages on, one new argument is particularly notable. The Competitive Carriers Association has for months sought low band restrictions or limits in the auction.

CCA has long argued that AT&T and Verizon have somehow foreclosed their members from access to low band spectrum (a notion that I debunked in a blog some months ago). Therefore, CCA has argued, there should be low band limits that restrict AT&T and Verizon in the 600 MHz auction while their members have free reign.

The FCC has now proposed a set of restrictions that basically gives CCA exactly what it has demanded -- it is proposing to restrict a carrier’s participation in the 600 MHz auction based on the amount of low band spectrum it holds in its portfolio.

One would think CCA would be cheering from the stands, but they are not. Why? Because the FCC’s proposal has finally forced CCA to acknowledge that there are “multiple examples” “throughout the country” of incidences where their members already have a significant portfolio of low band spectrum. Those members would therefore be restricted under the FCC’s current proposal.

[Commentary] The word out of the Federal Communications Commission is that we can expect a 600 MHz auction framework item in the May timeframe. This has set the auction restrictions drums beating (again).

Calls for large-carrier limitations and even strategic set asides are growing ever louder. In all the rhetoric, some fundamental facts are getting lost. So, let’s ground this debate.
Fact No. 1: It will take a lot of revenue for the incentive auction to be successful.
Fact No. 2: No one bidder can run a $30 billion table.
Fact No. 3: A set aside of any type will only exacerbate the $30 billion revenue challenge.
Fact No. 4: A low band cap will also exacerbate the $30 billion revenue challenge.
For this auction to succeed, the FCC must attract wide broadcaster participation in major markets. Period. No exceptions. And to do that, the FCC must be prepared to meet prevailing price expectations.

We are firmly convinced that scoring on any basis related to station value or revenue will undermine the very broadcaster participation that is essential to success. TV stations are selling spectrum -- not their broadcast businesses. And if broadcasters don’t show up, the question of whether the auction will raise the necessary revenue on the forward side will be moot.

When the Federal Communications Commission’s mobile spectrum holdings proceeding was initiated over a year ago, AT&T argued that the Commission’s basic spectrum aggregation test -- as originally conceived -- remained a sound approach.

The test seeks to strike a balance between regulatory certainty, by assuring licensees that spectrum accumulations within a safe harbor will be approved, and regulatory flexibility, by giving the Commission a focused tool to assess whether proposals that exceed the safe harbor screen will foreclose competition. The benefits of this balanced, consumer-focused approach have been extraordinary.

To be sure, modest steps are still needed to update the screen and restore its validity. These two steps are all that is necessary to restore the screen to its proper and intended function of addressing the potential for market foreclosure.

For one thing, the screen continues to exclude a substantial amount of spectrum that the Commission’s own reports to Congress recognize as usable for mobile wireless service and that, in fact, is being used today. Most prominently, the Commission should correct a current glaring omission by including in the screen the entire 194 MHz of BRS and EBS spectrum held almost entirely by Sprint/Clearwire, rather than the mere 55.5 MHz the Commission has included to date.

Moreover, some recent decisions have departed from longstanding precedent by no longer treating the safe harbor as “safe,” requiring divestitures even where the screen has not been exceeded.

These ad hoc departures from the Commission’s framework undermine the predictability that is critical to business planning. The Commission should make clear that its case-by-case analysis will be reserved for proposals to exceed the threshold level in any local market and that this review will be properly focused on the potential for actual foreclosure.