Federal Communications Commission

In this Public Notice, the Wireline Competition Bureau (Bureau) provides guidance regarding the implementation of the rolling recertification process, as established by the 2016 Lifeline Modernization Order. The Commission adopted rules to change the subscriber eligibility recertification process from once each calendar-year to a rolling process based on each subscriber’s service initiation date. Currently, Lifeline subscribers must recertify their eligibility once every calendar year. The Order adopted a rolling recertification process that requires subscriber eligibility to be recertified every 12 months following the subscriber’s service initiation date. The Commission established this rolling recertification requirement to improve administrative efficiency and reduce burdens on carriers, USAC and, in the future, the National Verifier.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler announced the appointment of Lisa Hone as legal advisor to the Chairman with responsibility for wireline telecommunications issues, and the departure of Stephanie Weiner.

Hone begins work in the Chairman’s office in November. Hone has most recently served as an associate bureau chief in the FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau (WCB). She has also served as a legal advisor for former Commissioner Michael J. Copps and as a deputy division chief in the Telecommunications Access Policy Division in WCB. Prior to joining the staff of the FCC in 2010, Hone worked at the Federal Trade Commission where she conducted and supervised federal court litigation and rulemaking proceedings involving a wide array of consumer protection issues. Hone has also worked in the US Senate (on detail from the FTC) and in private practice at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York City. Hone earned her law degree from the University of California, Los Angeles and earned a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University.

Weiner has been at the Commission since 2013, serving as senior legal advisor to the Chairman and, prior to that, in the FCC’s Office of General Counsel. Weiner has served in senior legal positions with Neustar, Inc.; the US Department of Energy; the FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau; and as an associate at Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis, LLP. Weiner earned a law degree from Northwestern University School of Law, a master's from the University of Chicago, and a bachelor’s from Brown University.

The Federal Communications Commission announced the winners of the Excellence in Economic Analysis and Excellence in Engineering Analysis Awards. These awards are intended to recognize Commission staff for outstanding economic analysis, and engineering, scientific or technical contributions that they have performed in the course of their work at the Commission.

Eugene Kiselev of the Media Bureau and Katherine LoPiccalo of the FCC’s Office of Strategic Planning share the 2016 Excellence in Economic Analysis Award for economic analysis of the Charter/Time Warner Cable/Bright House merger application. Kamran Etemad of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau and Robert Pavlak and Navid Golshahi of the Office of Engineering and Technology are the winners of the Commission’s 2016 Excellence in Engineering Award for their work on the technical issues for the Citizens Band Radio Service in the 3550 – 3700 MHz band.

The Federal Communications Commission rejected petitions for reconsideration of $20 million in fines issued against four prepaid calling card companies for deceptively marketing their products. In October 2015, the FCC issued separate $5 million fines against four calling card companies, Locus Telecommunications, Lyca Tel, NobelTel, and Touch-Tel USA, following an investigation by the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau. Each of the companies formally asked the FCC to reconsider those fines in four, separate petitions for reconsideration. The FCC dismisses and denies those requests and continues to seek payment of the fines.

The FCC has referred these matters to the US Department of Justice, which leads the process of collecting outstanding fines in federal court. The companies’ advertisements, apparently targeting immigrant communities, suggested that their calling cards could be used for hundreds or thousands of minutes of international calls. Multiple fees and surcharges added by the companies, however, caused the actual calling minutes available to consumers to be much fewer than advertised.

The released three main goals, with what the strike force delivered and the work that remains:
Goal 1: Robust Call Blocking & Filtering Tools for Consumers
Goal 2: Faster Implementation of Caller ID Authentication Standards
Goal 3: Solutions to Detect & Mitigate Unwanted Calls
They offered the following next steps:
Industry Must Ensure Continued Progress
Industry Must Be Aggressive in Achieving Concrete Deliverables
Providers Must Commit to & Comply with Implementation Deadlines
Providers Must Give Regular Updates, Particularly Where Work is Handed Off to
Other Industry Groups

A core component of the Federal Communications Commission’s Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau’s mission is to empower consumers in the telecommunications marketplace. True empowerment requires that consumers be active participants in the FCC’s processes. That is why, in January 2015, the FCC launched the Consumer Help Center. Through the Help Center, the FCC not only modernized and revitalized the consumer complaint intake process, these improvements also introduced new resources for educating consumers and sharing complaint data. Since the Help Center’s launch, we have made concerted efforts to continue to improve the quality of visitors’ experience, increase transparency around the complaint data we collect, and develop new ways to engage consumers.

Our latest enhancements to the Consumer Help Center is the “Tell Your Story” feature that gives consumers a new way to share with us their concerns and observations about a provider, a policy, or an issue affecting them or their communities generally. The redesigned Help Center webpage also provides easier access to all of the FCC’s consumer guides as well as the latest updates to consumer-related information on FCC.gov.

When you “Tell Your Story,” your comments will not be formally served on your provider as is our practice with complaints about service and billing. Instead, they will be used by Commission staff to inform policy making and identify practices that may be ripe for potential enforcement action. This differentiation will better allow the agency to focus its complaint resolution resources on those types of issues while maintaining and enhancing consumers’ ability to give voice to other concerns and thoughts.

The Federal Communications Commission will hold an Open Meeting on the subjects listed below on Thursday, October 27, 2016:

Protecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband and Other Telecommunications Services Alerts (WC Docket No. 16-106): The Commission will consider a Report and Order that applies the privacy requirements of the Communications Act to broadband Internet access service providers and other telecommunications services to provide broadband customers with the tools they need to make informed decisions about the use and sharing of their information by their broadband providers.

Locus Telecommunications, Inc., Lyca Tel, LLC, Touch-Tel USA, LLC, NobelTel, LLC: The Commission will consider a Memorandum Opinion and Order that dismisses and denies a Petition for Reconsideration of a Forfeiture Order issued by the Commission for the deceptive marketing of prepaid calling cards.

We are calling this afternoon's policy forum #Solutions2020 because we firmly belive that we can achieve robust, affordable connectivity for all Americans within the next four years. The six pillars I will outline, if fully implemented, will connect those digital deserts with robust, affordable communications services.

1) Ensure Affordable Communications: Lack of affordability remains one of the largest barriers to connected communities in this country, which is why I have made it the first pillar.
2) Empowering Communities: Local governments, that want to bring broadband connectivity to their communities, particularly when the private sector has failed to do so, should have, that right.
3) Broadband as a Driver of Improved Health Services: We must explore new ways, to ensure our nation’s health facilities, are equipped with advanced broadband-enabled technologies.
4) Promoting a More Diverse Media Landscape: We must strive to do more when it comes to making our media landscape truly reflective of the melting pot we call America.
5) 5G and Beyond for All Americans: There is a lot of buzz, around “5G” and I share this excitement. However, we must ensure, that the benefits of high-speed wireless broadband, reach all communities, including those Americans, who continue to rely on 2G service. And 5G connectivity, is largely reliant on the availability of more spectrum.
6) Enhancing Consumer Protections: Consumers deserve real transparency, when it comes to signing up for communications services.

We’ve had success in calling attention to government initiatives that threatened our constitutional freedoms. The most salient example was the Federal Communications Commission’s ill-advised “Critical Information Needs” study. This study involved researchers funded by the agency that licenses television stations going into broadcast television newsrooms and asking questions about editorial judgment. The FCC ultimately scrapped this study, thankfully. My op-ed in The Wall Street Journal may have started us down the path toward this decision. But what compelled the FCC to stop was the opposition of Americans from around the country and across the political spectrum. I wish I could say that the past is prologue, and that the future of free expression is bright. But I’m not so sure. I fear that our cultural consensus on the importance of being able to speak one’s mind is eroding. And nowhere is that consensus more at risk than on college campuses.

A good part of my focus at the Commission has been on opening closed doors for broadcasters to leverage new technology and reinvent themselves and the industry. Another recent area of reform involves the move to transition the public inspection files maintained by broadcasters to an online format. Additionally, last month, the Commission altered its old ad hoc foreign ownership approval procedures to allow broadcasters greater access to capital. On another front, many of you are likely following the Commission’s efforts on AM revitalization, which my colleague Commissioner Pai has been instrumental in moving forward. After a lot of consternation, we were finally able to reach accord and provide many AM radio stations with new options to compete in the ever changing marketplace.