Telecommunication

AT&T now has more than five times fewer legacy DSL customers than it did four years ago. Nevertheless, the company saw a net gain of 82,000 broadband subscribers in the first quarter, an achievement that reflects a major shift in the AT&T broadband mix. "[W]e are completing our broadband transition from DSL to IP broadband,” said AT&T Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer John Stephens. AT&T uses the term “IP broadband” to refer to services delivered over fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) and fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) infrastructure.

As part of the working group efforts within the Federal Communications Commission's Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC), one subcommittee has collected data on telecommunication pole attachment rates and published the information along with some very early data analysis.

[Speech] I know that today’s Expo is specifically focused on technological solutions to the robocall challenge. But if there’s an overarching theme, it’s the need for collaborative solutions. Thanks in large part to technology that makes it incredibly easy and cheap to make large numbers of spoofed robocalls, this is a difficult problem to solve, and everyone needs to play their part in getting the job done. That's why it’s important that Congress is actively engaged. That’s why it’s important that the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission are working together.

The Federal Communications Commission is proposing to help protect the security of the nation’s communications networks through its stewardship of the over $8.5 billion a year Universal Service Fund (USF). The FCC is seeking comment on a proposal to prohibit use of USF funds on the purchase of equipment or services from any company that poses a national security threat to the integrity of US communications networks or the communications supply chain. The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking also seeks comment on a number of issues, including:

Today the Commission will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking comment on a rule to prohibit the future use of Universal Service Funds to purchase equipment or services from providers identified as posing a national security risk. Congress has repeatedly expressed concern about the potential for supply chain vulnerability to undermine national security, and I will vote to approve. But our communications networks face other security threats that we cannot continue to ignore.

The Federal Communications Commission adopted new measures to tackle the problem of failed or poor-quality long-distance calls to rural parts of the United States. 

The Federal Communications Commission proposed modernizing rules governing business data services (BDS) for certain small rural carriers, known as Alternative Connect America Model, or A-CAM, carriers. 

The Federal Communications Commission reached a settlement concluding its investigation into whether T-Mobile USA violated the Communications Act when it failed to correct ongoing problems with delivery of calls to rural consumers and whether it violated the FCC rule that prohibits providers from inserting false ring tones with respect to hundreds of millions of calls. T-Mobile agreed to pay $40 million to the US Treasury and entered into a compliance plan to prevent future violations.