Telecommunication

The Federal Communications Commission is intervening in a court case in order to help Charter Communications avoid utility-style consumer protections related to its phone service in Minnesota. The FCC and Charter both want to avoid a precedent that could lead other states to impose stricter consumer protection rules on VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone service offered by cable companies. The FCC has never definitively settled the regulatory status of VoIP.

President Trump-appointed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has rubberstamped the elimination of several policies and protections that are critical to closing the digital divide. Among these now-battered policies is an item that will be decided on in November and will give telecom giants a green light to abandon their rural customers.

The Federal Communications Commission announced it has reached a $1.7 million consent decree with Securus Technologies resolving an investigation into whether Securus provided inaccurate and misleading information to the FCC regarding the company’s transfer of control to Platinum Equity, LLC.  As part of the consent decree, Securus will implement a strict compliance plan.

CenturyLink and Level 3 Communications' proposed merger cleared its last government hurdle nearly a year after the two telecommunications companies announced their combination. The Federal Communications Commission approved the deal after similar nods by state regulators and the Department of Justice earlier in 2017. Worth $25 billion when it was announced in 2016, the deal’s close was delayed for weeks as regulators took their time to review its competitive effects.

CenturyLink is joining the chorus of incumbent telecommunication companies that want the copper retirement and legacy service discontinuance process to be simplified to facilitate the build out and expansion of next-gen fiber and IP-based services.

In an Federal Communications Commission filing, CenturyLink has asked the regulator to streamline the Section 214 and copper retirement processes. “CenturyLink expressed wholehearted support for the Commission’s proposals to expedite and streamline the Section 214 and copper retirement processes,” Century wrote. “The migration to next-generation facilities and services is both natural and desirable. The Commission therefore should eliminate prior approval requirements where possible and streamline those that remain.”

In response to concerns about threatening phone calls targeting schools, religious centers and other organizations, the Federal Communications Commission voted to allow law enforcement authorities – under specific circumstances –to access blocked caller ID information when needed to identify and thwart threatening callers. The Commission’s action creates an exemption to a rule prohibiting carriers from disclosing blocked caller ID information. Threatened organizations will no longer need to get a waiver from the rule on a case-by-case basis, enabling quicker investigation of threatening calls.

The Federal Communications Commission is looking to expand the consumer and economic benefits provided by consumers being able to take their phone number to any carrier. Number portability enables consumers and businesses to keep their current phone number when changing providers or, in some instances, when moving to a new location. But currently, nationwide number portability is limited. Now, the FCC is seeking comment on the best ways to provide complete nationwide number portability.

In a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and Notice of Inquiry, the FCC is seeking comment on the regulatory and technological changes that would be required to implement complete nationwide number portability between all service providers, regardless of size or type. Because the transition to complete nationwide number portability will require extensive work, collaboration and support by all parties involved, the Notice proposes taking an incremental approach.

The Federal Communications Commission approved updates to various Commission rules for hearing aid compatibility and volume control on wireline and wireless telephones. Under the Hearing Aid Compatibility Act, the Commission is required to establish rules that ensure access by people with hearing loss to telephones manufactured or imported for use in the United States.

With today’s action, the Commission continues its efforts to ensure that tens of millions of Americans with hearing loss have access to and can benefit from critical and modern communication technologies and services. With the Order, the Commission adopted a revised volume control standard for wireline handsets to provide a more accurate measurement of voice amplification. The Order also implements a provision of the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act to apply all the Commission’s hearing aid compatibility requirements to wireline telephones used with advanced communication services, including phones used with Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) services. Compliance with these provisions must be achieved within two years.

The Federal Communications Commission eliminated the requirement that US providers of international telecommunications services file annual Traffic and Revenue Reports. The FCC also streamlined the requirements for filing Circuit Capacity Reports. These actions minimize the costs to both industry and the Commission while providing the Commission with the information it needs to fulfill its statutory obligations and protect US consumers and carriers.

The Report and Order finds that the costs of the traffic and revenue data collection now exceed the benefits of the FCC collecting the information from international service providers on an annual basis. Instead, the Commission will rely, as necessary, on targeted data requests to international service providers, in combination with third-party commercial data sources, to achieve its statutory objectives. Today’s action also concludes that the benefits of the Circuit Capacity Reports continue to justify the estimated costs of this data collection. However, the Commission streamlines the reporting by eliminating the requirement that carriers file circuit data for terrestrial and satellite facilities. The data from the Circuit Capacity Reports that will continue to be collected are necessary for the Commission to fulfill its statutory obligations, including those related to national security and public safety, and will continue to play a vital public interest role for other federal agencies.

There's widespread agreement that prisoners in the US pay far too much for phone calls, but several of the Federal Communications Commission's attempts to cap those prices have been blocked in court. One of the biggest obstacles is that phone companies have to pay large "site commissions" to prisons and jails in order to win the exclusive right to offer phone service to inmates. Prison phone company Correct Solutions Group has a contract with the Union Parish Detention Center that requires it to pay the jail a commission of 60 percent of the total gross revenue of phone calls.

Call prices have sometimes hit $14 a minute because of the high per-minute rates and various fees applied to inmate calls, according to the FCC. In October 2015, the FCC voted to impose caps of 11¢ to 22¢ per minute on all interstate and intrastate inmate calling prices. The October 2015 ruling did not ban site commissions, but the FCC wanted the new limits to encourage a shift away from the payments. If the FCC's proposed caps had fully taken effect, inmates would today be paying much lower prices, and prisons and jails would likely have had to accept lower commission payments. But after voting to limit prices, the FCC repeatedly had to go back to the drawing board when judges threw out certain parts of the price cap rulings.