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AT&T Lauded for Initial Compliance Efforts on DirecTV Conditions; More Testing Needed

An independent compliance officer (ICO) gave AT&T high marks for its efforts to satisfy FCC conditions on its 2015 takeover of DirecTV (see 1507280043). Donald Stern, a managing director of Affiliated Monitors who was named ICO under an agency monitoring…

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process, said AT&T met its reporting obligations for the transaction, including submitting a report Jan. 27 on its compliance with conditions. "The staff and leadership of AT&T has been cooperative and supportive of the ICO," he said in his report to the commission, which was posted Monday in docket 14-90. Stern noted compliance and evaluation complexities for AT&T and himself, and said he hadn't been able to independently verify substantive information provided by the company. But he said he had been able to review AT&T's descriptions of its compliance systems and processes, and had begun testing to validate company data. Stern said AT&T met its reporting duties for complying with four conditions he reviewed: (1) to deploy fiber to the premises (FTTP) to 12.5 million new mass-market customer locations (only 1.5 million of which can be in new, "greenfield" housing developments) within four years; (2) to offer 1 Gbps service to schools and libraries eligible for E-rate discounts in, or contiguous with, areas where AT&T has FTTP service; (3) not to favor affiliated programming over unaffiliated programming, including through an exemption of affiliated services from usage-based allowances; and (4) to devise a program to boost broadband adoption by low-income households in the company's wireline footprint. He said initial verification testing "tends to confirm the reliability of reported FTTP information, but more testing is needed." AT&T data were generally redacted. Stern didn't report on an Internet interconnection disclosure condition, which is the subject of a separate review process.