Adam Bender

DALLAS -- Competitive phone companies must retool lobbying efforts for a changed Washington, industry executives said Thursday on a panel at the CompTel show. Competitors should find creative new ways to pitch their interests and should lobby all parts of government, panelists said. “As the players change, our message has to change, too,” said Matt Salmon, CompTel’s president.

DALLAS -- Competitive phone companies are eager for a new FCC after suffering eight years of policy favoring incumbent carriers, TW Telecom CEO Larissa Herda said in a keynote late Tuesday at the CompTel show. Competitors survived “one of the most unfriendly regulatory environments possible,” Herda said.

DALLAS -- Competitive phone companies believe procedural reform is needed at the FCC, representatives of competitive local exchange carriers said Tuesday on a CompTel panel on agency hot topics. Competitors should submit their ideas to the commission, perhaps together under the CompTel banner, said attorney Genevieve Morelli. Officials made predictions on other issues important to competitive local exchange carriers, including how the FCC will deal with two Verizon forbearance petitions and the longstanding fight over universal service and overhauling intercarrier compensation.

The Obama administration defended the law granting immunity to telecom carriers that took part in the government’s warrantless wiretapping. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco this month suggested that the FISA Amendments Act, enacted last year, may be unconstitutional because it seemed to give “literally no guidance for the exercise of discretion” by the attorney general (CD Feb 13 p8). But “nothing in the Constitution prevents Congress from granting to the Attorney General broad discretion regarding whether and when to use his authority” under the surveillance law, the Justice Department told the court last week. Further, the Act doesn’t delegate “anything resembling legislative power” to the attorney general, DoJ said. Rather, the official’s role “is limited to gathering and presenting” facts in court, it said. Even if Congress did give the attorney general decision-making authority, it provided the “specific and narrow” guidelines required, the department said. DoJ’s brief marked the Obama administration entry into the court case. It’s “disappointing” that DoJ’s position hasn’t changed under the new president, Cindy Cohn, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s legal director, said in an interview. EFF is representing customers of AT&T and other carriers in the case. The filing looked “no different” from what EFF would have expected from the Bush administration, she said. As a senator, President Barack Obama voted for the FISA legislation, despite having publicly opposed telco immunity. In a statement Thursday, a Justice Department spokesman said the immunity bill “is the law of the land, and as such the Department of Justice defends it in court.” But DoJ’s hands weren’t tied, Cohn said. On the bright side, she said, the somewhat unenthusiastic statement leaves open the possibility that the Obama administration may reconsider the official executive branch view. It’s unclear when the judge will issue a ruling, Cohn said. Judge Walker probably won’t schedule another oral argument, but he could ask for more briefs from parties, she said.

More than 600 telecom carriers each face $20,000 fines for failing to file annual certifications last year showing compliance with Customer Proprietary Network Information rules, the FCC said late Tuesday. Other operators, accused of filing faulty certifications, face fines of $1,000 to $10,000. Most of the carriers that received notices of apparent liability were small companies from across the wireline, wireless and satellite industries. The fines are a part of the FCC’s efforts to “reduce its backlog” and provide “improved regulatory guidance,” the commission said.

AT&T didn’t violate antitrust laws when it set DSL prices high at wholesale and low at retail, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. The court reversed an appeals-court decision allowing a “price squeeze” claim against the carrier. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the unanimous decision in Pacific Bell v. LinkLine. Justices John Stevens, David Souter and Ruth Ginsburg signed on to a concurrence by Stephen Breyer that differed narrowly with Roberts’ opinion.

The FCC took flak on Friday from federal court judges about two orders granting incumbent phone companies forbearance from dominant carrier requirements applying to the special access market. The exchange took place during oral argument at the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit. The case concerns FCC decisions in 2007 to grant petitions by AT&T, Embarq and Frontier, which were submitted as “me too” requests following a deemed-granted ruling for Verizon. In oral argument, Judges David Sentelle, Brett Kavanaugh and Harry Edwards had far more questions for the FCC than for petitioners representing business end users and competitive carriers.

The FCC is mulling an extension to the filing deadline for the revised FCC Form 477, an FCC official told us Friday. The completed form, which will collect broadband availability data by census tract, is due from companies March 2 but isn’t yet accessible on the FCC Web site. Requests for delay were submitted by most major wireline and wireless industry groups this month, but the FCC has so far kept mum on the issue.

Requiring opt-in customer consent before a carrier shares information with outsiders doesn’t violate carriers’ First Amendment rights or the Administrative Procedure Act, the U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, ruled Friday. It rejected the NCTA’s challenge to a 2007 FCC order on customer proprietary network information. “There is nothing” to the NCTA’s argument that “the administrative record does not support the Commission’s Order,” the court said. Judge Raymond Randolph wrote the decision, which was supported by Judith Rogers and David Tatel.

The FCC released instructions for its new Form 477, to collect information about broadband deployment by census tract. Screenshots and answers to frequently asked questions are also now available on the FCC Web site at www.fcc.gov/form477, the commission said Thursday. The new Web-based interface through which filers will submit forms will be available on fcc.gov “as soon as possible,” the agency said. Filers must submit it by March 2. The FCC’s public notice made no mention of a request by several major rural associations to extend the due date by 120 days (CD Feb 12 p11). The companies argued an extension was warranted because the new form still isn’t available on the FCC site. An FCC spokesman declined comment. Rural carriers are grateful for the FCC’s outreach efforts, but the new information doesn’t get rid of the “logistical problems of filling in the form at such short notice,” said Steve Pastorkovich, senior policy analyst at the Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies. OPASTCO, one of the rural-carrier groups that asked for a 120-day extension, was making its case on the eighth floor Thursday morning, he said. The group understands the FCC’s desire for speed, he said, but a “short extension” would improve the accuracy of the information, he said.