A non-nomadic VoIP component may put an $8.5 million Rural Utilities Service-funded project in West Virginia under state regulation. Spruce Knob Seneca Rocks Telephone, a local service provider, asked the West Virginia Public Service Commission if its project needs a certificate of convenience and necessity. Though provisioning of broadband services isn’t state-regulated and doesn’t need a certificate, there remains the issue of non-nomadic VoIP, PSC staff said. While industry groups claimed that states are preempted from jurisdiction, commission staff cited orders from states like Maine, which indicated federal regulators have not yet taken a position on non-nomadic VoIP jurisdiction issues.

Cable operators soon will be required to carry independent networks once the FCC decides a complainant made an initial case in discrimination disputes, agency officials said. They said commissioners are poised to vote to approve a draft order and rulemaking on program carriage that contains such a standstill requirement. The FCC’s Democratic members have already electronically voted for the item on circulation, or said they will approve it, commission officials told us. They said Commissioner Robert McDowell may also end up voting for the order, but he hasn’t yet decided.

The FCC issued its first guidance on the net neutrality order’s disclosure rules. Among its recommendations, the commission said in a public notice Thursday (http://xrl.us/bkygdq) that the December order allows ISPs to comply with the point-of-sale rules by “directing prospective customers at the point of sale, orally and/or prominently in writing to a web address."

The FCC should classify tw telecom’s facilities-based VoIP services as telecom under Title II and give the company the right “to establish direct IP-to-IP interconnections” with incumbent carriers, the CLEC said in a petition for declaratory ruling. Thursday’s petition is the first of its kind since the Supreme Court ruled in Talk America in June that incumbents must interconnect with competitors “at any technically feasible point” (CD June 10 p7).

The decision whether LightSquared can begin terrestrial-only service will likely come through the International Bureau rather than be a call by the full FCC, an agency spokesman said Thursday. The bureau wasted no time in asking for comments on a working group study of LightSquared interference with GPS signals filed Thursday, signaling the importance of the proceeding to the commission. The public notice asks about LightSquared’s revised roll-out plans that revolve around the company beginning beginning service in the lower part of its L-band spectrum (http://xrl.us/bkygmf). Interested parties have until Aug. 15 to file comments. The inter-bureau spectrum task force will review the study and comments, though the decision was on track to come out of the International Bureau, said the spokesman.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- There’s not enough cash coming into the online video business to support the continued development of high-quality scripted TV programming, John Penney, executive vice president of strategy and business development for Starz, told a Parks Associates conference Wednesday. He said it costs about $3.5 million to create an hour of scripted TV programming, which works out to about $99 million per season of a broadcast TV show. “If there’s no return, obviously no one is going to be making these things,” he said. Online distributors don’t show enough ads to support those costs, he said. “There’s not enough revenue from those online distributors yet to really backfill the transition that’s going on in the economics of television,” he said.

The FCC’s Technology Advisory Committee (TAC) is slated to recommend that the FCC take steps to “turn off” the public switched telephone network (PSTN). TAC is examining a proposed “sunset date” for the PSTN, informed in part by when broadband is available everywhere under the National Broadband Plan and the rollout of wireless, said TAC officials at a meeting Wednesday. TAC, the advisory panel chaired by Tom Wheeler, met at the FCC Wednesday to discuss what may be its most controversial series of recommendations yet. TAC was recently rechartered for a two-year term with Wheeler again at the helm.

The West Virginia Public Service Commission is reviewing Frontier’s request to release a $13.8 million reimbursement from a service quality escrow account. Commission staff and consumer advocates questioned the request, saying the telco hasn’t improved service quality since taking over Verizon’s landlines in the state last year.

The TETRA Association asked the FCC to override objections by public safety groups and others and modify its Part 90 bandwidth and emission limits to allow Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) devices to operate in the U.S. “The overriding point is that there is no reason for the FCC to ban TETRA devices from any specific frequency band or service,” the association said. In April, the FCC launched a rulemaking on proposed technical rules under which digital technologies like TETRA could operate without causing interference to existing systems. The FCC also sought comment on whether TETRA technology would be detrimental to public safety interoperability. The FCC granted a waiver request sought by the TETRA Association, pending the outcome of the rulemaking.

Advocates of special access reform said their patience is wearing thin as the long-awaited FCC data request continues to founder. “From the customer point of view, this delay has been unconscionable,” said Levine Blaszak telco lawyer Colleen Boothby. She represents the Ad Hoc Telecommunications Users Committee, which includes NTCA and other special access customers, such as banks. The commission promised her clients that a second data request would be out by last January, Boothby said. “There’s always some reason for why there’s a delay in the process,” she said. “Every dollar businesses can save by not paying exorbitant special access rates is a dollar they can put into the economy, into creating jobs.”