The vacant channel proposal supported by Microsoft is “an affront” to the FCC’s work on the incentive auction, said America’s Public Television Stations in a letter posted last week in docket 12-268. Reserving vacant channels for unlicensed spectrum “would be potentially devastating to public television and its viewers in this country,” APTS said. “Nothing about this proposal is in the public interest, and the Commission should reject it outright.” Awarding Microsoft free spectrum would “further congest the broadcast spectrum, where hundreds of existing public television translators are hoping to repack,” APTS said. Microsoft didn’t comment. NAB also sent a letter to the FCC on the vacant channel proposal, attaching a Wired column penned by Obama administration tech adviser Susan Crawford (see 1707270032) that criticizes Microsoft’s intentions. “The article suggests that Microsoft’s focus on rural broadband is solely a political strategy designed to curry favor among domestic policymakers,” NAB said.

The Wright Petitioners asked for en banc review of a panel ruling that reversed key FCC inmate calling service pricing decisions, including intrastate rate caps, in a 2015 order (see 1706130047). A divided three-judge's panel's opinion "is at odds with fundamental Chevron principles and conflicts with decisions of the Supreme Court and this Circuit," said the inmate family advocates' petition (in Pacer) for rehearing en banc by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Global Tel*Link v. FCC, No. 15-1461. The panel "struck down FCC regulations designed to rein in monopoly-fueled overcharges for prison inmates’ telephone calls that often constitute the only contact between incarcerated individuals and their families," the petition said Friday. "The panel did so on the basis of its de novo interpretation of the governing statute, refusing, except on one issue, to defer to the FCC’s longstanding statutory interpretations in a notice-and-comment rulemaking. This was not because the interpretations were unreasonable, or because the Commission had rescinded its decision, but because the agency’s Deputy General Counsel represented in a letter to the Court that a majority of the Commission no longer supported all of the issues as briefed. ... Courts review decisions, not letters from counsel." The FCC didn't comment. "Given the history of stays in this proceedings, the FCC’s stance on the crucial issues, and the straight forward arguments presented, this seems a real long shot," NARUC General Counsel Brad Ramsay told us. The Wright Petitioners had said they planned to file the petition when they asked the D.C. Circuit to delay consideration of an industry challenge to a 2016 FCC reconsideration order that revised ICS rates (see 1707140044).

The FCC will mark the Sept. 11 anniversary of the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington with a workshop on best practices for improving situational awareness during 911 outages, said a Thursday notice. The workshop “will include how to strengthen Public Safety Answering Point 911 service outage notifications and how to best communicate with consumers about alternative methods of accessing emergency services,” it said. The Public Safety Bureau will host the event Sept. 11 in the Commission Meeting Room. More details, including the start time, will be revealed later.

The FCC is moving forward on issues important for the deaf and hard of hearing, but regulation often isn't the answer, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai told a Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Inc. (TDI) meeting in Bethesda, Maryland, Thursday: “Advancing the public interest doesn’t always require adopting new rules.” A key to disability access is encouraging the telecom industry to make “accessibility a priority, rather than an afterthought,” he said. One of the most “encouraging developments” is that devices like smartphones have begun incorporating accessibility principles “from the get-go,” Pai said. “Accessibility by design helps those with disabilities stay as current as everyone else when digital, Internet, mobile, and other technologies are developed. It’s also so much easier and cheaper than retrofitting products after the fact.” Pai reflected on how much things have changed since 1968, when TDI launched: “You were using 18-wheelers to schlep discarded teletypewriters that weighed hundreds of pounds to the homes of deaf and hard-of-hearing people. You were doing it so that your community could have telephone access, which everyone else had been enjoying for decades.” Today, people have “mini-computers that fit in our pockets,” he said. Two years ago, then-Chairman Tom Wheeler spoke to TDI (see 1508200044) at its last major meeting. Pai’s comments were later posted.

We had limited access to new substantive filings on the FCC Electronic Comment Filing System Thursday. The FCC didn't comment. The system has been slowed due to large numbers of open internet public comments the past couple of weeks, and had a major backlog last weekend (see 1707240070).

Verizon is trying to get the balance right on buying spectrum versus densifying its network, Chief Financial Officer Matt Ellis told analysts Thursday as it turned around subscriber losses. “We continue to look at the trade-off,” Ellis said: The carrier wants to find “the most efficient way to add the capacity that we need.” Based on the cost of spectrum in some markets, it’s cheaper there to densify the network through small cells and other build outs, he said. “Cost of densification, just like any technology, has come down,” Ellis said. The company continues to add spectrum through buys in the secondary market when it's “priced at the right level,” he said. Verizon lost 398,000 retail postpaid wireless subscribers in the first six weeks of 2017 before it launched an unlimited offering (see 1704200044). Q2, Verizon reported 590,000 postpaid smartphone net adds, with retail postpaid churn of 0.94 percent and postpaid phone churn of 0.7 percent. Ellis said it's very “confident” in low- and mid-band spectrum holdings, remaining interested in the shared 3.5 GHz band. "Verizon reignited its growth engine in the quarter," CEO Lowell McAdam said in a statement. MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett said results overall impressed, beating analyst estimates. "The meme that perhaps best captures the current investor Zeitgeist about the U.S. telecoms is that 'AT&T is playing chess while Verizon is playing checkers,'" Moffett wrote, the thinking being that "at least AT&T, with its string of vertical media moves and diversification, HAS a strategy. Verizon is, to mix metaphors, lost in the woods." But Verizon is showing it also may have a strategy, he said.

AT&T said its decision to join June 12's net neutrality "Day of Action" (see 1707120017) "confounded" organizers. Despite "years" of AT&T open internet support, there was "much seething" from "the Fight for the Future crowd," accusing the telco of "a deliberate attempt to mislead the public, all because we share a common goal but do not embrace common means," blogged Senior Vice President Joan Marsh Wednesday. "Things got weirder" as Twitter effectively blocked tweets of an AT&T blog and other content for several hours, which Twitter blamed on an anti-spam filter "glitch." Twitter told us "the account was erroneously caught in Twitter's anti-spam filters and the glitch was fixed." Sens. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said Twitter should “partner with Congress on a real solution to codify open internet principles. ... It is not difficult to imagine the outrage that would have occurred had an [ISP] experienced a 'glitch' that blocked Twitter” or other tech firms that favor keeping the rules. Net neutrality supporters “do not need a day of action to get Republicans to the negotiation table” on a bipartisan bill, the senators wrote to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. “We sit ready and waiting for a real, factually informed discussion.” House Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., plans a Sept. 7 hearing with the heads of Google parent Alphabet, AT&T, Netflix and others aimed at promoting net neutrality legislation amid perceptions of lack of appetite among Democrats to negotiate (see 1707130063 and 1707250059).

Apartment companies asked the FCC not to propose rules restricting their ability to sign "exclusive marketing, bulk billing, revenue sharing or exclusive wiring agreements" with communications providers. AvalonBay Communities, Equity Residential, Related Cos., Trammel Crow Residential and others shared National Multifamily Housing Council's concerns that regulating such agreements could "raise prices, result in degraded services, decrease competition and slow broadband deployment," said their comments, one of several that trickled in after others were posted this week in docket 17-142 on an inquiry into the multiple tenant environment (MTE) broadband market (see 1707250050). The 31 companies said they have about 1.29 million apartment homes; most of their buildings offer more than one video or broadband service option; and their "unique relationships with service providers that begin prior to building construction" partially "defray the multi-million dollar expense of installing and maintaining the wiring and other infrastructure necessary to provide broadband, video, voice, security and other services." But Public Knowledge urged the FCC to move quickly "to improve choice, competition, affordability, service quality, and deployment of broadband services" in MTEs, including by prohibiting exclusive marketing, bulk billing and exclusive wiring arrangements, revenue sharing agreements and other contractual provisions that limit broadband choice. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance and Next Century Cities backed local ordinances, such as San Francisco's Article 52, giving MTE occupants competitive choices.

American Oversight asked a court to force the FCC to release documents about agency leadership contacts with telecom industry parties on efforts to roll back net neutrality regulation. The group said the FCC "repeatedly delayed" releasing records in response to two Freedom of Information Act requests in April seeking information on meetings and correspondence among Chairman Ajit Pai, five senior staffers, Congress and telecom companies. “The FCC has made it clear that they’re ignoring feedback from the general public, so we’re going to court to find out who they’re actually listening to about Net Neutrality," said Austin Evers, AO executive director, in a release Wednesday. "If the Trump administration is going to let industry lobbyists rewrite the rules of the Internet for millions of Americans, we’re going to make them do it in full view of the public.” A complaint seeking injunctive relief from U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said the commission violated FOIA time limits and improperly withheld records (American Oversight v. FCC, No. 17-1492). The FCC didn't comment. Another 167,669 public comments were posted Wednesday in net neutrality docket 17-108 as of late afternoon, bringing the cumulative total to 12.6 million. Tuesday saw 1.27 million comments posted after only 203,519 were posted Monday. The commission said 1.5 million comments filed over the weekend created a backlog (see 1707240070).

Sinclair and Tribune haven’t sufficiently explained why contracts and other information requested by Dish Network, Public Knowledge and the American Cable Association aren’t relevant to a public interest analysis, said Dish, PK and ACA in a joint reply to Sinclair and Tribune opposition (see 1707200048) in FCC docket 17-179. NTCA, Common Cause and networks supported the request (see 1707210050). Sinclair and Tribune’s submissions “include no documentary sources or affidavits that would allow their confirmation,” said ACA, Dish and PK. Their application “concedes that, as it stands, it violates several provisions of the Commission’s ownership rules, without offering a concrete plan for how to cure these violations,” they said. Though the combining broadcasters said the information request is procedurally out of order, Dish, ACA and PK said they're informing the FCC for what information it should request, not upending procedure. “The Commission cannot conclude that the transaction is in the public interest based on the record as it currently exists,” the joint filing said. Arguments that a 2015 court battle over confidential documents about AT&T/Direct TV and other MVPD deals shows retransmission consent contracts shouldn’t be part of the information available to third parties during deal review are incorrect, said Dish, ACA and PK. CBS v. FCC “does not say that retransmission consent agreements are off limits; it simply holds that the showing made by the Commission in that case was insufficient,” they said. The information initially requested by Dish, ACA, PK and the others is “not exhaustive,” the joint filing said.