"A vaguely worded statement buried" in the last paragraph of terms and conditions and not part of the uniform service contract isn't adequate disclosure of public Wi-Fi hot spots being broadcast from customers' homes, said a response (in PACER) filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Central Islip, New York, in opposition to a motion to dismiss a suit against the cable ISP and parent Altice. Plaintiff Paul Jensen of Brooklyn said Cablevision/Altice claims the Wi-Fi policy is divulged in the general terms and conditions of service, but the link provided in the motion to dismiss redirects people to another page with another set of links to 22 different terms of service, with the fourth one down directing people to yet another web page giving details about Optimum Online Service operating as a wireless hot spot. Jensen said parent companies aren't automatically liable for subsidiaries' actions, but the parents can be found liable where the actions were done at the parent's direction, and Altice controls Cablevision decision-making. Jensen said Cablevision/Altice is wrong when it argues that each use of a customer's Optimum router is a distinct alleged offense and none of those individually reaches the $5,000 damages threshold, since courts have found that damages to a class as a whole can be aggregated to meet that $5,000 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act threshold. Altice didn't comment Tuesday.

The FCC told the Universal Service Administrative Co. to reserve 100 percent of the E-rate funds it needs to cover three categories of potential funding disbursements: "(1) pending applications; (2) funding that has been committed but not yet disbursed; and (3) appeals pending with USAC and the Commission." Noting USAC had been reserving some funds for older appeals on an ad hoc basis despite a 2014 FCC letter's guidance, the commission said it sought to clarify various instructions to "provide a clearer and more consistent E-rate fund reserve practice for USAC" to implement. "The direction to reserve 100 percent for the above-referenced categories alters the 2014 Letter guidance that generally instructed USAC to not reserve funds for pending applications that are older than three years and pending appeals," said FCC Managing Director Mark Stephens in a letter to USAC listed in Tuesday's Daily Digest. "We know that not all funding applications are granted, not all committed funds are disbursed and not all pending appeals are granted. However, we have determined that a 100 percent reserve rate is the most consistent and transparent way for USAC to track needed funds and provides certainty that there is available funding for disbursements." Stephens gave other guidance details, including on "carry forward procedures" for the accounting of unused funds. USAC didn't comment.

The next meeting of the World Radiocommunication Conference in 2019 is critical and industry needs to find consensus, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai told the FCC’s WRC-19 Advisory Committee Tuesday. “I don’t have to tell you how critical the WRC is for American industry and ultimately American consumers,” Pai said, according to his written remarks. “You have all seen it firsthand, many of you over the course of several conferences. Spectrum decisions made at the WRC will have an impact that lasts long after the conference lights go dark.” The next WRC must “promote a stable, predictable regulatory environment,” Pai said. “This is the best way to facilitate long-term investments in a multi-trillion dollar communications industry and to usher in new services to consumers.” The next WRC will look at high-frequency spectrum for broadband, high-altitude platform stations, massive constellations of Non-Geosynchronous Orbit satellite systems and “communications to and from planes, trains and automobiles,” Pai said. The FCC advisory committee represents the interest of industry in U.S. preparation for the WRC. “Your efforts will ensure that the FCC represents effectively a broad spectrum of views during international negotiations and in the course of domestic decision-making,” Pai said. Former Chairman Tom Wheeler briefly visited the last WRC when it met in Geneva in 2015, where he pressed for a worldwide approach to broadband in the TV bands, before the start of the U.S. TV incentive auction (see 1511050041).

With an eye on 5G, Verizon said it signed a three-year minimum purchase agreement to buy $1.05 billion worth of Corning fiber cable. That translates to as much as 12.4 million miles of fiber per year, from 2018 through 2020, Verizon said in a Tuesday news release. “Verizon has been reinventing its network architecture around a next-generation fiber platform that will support all of the company’s businesses,” Verizon said. “This new architecture is designed to improve Verizon’s 4G LTE coverage, speed the deployment of 5G, and deliver high-speed broadband to homes and businesses of all sizes.” In an initial deployment, Verizon said it launched One Fiber in Boston last year with plans to invest $300 million over six years to deploy fiber throughout the city. Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam said on CNBC Tuesday that the deal is important as Verizon densifies its network through small cells. Verizon will launch 5G in 11 markets this summer, he said: “This is one of those where if you build it, they’ll come.” McAdam said an FCC proposal to speed wireless infrastructure deployment, teed up for a vote at the FCC Thursday (see 1703300060), is also critical. The proposed rules are “important to us,” he said. “It’s working with the communities to make sure that the conduits are available that facilitates the small-cell placement, that puts a shot clock on the amount of time before permits are approved in the municipalities; those sorts of things will help us move it forward.” Verizon has about 60,000 macro towers and 13,000 small cells now, McAdam said: “When we get rolling” in places like Boston “we’ll put 8,000, 10,000 small cells, literally the size of your hand.” The next networks will look very different from 4G and earlier networks, which were focused on capacity and throughput, he said. “Fifth generation is about those things, and we’re going to see 100 times faster throughput,” but also with much less latency, McAdam said. “The network will go out and come back and respond in less than the time it takes to blink your eye,” he said. “We’re going to see 10 times the battery life that we’ve seen in the past. That opens up a whole new set of applications.” But none of the changes is possible without fiber “deep in the network,” he said.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s proposal for an Office of Economics and Data (see 1704050047) should lead to better regulation, especially if it means more cost-benefit analysis (CBA) of pending regulations, said Caroline Cecot, affiliate faculty member at George Mason University Law School, in a Technology Policy Institute blog post. Borrowing language from President Donald Trump, she said the push could "make economics at the FCC great again.” The proposed office would, “among other things, prepare CBAs to help the Commission determine whether the benefits of a given proposal are expected to outweigh its costs and consider how the costs and benefits of the proposal will be distributed among different segments of society,” Cecot wrote. “Once controversial, CBA -- or at least some form of CBA -- is now almost synonymous with sound policy.” Meanwhile, the Free State Foundation said in a new paper that regulation from the FCC led to less investment. “Telecommunications, a sector that should be leading the way in innovation, continues to be too heavily regulated,” said the paper by Senior Fellow Theodore Bolema. “While some eras are characterized by great regulatory accumulation and others by little or no accumulation, the direction, especially in the last several years of the [Tom] Wheeler Commission, has been continuously toward imposing more regulatory burdens.”

With the first meeting of the FCC’s new Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee set for Friday (see 1704060038), Deere & Company underscored the importance of broadband to agriculture. “Deere has undertaken to bring special attention to the growing need for high-speed broadband of rural users and, in particular, the agricultural sector which remains the lifeblood of a majority of the nation’s rural economies and communities,” the company said in a filing at the FCC in docket 17-83. “Deere is hopeful that the BDAC will address the particular needs and challenges of the nation’s rural areas in devising recommendations to lower barriers to high speed broadband deployment.” Deere specifically recommended that BDAC Streamlining Federal Siting working group be renamed the “Rural Areas, including Streamlining Federal Siting” working group. “With this change, this working group would have the challenges of high speed broadband deployment in rural areas clearly within its focus,” the filing said.

Following the Trump administration's directives to eliminate regulations, the FTC said several initiatives are underway to simplify processes and enhance transparency. "We are focusing our resources where they will do the most good for the public and eliminating wasteful, legacy regulations and processes that have outlived their usefulness," said acting FTC Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen in a Monday news release. New groups within the Bureau of Competition and Bureau of Consumer Protection are trying to "streamline demands for information in investigations" from companies and individuals as a way to cut "unnecessary costs," said the FTC. It said both bureaus are also closing older investigations, if appropriate. The Consumer Protection Bureau also is trying to distill "key lessons" from closed data security investigations to help provide guidance and transparency (see 1702020020), the agency said. And that bureau is collaborating with the Bureau of Economics to integrate its expertise earlier in investigations to improve decision making on the impact to consumers from enforcement actions, the release said. The agency said Ohlhausen created a new capability to help her office collect and review ideas on streamlining processes and improving operational efficiencies.

Increasing levels of RF noise will create a “world of pain” for radio communications services, the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers said in a meeting with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai Tuesday, according to an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 16-191. “If the noise situation is not addressed the highly-anticipated IoT may fall well short of expectation,” AFCCE said. Lack of adequate rule enforcement is leading to “both increased unlicensed operations and increasingly non-compliant operations, both of which frustrate rule-abiding operators and challenge the ability to share spectrum,” the group said. It said the FCC should expedite the creation of online interference complaint portals and “re-establish programs of random inspections and post-marketing sampling and measurements to assess and monitor the state of compliance.”

The FCC proposed a $404,166 fine against a New York man, Jay Peralta, for apparently operating without authorization from the agency a radio on frequencies licensed to the New York City Police Department, and “maliciously interfering with NYPD officers’ communications, and transmitting false distress calls.” Commissioners approved the proposed fine. Peralta admitted to making “10-13” and “10-85” calls on the NYPD radio system, both denoting that an officer needs assistance, said an NAL. “Through his actions, as he described them to the NYPD, Mr. Peralta has demonstrated not only a deliberate disregard of the Commission’s authority and rules, but of the safety of NYPD officers and the public that they are called to serve and protect,” the FCC said. “Commission action in this context is therefore essential to safeguard authorized operations on spectrum licensed for public safety uses, and, accordingly, a substantial penalty appears warranted.” With the order, "the FCC makes it abundantly clear that it will not tolerate unauthorized and illegal use of the radio spectrum,” Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement. "This may not be a typical pirate radio case in which an unauthorized operator inflicts damage on a radio broadcaster that is operating with a valid FCC license, but it does involve unauthorized interference to critical public safety communications systems.” Peralta couldn't be reached for comment.

Dividing the 47 GHz and 50 GHz bands into four sub-bands will let fixed satellite services (FSS) safely share that spectrum with upper microwave flexible use (UMFUS) systems' 5G operations, satellite operators said in a docket 14-177 FCC filing Thursday. For the 47.2-48.2 GHz band, now designated for terrestrial wireless use, UMFUS would keep primary position in the band but FSS would be allowed to share via individually licensed earth stations deployed on a protected basis, the operators proposed. The 48.2-50.2 GHz band would remain designated primarily for FSS uplinks. For 50.4-51.4 GHz, allocated on a co-primary basis to FSS, mobile and fixed services, though not used now by any of those services, UMFUS would be designated as primary in densely populated areas, while elsewhere, UMFUS and FSS should be designated as co-primaries. They said the 51.4-52.4 band should receive similar treatment. Behind the proposal are EchoStar and its Hughes Network Systems, Intelsat, Inmarsat and OneWeb. OneWeb is joining with Intelsat.