An item added to the FCC list of circulating proposed rules Friday appears to be a declaratory ruling on a petition requesting that broadcasters be allowed to satisfy equal employment opportunity requirements with postings only online. An FCC spokesman confirmed the petition for rulemaking "Seeking to Allow the Sole Use of Internet Sources for FCC EEO Recruitment Requirements, Declaratory Ruling,” refers to a petition requesting the rule change that was filed in December by Sun Valley Radio and Canyon Media (see 1612190062). "The daily newspaper, previously cited by the FCC as the presumptive way to reach all groups within a community, now pales in its reach within the community compared to the Internet,” said the petition. Currently, broadcasters must widely disseminate job postings, and can't advertise them only online or on their own airwaves, a broadcast attorney told us. Commissioner Mike O’Rielly repeatedly has endorsed loosening the rules.

State ISP privacy measures are “unnecessary,” a CTIA spokesman emailed Wednesday, joining USTelecom and ISPs slamming state legislatures that are moving to adopt internet privacy protections after President Donald Trump and Congress used the Congressional Review Act to kill FCC broadband privacy rules (see 1704050037). “The wireless industry takes a proactive and serious approach to protecting consumer privacy,” the CTIA spokesman said. “Federal and state laws already on the books and other industry protections safeguarding consumer privacy remain firmly intact today.” Meanwhile, the Washington state House plans a hearing April 12 on a broadband privacy bill (HB-2200) introduced Wednesday with about 75 sponsors from both political parties. It requires broadband internet access service (BIAS) providers to notify customers about privacy policies, obtain opt-out approval from a customer to use, disclose or permit access to nonsensitive customer proprietary data and take reasonable measures to protect customer personal information from unauthorized use, disclosure or access. “There are a couple notably industry-friendlier provisions, including exempting internal use of customer data from disclosure requirements,” said the American Legislative Exchange Council’s Jonathon Hauenschild. And it allows ISPs to charge more for services for those who don’t permit ISPs to share their data, emailed the Communications and Technology Task Force director. On the Minnesota House floor Thursday, lawmakers considered an omnibus jobs bill (SF-1937) including a privacy amendment stating that no telecom or ISP operating in Minnesota may collect personal information from a customer without written consent. The House hadn't voted at our deadline.

Correction: CPB isn't involved in the Protect My Public Media campaign, which is co-managed by America's Public Television Stations and NPR, and includes PBS as a partner (see 1704040079).

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai named 29 members to the commission’s new Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee, to be chaired by Elizabeth Pierce, CEO of Quintillion Subsea Operations. The group will meet for the first time April 21, said a Thursday news release. “I’m excited that the Committee will soon be getting to work on recommendations that will help break down barriers to broadband deployment,” Pai said. “Closing the digital divide across America is my top priority, and the work of this committee will be a crucial step toward meeting that goal.” The FCC received more than 380 applications to sit on the BDAC and another 58 will be designated for its working groups, Pai said. Kelleigh Cole, director of the Utah Broadband Outreach Center in the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Development, will be vice chair. In most FCC advisory groups, the work gets done in the working groups and Pai designated five. Model Code for Municipalities will be chaired by Douglas Dimitroff of the New York State Wireless Association and Sam Liccardo, mayor of San Jose, California, will be vice chairman. Model Code for States to be chaired by Kelly McGriff, Southern Light, and the vice chair will be Karen Charles Peterson, commissioner with the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable. Other working groups are: Competitive Access to Broadband Infrastructure -- Ken Simon, Crown Castle, chairman, Brent Skorup of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, vice chairman; Removing State and Local Regulatory Barriers -- Robert DeBroux, TDS Telecom, chairman, Kim Keenan of the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council, vice chair; Streamlining Federal Siting -- Jonathan Adelstein of the Wireless Infrastructure Association, chairman, Valerie Fast Horse of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, vice chair. The April 21 meeting starts at 10 a.m. in the Commission Meeting Room. A full list of members is here, including members from AT&T Mobile, Comcast, Google Fiber, the LGBT Technology Partnership and Institute, Mimosa Networks, Sprint and Southern Co. The FCC also released a public notice establishing a docket for comments to BDAC or to file documents for its use. The docket is 17-83.

House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Mike Doyle, D-Pa., saw a difference between how some congressional Republicans talked publicly and privately about the Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to kill FCC ISP privacy rules, recently signed into law, he said on an episode of C-SPAN’s The Communicators, set to be televised this weekend and be online. “We talked to many Republicans who agreed privately that this certainly was not a good move for the party,” Doyle said, not naming anyone. A group of 15 Republicans voted against the CRA during its House vote, and no Democrats voted for it. Doyle said he expects a similar fight over the 2015 open internet order if Chairman Ajit Pai seeks to undo the order. “This isn’t something they can do with a CRA or they can rush through,” Doyle said. “I believe they will hear from literally millions of Americans who do not agree with the action the chairman is about to take.” On the matter of privacy, he said the FTC wouldn't be sufficient due to its lack of rulemaking authority. He didn’t see undoing the FCC rules as a matter of bringing parity to the telecom and tech companies on privacy, as some have argued. “You have choice,” he said of online privacy, arguing that a person who doesn’t like Google could use Bing. Many Americans have the choice of only one ISP, he said. Democrats want “strong consumer protections,” he stressed, talking about his interest in competition and what that means for the telecom industry. He isn’t pushing for any particular contender to become FCC commissioner, he said.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's business data services overhaul may be the subject of some negotiation over certain aspects of its rollout, House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Mike Doyle, D-Pa., said in an interview Wednesday. “He and I have spoken personally,” said Doyle, who has fought for BDS overhaul for years and is unhappy with the overall direction of Pai’s draft item. “I’m still working with him on if this is to be on how it’s rolled out. We’re still sort of in negotiations on that.” The item was released in draft form last week and tentatively scheduled for consideration at the April 20 commission meeting (see 1703300052), with some expecting a 2-1 vote with the agency's sole Democratic member, Mignon Clyburn, opposed (see 1704050048 and 1704030050). “I think he’s going to move forward with the deregulation; the question is how quickly that takes place," Doyle told us of his understanding. "Is it like a flash cut or you have a break-in period where it’s done over a period of time so that people can adjust to the changes in the market? That’s not been determined yet; that’s what we were talking about. But I think he’s made it pretty clear he’ll move forward with deregulating most of the market.” Doyle sees bad consequences of such deregulation: “The end result is going to be increased prices on the backbone and on people that use business data services,” Doyle said. “We were hoping for him to continue the fact-finding that was started, but he’s made a decision to say, ‘Well, there’s competition in these markets and therefore we’re deregulating about three-quarters.’” Doyle cited the issue briefly during a Wednesday spectrum hearing when questioning witnesses. Doyle said he wanted to mention the issue “in light of when you talk about 5G deployment, one of the components of that is the cost of the backbone.” He backed former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's efforts on BDS: “We came so close to getting it done, and we just weren’t able to get that third vote.” Pai now is “moving forward to deregulate BDS prematurely, I believe." During the hearing, CTIA Vice President-Regulatory Affairs Scott Bergmann didn’t comment on Pai’s item and noted CTIA members differ on how they think backhaul should be regulated. “We are always trying to find ways to drive down cost,” Bergmann said. An FCC spokesman declined comment on any talks with Doyle.

Various parts of Ligado's LTE plans face spectrum-related opposition, which raises the risk of financial challenges for the company, said satellite consultant Tim Farrar in a blog post Wednesday. Farrar said there are indications the Federal Aviation Administration will heavily limit power levels in the 1527-1537 MHz downlink band, and the Department of Transportation may put even tighter limits; and there are efforts by the earth science community to prohibit an auction of the 1675-1680 MHz spectrum used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Iridium is trying to block use of the 1627.5-1637.5 MHz uplink band, and the 1647-1657 MHz uplink band likely can be paired only with 1527-1537 MHz low-powered downlinks. He also cited a column Tuesday in The Hill by Robert McDowell of Cooley in which the former FCC commissioner said Ligado's LTE plan, like the one proposed in 2010 by its predecessor LightSquared, "still causes harmful interference to already-licensed neighbors such as satellite services providers, NOAA’s weather service and the aviation industry" and should be rejected by the FCC. Farrar said Ligado has the finances to last into next year and continue lobbying, but the FCC may come to a decision this month given Chairman Ajit Pai's indication the agency plans to answer petitions within one year and Ligado's application and petition were put on public notice April 22, 2016. The agency didn't comment. Ligado in a statement Wednesday said McDowell -- whose firm represents Iridium -- made an "outdated and inaccurate characterization" of its satellite/terrestrial network and noted that McDowell, when testifying in 2014 as an expert witness in LightSquared's Chapter 11 bankruptcy, indicated GPS coexistence with Ligado's LTE network was technically feasible. McDowell told us Wednesday his 2014 testimony was about FCC process and timing issues, not about out-of-band emissions concerns in the 1627.5-1637.5 MHz band, and that Ligado's LTE plans still haven't resolved those. Ligado outside counsel Gerard Waldron of Covington & Burling said DOD indicated at a DOT workshop last month on adjacent band compatibility that it was comfortable with Ligado's LTE plans. A final DOT report is due later this month, Waldron said.

Raymond James' Frank Louthan said a business data service order likely will be approved 2-1 by FCC commissioners, agreeing with other observers (see 1704030050). The analyst told us Wednesday he hopes Chairman Ajit Pai can get Commissioner Mignon Clyburn "to agree to some aspect it, somehow bridge the divide there ideologically," but said he's "not confident that will happen." Louthan called the previous FCC's approach to competition flawed. "They did not look at cable impact enough, and I think that there were some other artificial bright lines on what defined competition that were unnecessary," he said. "The overall cost savings to the companies that were pushing for it appeared small to me as well, once they actually disclosed it." A deregulatory-oriented draft BDS order is tentatively scheduled for an April 20 vote (see 1703300052). Incumbent telcos are the traditional providers of BDS to competitors on a wholesale basis and businesses on a retail basis, but they face new competition. Laurence Glass, founder of Lariat, a Wyoming fixed wireless ISP, said wholesale special access services (the traditional term he prefers to BDS) "are especially important to broadband deployment" and are "perhaps the only services of this type" the FCC needs to regulate. "If wholesale services are readily available and fairly priced, multiple competitors will use them to create services at the retail level," he said in a filing posted Wednesday in docket 05-25 on a phone call he had with a Pai aide. To deploy in unserved areas, WISPs need "middle mile" special access services to establish a "beach head" in a nearby town to achieve economies of scale, Glass wrote, but incumbent telco and cable providers can thwart competition through wholesale pricing above retail pricing or refusing to make the service available. "Unfortunately" he wrote, the draft order "declines to address the anti-competitive practices of pricing wholesale services above retail" and also of refusing to deal.

Representatives of T-Mobile asked officials from the FCC Incentive Auction Task Force to follow its schedule as planned with the transition about to begin. T-Mobile met with numerous IATF staffers, including head Gary Epstein, said a Monday filing in docket 12-268. “Representatives from T-Mobile discussed the status of broadcaster and vendor preparations for the Post-Auction Transition and T-Mobile’s engagement with various stakeholders to help identify and resolve transition hurdles,” the carrier said. “Based on transition data assembled by T-Mobile for more than 1,000 stations obtained from direct outreach to broadcasters and publicly-available sources, the IATF staff’s efforts to optimize the repack will exceed most expectations and minimize disruption to television broadcasters and their viewers.” The company said it discussed several potential issues and how to address them, including: “collocated FM stations, the desire of many relinquishing stations to be able to turn in their licenses early, the likelihood of applications to seek expanded facilities in the second application window, and the anticipated increase in mergers and acquisitions among broadcasters.” NAB sought a do-over on key aspects of the plan (see 1703170055).

Sprint and Windstream highlighted their business data service concerns at the FCC, as commissioners consider a draft BDS order tentatively scheduled for an April 20 vote (see 1703300052). Officials of both companies "discussed the importance of providing BDS customers with sufficient time to adapt to a radically altered BDS framework, and ensuring that incumbent local exchange carriers do not increase DS1 and DS3 rates in response to deregulation," said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 05-25 on a meeting they had with an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn Thursday. That day, Chairman Ajit Pai released the BDS draft to create "a new framework that minimizes unnecessary government intervention" and relies more on market forces. A day earlier, Granite Telecommunications officials had met with Pai and an aide and separately with a Clyburn aide on BDS-related technology transition issues. "Granite discussed the importance of maintaining a reasonable transition timeframe for the interim rule that incumbent LECs seeking [Communications Act] Section 214 authority to discontinue a TDM-based commercial wholesale platform voice service that is currently used as a wholesale input by competitive carriers must provide competitive carriers with reasonably comparable access on reasonably comparable rates, terms, and conditions," said a filing posted Monday. "Granite asked that the Commission set a concrete end date to the interim rule rather than tie the end date to actions in other proceedings." Pai Thursday also circulated a draft NPRM and notice of inquiry on wireline infrastructure deployment aimed at expediting the copper retirement process, streamlining the Section 214 discontinuance process, and improving pole-attachment conditions through process and rate changes. The American Cable Association met with Pai aides and Wireline Bureau and Wireless Bureau officials Thursday about actions to accelerate broadband deployment, with a focus on problems its members encountered on pole attachments. Member representatives said state and local governments often were helping providers "tear down the barriers to deployment, which can be especially fruitful in making the difference about whether to deploy to more rural areas," said an ACA filing posted Tuesday. "They recommended the Commission collect examples of these 'positive models' to provide a roadmap for regulatory action or development of model local codes."