The FCC said a slowdown involving the commercial vendor that hosts the agency's electronic comment filing system was to blame for problems Tuesday opening filings. The agency emailed us the slowdown involved the U.S. East Coast and affected the speed of files. It affected the Electronic Comment Filing System. Last week, the agency experienced other IT-related issues (see 1702220072).

The FCC listed all its current information-collection requirements approved by the Office of Management and Budget under the Paperwork Reduction Act. "The Commission intends that this section comply with the requirement that agencies 'display' current OMB control numbers and expiration dates assigned by the Director, OMB, for each approved information collection requirement," said a rule and a 20-page list attached to an order of the FCC managing director released Tuesday. An FCC spokesman said the item simply updated the list.

CenturyLink has a "tough hand" but its planned Level 3 buy is a timely move, said MoffettNathanson analysts Tuesday in an investor note initiating coverage with a neutral rating. Like other wireline telcos, CenturyLink is struggling in the industry transition from copper-based to fiber-based and wireless services, with about half its revenue "still legacy in nature" and declining, requiring "defensive" network investments, they wrote. Free cash flow is "deteriorating and will soon be barely sufficient to cover the dividend," they wrote: "Level 3 does not suffer from the same structural challenges as CenturyLink, and cost savings between the two businesses will be significant. This shrewd and well-timed acquisition will allow CenturyLink to stabilize its financial profile in the coming years and eliminate the risk of having to cut its dividend. CenturyLink had no choice but to do this deal, and ... it snagged Level 3 without overpaying." The companies defended their transaction at the FCC against criticism it would hurt competition (see 1702090035 and 1701240037). They expect further investigation to confirm that deal-specific enterprise services "are and will remain vibrantly competitive," said their filing in docket 16-403 on a meeting with an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai. On the long-haul side, they said there's competition from numerous providers with significant networks. "There is no basis to treat wholesale dark fiber as a separate product market from lit services," they wrote, saying the FCC "found it reasonable in the Verizon-XO transaction to conclude that a combined company will seek to maximize the return on its fiber facilities by selling both lit services and dark fiber to the extent it is efficient to do so."

Intelsat and OneWeb joining likely would need only FCC International Bureau, not commissioner, approval, although that process still could take months, satellite lawyer and former LightSquared General Counsel Jeff Carlisle told us. He said the deal, announced Tuesday, shouldn't draw a lot of controversial comments. He said the deal doesn't seem to pose horizontal or vertical concentration issues because the two companies operate in different markets. Instead, the combination points to a breaking down of traditional telecom silos of terrestrial/low earth orbit (LEO)/geosynchronous orbit (GEO), much like AT&T/DirecTV did. "You're going to see a lot of these age-old distinctions becoming maybe a little less distinct," Carlisle said. Intelsat said it expects to deal to close in Q3, contingent on regulatory and bondholder approvals. Intelsat CEO Stephen Spengler said in an analyst call Tuesday that the combined company, with Intelsat's GEO system and OneWeb's planned LEO system, opens the door to their together taking a larger satellite broadband market share and doing more work in backhaul carriage, as well as new applications like connected vehicles and over-the-top video distribution. Northern Sky Research analyst Lluc Palerm told us the deal opens the door to opportunities like the joined companies working low-latency markets such as 5G and also would let startup OneWeb piggyback off the international landing rights Intelsat already has.

CTA President Gary Shapiro and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai were among those reacting this weekend on Twitter to the shooting last week of two Garmin engineers, both 32 and originally from India, and a bystander in a bar near Garmin’s U.S. headquarters in Olathe, Kansas, in what authorities are calling a possible hate crime (see 1702240066). Srinivas Kuchibhotla died in the shooting and his Garmin colleague, Alok Madasani, was wounded, as was Ian Grillot, 24, the bystander who tried to intervene. “Our hearts go out to family and friends of Srinivas Kuchibhotla, the other victims and the entire @Garmin family,” Shapiro tweeted Saturday. "RIP, Srinivas Kuchibotla [sic]," Pai tweeted late Friday. "@Garmin engineer murdered in cold blood in KC was 'simply an outstanding human being.'" The son of immigrants from India, Pai grew up in Parsons, Kansas, about 125 miles southwest of Olathe, his FCC bio page says. Alleged gunman Adam Purinton, 51, faces one count of premeditated first-degree murder and two counts of premeditated attempted first-degree murder in Johnson County District Court in Olathe. Purinton made his first court appearance Monday before Judge Charles Droege, who scheduled Purinton for a March 9 "no go" preliminary hearing, where he'll hear his fiirst evidence in the case, court records show.

That FCC staffer Sharon Stewart was regularly exposed to pornography at work over six years, despite pleas to a co-worker to stop loudly watching on his workplace computer, is proof enough of a severe and pervasive issue creating a hostile work environment, Stewart said Friday in an opposition (in Pacer) to the FCC's bid for summary judgment on her workplace retaliation lawsuit (see 1701300014). Stewart said the FCC conceded that coordinating Communications Act Section 610 reports was a major part of her job and could have led to a grade increase, until that work was taken from her after she filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint. Stewart said her supervisor knew about her complaints but did nothing to address them and never spoke to her about how the issue might have affected her work after an FCC Office of the Inspector General investigation confirmed the pornography viewing. Stewart disputed the agency argument she hadn't exhausted her administrative remedies since she brought all of her complaints to the FCC's attention during the EEOC administrative process and said she was within her rights to withdraw her request for an EEOC hearing in good faith to file the litigation. The commission didn't comment Monday.

The Trump administration is alerting agencies of top-line discretionary spending numbers for FY 2018 funding starting Monday, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters at a White House news conference. The administration is upping defense spending by $54 billion, up to $603 billion, and cutting nondefense spending by that same amount, Mulvaney said. The cutting “reduces duplicative programs” and “programs that simply don’t work,” he said. “This is not a full-blown budget. That will not come until May.” The rise in defense spending "will be offset and paid for finding greater savings and efficiencies across the federal government,” President Donald Trump said Monday during a meeting with governors. The administration will strive to supply a looser budget outline to Congress by March 16, fitting with earlier rough anticipated timelines, and a full budget by the “first part of May,” Mulvaney said. The budget planning now doesn't address certain programs such as infrastructure, he said. The broader infrastructure discussions are ongoing and will likely happen outside the budget process, Spicer said. “I know there’s a lot of discussion” on public-private partnerships “in terms of the funding mechanism,” Spicer said. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaking at an event Monday, said "if it's tax breaks, we're not going to be for it," an infrastructure funding "nonstarter" that Schumer has communicated to Trump. "It should be paid for," Schumer said. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Democrats would back inclusion of broadband, speaking at the same event. Capitol Hill Democrats warned against the level of cutting floated Monday. “A $54 billion cut will do far-reaching and long-lasting damage to our ability to meet the needs of the American people and win the jobs of the future,” Pelosi said. Schumer said the cuts would put a burden on the middle class. Spokespeople for entities including the Commerce Department, the FCC and the CPB (see 1702270058) didn’t comment Monday on what the top-line numbers may mean for their operations.

FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly welcomed the opportunity take a new look at proposed ISP privacy rules. O’Rielly wrote Monday on the process Chairman Ajit Pai unveiled Friday, giving fellow commissioners until Thursday to weigh in on a proposed stay of parts of the rules (see 1702240055). “As I indicated in my dissenting statement when the previous Commission adopted these rules, I believe they are fatally flawed from the standpoints of both statutory authority and public policy,” O’Rielly said in a statement. "I support the Chairman's proposal to allow the Commission and Congress time to take another look at these ill-considered rules before they have a chance to throw broadband providers' data security practices into unsettled territory.” O’Rielly said he generally supports the process Pai is following in moving forward on a stay, while giving commissioners a chance to vote.

The U.S. should auction most broadband subsidies "to catch up with the rest of the world," said American Enterprise Institute scholar Mark Jamison, who was on Donald Trump's presidential transition team for the FCC. Peru and Chile pioneered telecom subsidy auctions and much of FCC Connect America Fund support is now auctioned for high-cost areas, but such auctions should be expanded to other USF programs, he said in a Friday blog post. "The old E-Rate, Rural Health Care, Lifeline and some CAF programs would be dropped. E-Rate, Rural Health Care and some CAF programs would be rolled into a CAF Phase II-like reverse auction. Lifeline support would move to income subsidies." Other federal government broadband programs should be terminated, with funding channeled "through the new world-class FCC system," he wrote. "As Commissioner Michael O’Rielly recently observed, federal broadband spending must have integrity and efficiency. The best bet for accomplishing this is a revamped FCC system." Asked how many countries auctioned broadband subsidies, Jamison told us he didn't know, but said "it is considered best practice internationally."

Four video relay service providers lobbied the FCC to issue a Further NPRM on VRS rates by the end of March, and draft an order by June 30, the end of the current rate year. CSDVRS (ZVRS), Purple Communications, ASL Service Holdings (GlobalVRS) and Convo Communications reviewed their Jan. 31 VRS rate proposal, said a joint filing posted Friday in docket 10-51 on a meeting with an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai. The FCC's 2013-2017 schedule of rate reductions was premised on planned "structural and competitive reforms," but many of those actions haven't been implemented "and the VRS market remains dominated by a single provider," said their Jan. 31 submission. "The current glide path has, in fact, benefited the dominant provider by forcing the non-dominant providers to reduce costs below optimum operating thresholds (i.e., near break-even or at an operating loss), while the dominant provider continues to compete from a position of comparative financial strength," they wrote. "The rate reduction that took effect on January 1, 2017, threatens the viability of all non-dominant providers, and will result in only further concentrating the VRS market." They proposed a four-tier rate structure to "move all providers toward a more reasonable operating margin" create "much needed rate stability" and save the telecom relay service fund $14 million over four years. Under the proposal, per-minute VRS compensation would be: $5.29 for an Emergent tier (500,000 monthly minutes and below), $4.82 for Tier 1 (up to 1 million minutes), $4.35 for Tier 2 (1,000,001 to 2.5 million minutes) and $2.83 for Tier 3 (above 2.5 million minutes). Sorenson Communications, the top VRS provider, didn't address the proposal but discussed various other topics in a filing on a meeting it and CaptionCall had with the same Pai aide.