SiriusXM equipment in some locations still sees interference from AT&T wireless communications service facilities, and one solution under consideration involves collocating SiriusXM terrestrial repeaters or boosting the SiriusXM signal at some WCS transmission sites, the satellite radio provider said in an FCC filing posted Tuesday in docket 07-293. The filing was an update on coordination efforts involving AT&T's WCS broadband network and SiriusXM's satellite digital audio radio service. SiriusXM said that coordination work involved "thousands of hours of equipment testing in labs" as well as drive testing near WCS transmitters. It said it and the carrier are evaluating the effectiveness of the proposed solutions and whether they would require FCC OK. AT&T didn't comment Wednesday. A 2013 AT&T/SiriusXM settlement opened the door for the carrier to deploy LTE in the 2.3 GHz band (see 1210180070).

Acting FTC Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen should be made the agency's permanent head, said Lawrence Spiwak, president of the Phoenix Center, in an opinion piece for The Hill. He said Ohlhausen will "judiciously" wield the commission's power by focusing on "substantial harm" on consumers rather than speculative injury. He also said Ohlhausen has a "close relationship" with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and, like him, could "implement thoughtful policy on day one." Ohlhausen will be fair and wants to get better understanding of the economics of digital privacy, especially the link between access to consumer data and innovation, Spiwak said. "As a genuine respect for economics is in very short supply in Washington policy circles -- although lip service regrettably is always in abundant supply -- it's important for us to give credit where credit is due," he added. Ohlhausen plans to cut unnecessary regulations and provide businesses with more transparency, he said, but "one should not equate her philosophy of 'regulatory humility' with being soft on those who would harm consumers."

Ajit Pai's FCC direction on undoing broadband regulation doesn't surprise Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, since Republicans were clear under then-Chairman Tom Wheeler that they disagreed with some rulings and postures such as its approach to net neutrality, she said in a six-minute interview Tuesday on WNYC AM/FM New York's The Takeaway. But the principles of net neutrality aren't dead, she said, calling them "beyond partisanship." How "we execute them, that might be different," she said. Clyburn said there's a general expectation ISPs shouldn't be allowed to throttle or block web access and there should be some privacy protections. She also said there's infrastructure investment and business certainty "because we have clear rules of the road.”

Telcos pushed for FCC elimination of "outdated" Part 32 accounting rules as part of a gradual move to reliance on generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). USTelecom, AT&T, CenturyLink and Verizon officials discussed the methodology the price-cap telcos used in crafting a proposed transition for calculating pole-attachment rates under GAAP, said a USTelecom filing posted Tuesday in docket 14-130 on meetings with aides to Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Michael O'Rielly. The FCC is considering streamlining and eliminating its Part 32 rules at its Feb. 23 meeting (see 1702020051). The telco "proposal seeks to provide a simple and transparent method for addressing any delta between the results derived under the two methodologies and ensuring a long 12-year transition [that] is fair to both attachers and the carriers and meets the requirements of the [Communications] Act," the filing said. But NCTA said a GAAP-based approach wouldn't track specific pole investment and expenses as required under Part 32, leading to "unwarranted, harmful increases in pole attachment rates." The harms can't be addressed solely through a lengthy transition and instead should be combined with a freeze on ILEC pole-attachment rates, said an NCTA filing on a meeting with the O'Rielly aide to discuss the group's opposition to the telco proposal (see 1702090042). The USTelecom filing said the telco proposal, unlike a rate freeze, would incorporate changes annually, which would be "more consistent with the Act," while neutralizing the impact of the transition from Part 32 to GAAP-based inputs. Pole-attachment rates would continue to vary under GAAP and in many cases are expected to be lower than those under Part 32, the filing said. "We also described how impractical it would be to maintain Part 32 accounts just for pole attachment rate calculations," the telcos said.

“The time is right” to consider fundamental changes to the FCC's structure, said Bronwyn Howell, American Enterprise Institute visiting fellow, in a blog post endorsing Trump transition team member Mark Jamison's proposal to change the commission's operations. Jamison is also a scholar affiliated with AEI, and proposed replacing the wireline and wireless bureaus with bureaus of economics, engineering, competition and consumer protection (see 1702020029). The FCC's current structure is an artifact of an earlier time, ”building upon regulations developed for railways and postal services,” Howell said. A reorganization would allow the commission to shift to monitoring the industry as an “ecosystem” where “the performance at specific points of the ecosystem is monitored, and behaviors are adjusted retrospectively based on need,” Howell said. “In the former, systems are designed with large levers to be pulled that can fundamentally alter the structural arrangements of regulated industries, while the latter can be characterized as multiple ‘regulators’ scattered throughout a complex system,” Howell said. “The proposed structure takes account of the profound changes that have taken place as technological convergence has brought all of telecommunications, broadcasting, and data transport onto a common digital platform, and customers’ experiences have come to be mediated primarily through the applications they use rather than the underlying network technologies that support them.”

V3.0 of the Network Outage Reporting System (NORS) is open for testing and production use until March 2, the FCC Public Safety Bureau said in a public notice Monday. The testing period opened Feb. 2. The new version of NORS “will enhance the overall security and reliability of NORS and allow future evolutions to better support new communications technologies and analytic methods,” the PN said. The new version has four interfaces, all of which will be open for testing, the PN said. “During the testing phase, companies will continue to file their official NORS reports in the NORS 2.0 system,” the PN said. “Upon successful completion of testing, the Commission will migrate all filings to the new NORS 3.0 production system at the beginning of March.”

NAB opposes aspects of the FCC draft notice on ATSC 3.0, said Vice President-Spectrum Policy Alison Neplokh in a blog post. “The draft asks a lot of questions about a tuner mandate, something we and our co-petitioners agree would be counter-productive to the goal of a market-based transition,” Neplokh said. CTA, one of NAB's co-petitioners on ATSC 3.0, similarly voiced concerns recently with “troubling language" in the draft notice about a TV tuner mandate (see 1702030075). Neplokh also criticized questions in the draft on retransmission consent. The retrans portions “have no bearing on enabling innovation in broadcast services, other than to stifle them,” Neplokh said. But she praised Chairman Ajit Pai's recent changes to FCC processes to make circulating items publicly available. The changes are good for commission staff and the agency itself, along with stakeholder groups, said Neplokh, a former FCC deputy chief technologist. “As a former Commission staffer, I often longed for feedback from stakeholders on the feasibility of the rules we were preparing to adopt.” Pai's rule change allows a more open feedback between staffers and stakeholders, Neplokh said. That clearer exchange of ideas will have “tangible benefits” for rules once they're passed, because rules created through a more open process are less likely to lead to petitions for reconsideration and long appeal processes, she said.

Despite the "rocky start" between President Donald Trump and Silicon Valley on the immigration order, the new administration's focus on policy, regulatory and tax changes can be "especially good" for the technology industry, said American Enterprise Institute visiting fellow Bret Swanson in a Friday blog post. He said "long overdue tax reform" will allow big tech companies to "redeploy hundreds of billions of dollars of capital" held overseas into R&D and other investments in the U.S. He said "a return to sanity" at the FCC would spur network infrastructure investment into 5G technology and help boost broadband and support future innovation like self-driving cars and digital health. The tech industry can "enthusiastically" support most of these policy changes, but Swanson said the administration can also learn a lot. "If it listens to technology firms, it will likely gain a deeper appreciation for the contributions of immigrant technologists and entrepreneurs," he wrote. "It might also pick up on a cultural strength of many technology firms, where collaboration, instead of all-out confrontation, is rewarded with positive-sum growth." He said the two sides are "unlikely to succeed without each other." Swanson didn't outright criticize Trump's executive order on the travel ban, but said the administration has shown an ability to "correct mistakes." A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Thursday unanimously upheld a district judge's suspension of that travel ban (see 1702100042).

FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly sought Universal Service Administrative Co. help in "identifying and eradicating potential waste in the E-rate program" for schools and libraries due to applicants seeking subsidy funding to overbuild existing broadband networks. O'Rielly noted he dissented from a 2014 order that allowed E-rate discounts for "self-construction" but rejected recommendations to prohibit funding such projects in areas that already had broadband. He said he continues to hear concerns that USF support is "being wasted by E-rate applicants" on overbuilds, which he said is "especially problematic" when the existing networks are being subsidized, including by the high-cost USF program. "In those instances, ratepayer dollars are being used to support artificial competition potentially jeopardizing service to the broader community," he wrote in a letter posted Friday to USAC CEO Chris Henderson. O'Rielly said he was particularly troubled by a recent news article in which the school system in Arlington County, Virginia, discussed plans to seek E-rate funding to pay for a backup fiber network. He said he doesn't believe that's permitted under the FCC's rules, and regardless, he saw no policy justification to support such projects. O'Rielly sought answers from Henderson by Feb. 17 to a series of questions to better understand the scope of overbuilding under the program. USAC and Arlington County Schools didn't comment.

The Wall Street Journal credited FCC Chairman Ajit Pai with "restoring bipartisanship and political accountability to an agency that desperately needs it," after the "Obama administration ran the FCC as an extension of the White House." Pai has made various process changes that create greater transparency, including the move to circulate with commissioners and then release to the public the draft text of meeting agenda items, said an editorial. It dismissed criticisms of Pai actions "reconsidering marginal changes" to Lifeline and closing an investigation of "popular" free-data plans. "For all the invented panic over Republican rule in Washington, note that Mr. Pai is divesting himself of authority and making the agency more responsive to the consumers who pay his salary," the newspaper said. In a blog post Friday, telco consultant Jonathan Lee defended the Pai FCC's revocation of nine Lifeline broadband provider designations approved in the final two months under previous Chairman Tom Wheeler. Lee noted the FCC hadn't approved any Lifeline applications for years and had been told by Republican lawmakers after the election to act "only on matters that require attention under the law." Lee took issue with a previous blog post from former Wheeler counselor Gigi Sohn that hailed pushback against the Lifeline decision. She also criticized a Pai explanation "setting the record straight" (see 1702090073 and 1702070062). "Perhaps if Sohn took less 'surprise and delight' in someone else having to defend themselves against misinformation, then she could have advised Chairman Wheeler to take an interest in Lifeline competition before being asked by Congress to focus only on matters 'that require attention under the law' prior to the change in presidential administrations," Lee wrote. In another Friday blog post, CCMI telecom consultant Andrew Regitsky also defended Pai's Lifeline actions: "While it is certainly fair to criticize Pai and the FCC, consumer advocates and their media allies would be better served to wait for a significant Commission action that actually hurts consumers rather than becoming outraged over everything."