Striking Verizon workers planned to return to work Wednesday, since Verizon and union leaders signed a tentative agreement Friday to end a more than six-week East Coast strike (see 1605270050). In a news release Monday, the Communications Workers of America said the proposed four-year contract provides 10.9 percent in raises over four years with compounded interest, including 3 percent upon ratification and 2.5 percent on each anniversary of the contract. In the mid-Atlantic, it includes a $1,250 signing bonus; in the Northeast, a $1,000 signing bonus plus a $250 healthcare reimbursement account, it said. The deal gives workers a minimum $700 in profit sharing in each of the next four years, and rather than reduce pensions as the telco proposed, the agreement provides three 1 percent increases to pensions, it said. About 70 Verizon Wireless retail employees in Brooklyn, New York, and Everett, Massachusetts, will get their first-ever contract, the CWA said. All call centers that had been threatened with closure in the mid-Atlantic region will remain open; three of five threatened call centers in upstate New York will remain open, with the six workers affected in the other centers to be offered new Verizon jobs locally, it said. Verizon will add 1,300 call center jobs, including 850 in the mid-Atlantic and 450 in the Northeast, CWA said. Verizon agreed to reverse several major contracting initiatives, resulting in a 25 percent increase in the number of unionized crews doing pole work in New York state, CWA said. The proposed contract also preserves existing language on job security, transfer and seniority protections for retirement incentives, the union said. Verizon withdrew proposals on forced interstate transfers, CWA said. Verizon agreed to end a performance supervisory program in New York City that workers didn’t like, and the parties will work with an outside consultant to develop a nonpunitive program, the union said. The company agreed to withdraw proposed cuts in accident and disability benefits, CWA said. Verizon said the company will save money and avoid additional costs through healthcare plan design changes, adopting Medicare Advantage plans for retirees, maintaining limits on post-retirement healthcare costs, and freezing the mortality table for lump sum pensions using the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade rate. The agreement lets Verizon provide special buyout incentives to employees, the company said. Verizon is also likely to save money by the act of ending the strike, analysts have said, since the company had to deploy thousands to fill in for the union workers, including contractors and its own managers. The unions will submit the agreement to members for a ratification vote; if approved, the contract will run through Aug. 3, 2019, Verizon said. The strike hurt Verizon financially and its end is welcome, said Wells Fargo analyst Jennifer Fritzsche. “While there likely will be some impact on Q2 financials related to the strike … the savings that should result from this Strike outweigh the near term distractions,” she wrote investors Tuesday.

Circulation items that get converted to meeting items on the FCC's monthly meeting agenda should be announced three weeks before the meeting, and converted items that don't reflect the views of staff and of the chairman's office should be revised and recirculated as official meeting items no later than that three-week-out "white copy date," Commissioner Mike O'Rielly said in a blog post Tuesday suggesting an overhaul of the agency's circulation items process. Circulation items generally are less controversial and less time sensitive, meaning they often circulate among commissioners for months without getting votes, O'Rielly said. He said any item that has circulated for six months should be taken out of circulation automatically because it "is often stale and likely would require more work to reflect the current state of the record." O'Rielly said an item circulating that long with only one or two votes typically doesn't have widespread commissioner support and is unlikely to get enough to trigger must-vote procedures. Either the chairman's office should work with staff and commissioners to retool the pulled items so as to find consensus or the yanked items should be put on the open meeting agenda, he said, likening it to how the Senate handles nominations. Currently at the FCC, he said, long-circulated items get added to meetings even when they clearly lack support and there has been little work to modify them. He said that adding them to the meeting as a placeholder "for some yet-to-be drafted consensus document that will hopefully emerge in the short time before the meeting" means commissioners themselves often are having meetings with outside parties on the proposals without even knowing "what is actually on the table." Current FCC procedures allow for notably small windows of notice to the publication and consideration by commissioners, O'Rielly said, saying items on circulation as of that white copy date can be added to the monthly agenda one week before the meeting, during the Sunshine period when outside parties are blocked from contacting the FCC to weigh in. O'Rielly said any draft "that needs significant rewrites" during the white copy period should be pulled for consideration later, and nothing should be added to the agenda a week before the meeting "absent extraordinary circumstances." The office of Chairman Tom Wheeler is reviewing O'Rielly's blog post, emailed a commission spokesman. "The chairman welcomes constructive ideas on process from all commissioners.” The blog was the latest in a series of agency process changes O'Rielly has advocated in blog posts (see 1602240070 and 1501160041).

The ICANN board adopted revisions to bylaws meant to implement aspects of ICANN's Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition plan and a related set of changes to the nonprofit's accountability mechanisms. The board also adopted ICANN's IANA functions service level agreement with the regional Internet registries and a supplemental memorandum of understanding with the Internet Engineering Task Force, ICANN said Friday. The revised bylaws generally track with draft revisions that ICANN released for comment last month (see 1604220061) but make some additional revisions in response to concerns raised in comments (see 1605230059). New revisions included removing a portion of the bylaws that grandfathers agreements between ICANN and five entities that aren’t set to take effect until Oct. 1 -- the Address Supporting Organization, Internet Engineering Task Force, Number Resource Organization, Root Zone Management System and Post-Transition IANA. Most commenters raised concerns about the inclusion of the agreements because they hadn't been finalized, ICANN said. ICANN planned to have transmitted the revised bylaws to NTIA after our deadline Friday. NTIA had required revisions to ICANN's bylaws before the agency could complete its review of ICANN's IANA transition-related bylaws. That review is expected to be completed by mid-June. “This is an important milestone for ICANN and the community,” ICANN Chairman Steve Crocker said in a blog post. “As we await the release of NTIA’s report, we continue to prepare for implementation of the transition proposals.”

The FCC Public Reporting System for displaying incentive auction results to the public went online Friday, as expected (see 1605240047). “Because the PRS will chronicle the course of both the reverse and forward auctions, the amount and nature of the information displayed will increase and evolve as the auctions progress,” said the public notice announcing the website. The PRS will display limited information about auction results, the wireless spectrum on offer, and the progress toward completing a final stage for the incentive auction, the PN said. A user guide to the PRS is available on the FCC's auction website. The auction is set to begin May 31.

The FCC offers no real defense of treating in-kind, cable-related obligations as franchise fees, said Montgomery and Anne Arundel counties, Maryland, and Dubuque, Iowa, in a reply brief (in Pacer) Thursday in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The municipalities said the FCC argues that in-kind services always have been subject to a 5 percent franchise fee cap. The municipal interests are appealing a 2007 FCC order that extended to incumbent cable operators many limits put on new entrants and a 2015 order clarifying that franchising regulations don't apply to state laws on cable TV or to state-level franchising authorities (see 1605020030). The agency's own counsel said in-kind services weren't always capped, contend petitioners and supporting interveners Boston; Houston; Larchmont and Mamaroneck town/village, New York; Mount Hood (Oregon) Cable Regulatory Commission; and Texas Coalition of Cities for Utility Issues in the new joint filing. They said the FCC justification for pre-empting most-favored-nation (MFN) clauses doesn't rebut their contention that one-way pre-emption goes against Cable Act goals. "The agency claims it did not wish to interfere with existing contracts, but as it had already done so by preempting the agreements upon which MFN clauses inherently depend in [the 2007 order], its justification fails and cannot be reconciled with its decision to treat the validity of other contractual clauses on a case-by-case basis," they said. They said the FCC concession that local franchising authorities can require institutional networks (I-Nets) not used to provide cable services shows LFA authority isn't limited to providing cable services over cable systems. And they said the FCC continues to be unclear on whether it believes state licensing franchises are pre-empted by the 2015 order: "This Court should rule that any U.S. District Court presented with an attempt to apply any of the Orders ... dismiss the case where there is a state-level franchising regime." The FCC didn't comment Friday.

USTelecom backed NCTA's request for an FCC extension of comment deadlines in a business data service (BDS) rulemaking, and agreed with the cable group's questioning of commission motives (see 1605130039). "Similar to our own requests for additional time to address the complex and important issues in this proceeding, NCTA’s Motion reflects valid concerns with compressed pleading cycles that seem designed primarily to meet an arbitrary deadline for completing the next phase by the end of the year," said USTelecom's filing Thursday in docket 05-25. "We agree with NCTA that this lends credence to the suggestion that the outcome of this proceeding is predetermined." USTelecom said it and others also need more time to do an independent review of a consultant's white paper that was commissioned by the FCC and attached to a Further NPRM. "Although we are grateful for the FCC’s prompt response to USTelecom’s request for access to additional information used for the analyses in the White Paper, we have since learned that not all of the requested information was provided," the group said. "Our consultants have explained that without the same access to the underlying raw data, they will not be able to replicate the results in the White Paper. Specifically, due to the FCC’s masking of bandwidth for connections of over 1 Gbps, they lack the bandwidth information used in some of the White Paper’s regression specifications. These specifications cannot be replicated. Additionally, they lack the 'proprietary Tom-Tom' data relied upon for certain controls at the ZIP Code level. They do not have adequate information to identify what Tom-Tom data were used or whether these data can be obtained at a reasonable cost." USTelecom also said a comment extension is justified by recent cable company modifications to data they previously submitted. Sprint and other ILEC critics oppose NCTA's request for extending the initial June 28 comment deadline by at least 45 days and a July 26 reply comment deadline by at least 30 days (see 1605180028 and 1605200061).

The FCC voted 5-0 to extend its National Deaf-Blind Equipment Distribution Program as a pilot program for another year until June 30, 2017. NDBEDP provides up to $10 million annually to support efforts that distribute communications equipment to low-income people who are deaf-blind. "Extending the pilot program for an additional year will enable the NDBEDP to continue providing communications equipment to low-income individuals who are deaf-blind without interruption while the Commission completes the proceeding that is underway to adopt rules to govern a permanent NDBEDP," said the FCC order released Friday in docket 10-210. One FCC member had concerns. "I will reluctantly support the order extending the pilot program for another year to ensure the program is not interrupted, but I am beyond disappointed that the Commission was not able to complete rules for the permanent program during this past year," said Commissioner Mike O'Rielly in an accompanying statement. "This rulemaking has had the support of all five Commissioners and a number of outside parties, which does not happen too often. Moreover, the permanent program is actually authorized by law, whereas the pilot program is in a more questionable state. Perhaps if the Commission had prioritized this rulemaking over others, we could have adopted final rules by now." Separately and on Thursday, the FCC sought applications for the program in two states (see 1605270019).

The Newspaper Association of America wants the FTC to investigate advertising blocking technologies and related services, saying they may violate Section 5 of the FTC Act. NAA alleged in a Thursday news release and complaint that ad blockers falsely represent to consumers who download an app or service that they'll get ads that satisfy a certain standard. But large companies pay ad blockers -- namely Adblock Plus -- to get on a "whitelist" that ensures ads will reach consumers, NAA said. It wants the commission to look at Germany-based Eyeo, which operates Adblock Plus. The association also alleged other unfair and deceptive practices. Its complaint said ad blockers "mislead consumers into believing that publishers have consented to the substitution of their own advertising for new ads sold by ad-blocking companies." NAA said subscription services, which claim to offset publisher harm, don't give any evidence to support that claim, and ad blockers that allow users to "evade metered subscription services and paywalls" are engaging in unfair competition. "Newspapers recognize that ad blocking technology is responding to a consumer demand, and publishers are working diligently to improve the ad experience for consumers," NAA CEO David Chavern said in the release. "The deceptive activities of these ad blockers undercut publishers' ability to innovate and respond to customer demands, and preempt publishers' efforts to communicate with consumers about the importance of advertising or alternative mechanisms for supporting high-quality journalism content." Eyeo and the FTC didn't comment.

The FCC released a report and order and Further NPRM on outage reporting, approved by the commission Wednesday (see 1605250061). “We seek to ensure that the Commission’s outage reporting system keeps pace with technological change and the impact of evolving consumer preferences,” the FCC said in the document. “These specific amendments stem from our experience with outage reporting over the past twelve years, and will enhance the information we receive on outages relating to legacy communications networks.”

While taking FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn on a tour of Boeing's North Charleston, South Carolina, plant, company officials also talked up co-primary spectrum sharing in the 37.5-40 GHz band between very high data rate satellite communications systems and the proposed upper microwave flexible use (UMFU) service, the company said in an ex parte filing Thursday in docket 14-177. According to Boeing, its executives told Clyburn that designating 37.5-40 GHz solely for UMFU without nationwide spectrum sharing, including in urban areas, with co-primary, receive-only satellite user terminal operations, "would be exceedingly inefficient," since satellite communications in the band can provide universal coverage while UMFU proponents "have acknowledged that UMFU systems may never provide service to consumers outside of dense urban areas." Boeing executives also told Clyburn there's a need for more unlicensed spectrum in the 64-71 GHz band for advanced manufacturing and for use of the 67-71 GHz band for unlicensed in-flight services. Boeing officials on the tour included Audrey Allison, senior director-frequency management services, and General Manager Beverly Wyse of Boeing South Carolina.