Comcast, Cox Communications and Time Warner Cable got waivers to operate their existing U-NII-3 outdoor access points in the U-NII-1 band, said the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology in three orders Wednesday. “These currently deployed systems should not pose a threat of harmful interference to the incumbent services in the U-NII-1 band,” the orders said. The waivers apply only to the outdoor access points named in the companies’ applications and not to future deployments, the orders said. Comcast’s waiver (http://bit.ly/XAOFKe) covers 20,820 outdoor access points, TWC’s (http://bit.ly/VF36LP) covers 19,913 and Cox’s (http://bit.ly/VF30DL) covers 2,346, the orders said.

The North American Numbering Council will meet Sept. 17, 10 a.m-2 p.m. EDT, in the FCC commission meeting room, the FCC said Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1tqvRa9). Among the agenda items is a report by NANC’s Local Number Portability Administration Working Group. Telcordia Technologies and Neustar are fighting over which will be the LNPA (CD Aug 14 p1).

The FCC shouldn’t vote to pre-empt state laws in North Carolina and Tennessee restricting municipal broadband because it doesn’t have the legal authority to do so, said Matthew Berry, chief of staff to FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, during a speech Wednesday at a National Conference of State Legislatures summit in Minneapolis. The FCC’s upcoming debate over pre-emption petitions from the cities of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Wilson, North Carolina, will focus on the debate over legal authority rather than whether cities should “get into the broadband business” or whether the states should restrict municipal broadband, Berry said. The commission could reach a decision on the Chattanooga and Wilson petitions by the end of the year, Berry said according to the prepared text of his speech (http://fcc.us/1nba16B). The cities filed their petitions with the FCC late last month (CD July 28 p5). Berry cited the Supreme Court’s 2004 decision in Nixon v. Missouri Municipal League that the FCC didn’t have the power to pre-empt state laws restricting municipalities’ ability to provide telecom services under Communications Act Section 253 absent “unmistakably clear” legislative intent from Congress. Nixon provides courts with a two-step test for analyzing any case stemming from an FCC decision on the Chattanooga and Wilson petitions, in which courts must look at whether Congress specifically intended the FCC to pre-empt state municipal broadband laws and whether a clear statement is required, Berry said. Chattanooga and Wilson are asking for pre-emption under Section 706 rather than Section 253, but “the case for preemption is even weaker under Section 706 than it was under Section 253,” he said. Section 706 “does not come close” to meeting that burden,” so any pre-emption attempt would be “sure to meet its end in court,” Berry said. Pre-emption would bring the FCC into conflict with both Congress and state officials “who should be our partners rather than our adversaries,” he said. “We do not have the bandwidth to waste on a symbolic, feel-good effort that appears designed to appease a political constituency that is unhappy with where the FCC is headed on other issues.” The House voted last month to deny the FCC funding for municipal broadband pre-emption (CD July 17 p3). Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist said in a statement that the FCC “should not waste valuable time and taxpayer dollars in futile legal wrangling. It’s none of the FCC’s business if state governments forbid cities from wasting taxpayer dollars."

AT&T and DirecTV urged the FCC to deny a petition to extend the deadline for filing initial comments and petitions on the proposed transaction between the two companies. The petition to extend the deadline by 30 days was filed by Public Knowledge and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (http://bit.ly/1tl3TfU). None of the reasons stated by the petitioners justifies an extension of time, “and none of them explains why petitioners have not even sought to access applicants’ confidential submissions during the 68 days that have elapsed since applicants filed their public interest statement in this proceeding,” AT&T and DirecTV said in a joint opposition (http://bit.ly/1oXgqSA). Initial comments in docket 14-90 are due Sept. 16 (CD Aug 8 p11)). Petitioners will have had more than three months from AT&T’s public interest statement filing, it said. This is “more than ample time to access information about the transaction and provide meaningful input,” it said.

CEA, CTIA and the Telecommunications Industry Association criticized NAB’s court challenge of the incentive auction order (CD Aug 19 p1), in emailed statements Tuesday. CTIA “would prefer to work together collaboratively to address NAB’s concerns rather than resort to litigation,” said Vice President-Regulatory Affairs Scott Bergmann, though he said he was hopeful the court and NAB would work for an expedited result. The petition for review “has the potential to significantly disrupt the FCC’s plans, and the wireless industry’s ability to access much needed radio spectrum,” said TIA President Grant Seiffert. “Consumers don’t win if industries lawyer up and go to battle in court.” The NAB court filing is “discouraging,” said CEA President Gary Shapiro. “Litigating against the incentive auction undermines and delays innovation."

The FCC gave the public an extra five days, three business days, to file net neutrality reply comments (http://bit.ly/1t37W2o). The new deadline is Sept. 15. The FCC explained Friday that when original comments were due in July, it accepted “as timely filed” comments for an extra three business days after FCC servers had problems keeping up with the flood. The reply deadline is extended by the same amount of time.

USTelecom slammed Free Press in a Friday blog post for its arguments in favor of reclassifying broadband as a Title II service. Reclassification “would create unambiguously negative pressures on broadband provider investment that would not exist absent reclassification,” wrote Patrick Brogan, USTelecom industry analyst (http://bit.ly/1nX9zbp). Imposing common carrier regulation on broadband “seems unnecessarily risky and potentially counterproductive for policy goals dependent on more investment, such as expanding deployment to all parts of the country and enhancing U.S. global competitiveness,” he wrote. “The post is full of mischaracterizations, and it still doesn’t hang together,” Free Press fired back in an email. “Getting the Facts Wrong might be a better title for it.” Free Press isn’t interested just in the “investment choices” of a few telcos, the group said. Internet freedom is good for the entire economy. “Avoiding common carriage principles and giving ISPs the green light to discriminate certainly is not going to promote investment by anyone —- neither the edge companies, nor the network providers who'd be able to profit from artificial scarcity in a world of access tolls,” Free Press said.

The FCC Technological Advisory Council will meet Sept. 23, 1-4 p.m. EDT, at the agency’s headquarters in the Commission Meeting Room, the regulator said Thursday in a public notice (http://bit.ly/1t4kNR0).

Neustar responded to a Telcordia letter asking why Neustar redacted 14 pages of comments filed at the FCC last month citing national security concerns, saying the redactions “reflected the Commission’s cautious approach” on such issues. The filing was posted by the FCC Thursday in docket 95-116 (http://bit.ly/1qanVGY). The Telcordia letter was posted Wednesday (CD Aug 14 p1). Neustar and Telcordia are disputing which the FCC will designate as the Local Number Portability Administrator for the U.S. “Neustar is fully prepared to work with Commission staff to make more information available to the public, while ensuring that security concerns are adequately addressed,” the company said.

The latest evidence from Europe suggests the FCC needs to impose net neutrality rules against blocking and application-specific discrimination, said Stanford Law School professor Barbara van Schewick in a meeting with FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, according to an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1vHRXu1). “We also discussed how allowing ISPs to charge providers of applications, content and services for access to end users or for enhanced or prioritized access to end users (including paid prioritization and zero-rating) would change the economic environment for innovation and investment in Internet applications, content and services,” van Schewick said. The filing was posted Wednesday by the FCC in docket 14-28.