The FCC will likely open an Emergency Connectivity Fund application filing window in June, acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel told reporters Tuesday. Whether to prioritize retrospective reimbursements, which was proposed (see 2104300084), "was an issue in our deliberations," Rosenworcel said. Commissioners agreed to open the first filing window for prospective purchases, a change sought by Commissioner Brendan Carr, with a second for additional prospective purchases if it's determined that not enough funding was allocated for the first window. Any remaining funds will then go toward an additional filing window for retrospective purchases. "The idea was we want to be able to make a difference and get more students connected than they are right now," Rosenworcel said. Rules included changes sought by Commissioner Geoffrey Starks on data collection (see 2105100061). It's "a smart addition," Rosenworcel said. "Distance learning is not going away," said Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. This "will help close the homework gap that persisted long before COVID-19," said Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y. Democrats praised the FCC’s implementation plan, including Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell of Washington, House Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone of New Jersey, Communications Subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania and Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts.

The FCC Wireline Bureau wants comment on a protective order for submitting and requesting information through its robocall mitigation database, said a public notice Monday in docket 17-97 (see 2104200042). Comments are due 10 days after Federal Register publication, replies 15 days after.

AT&T had a cultural shift since GAO recommended last year it improve stakeholder communications (see 2009170071), FirstNet CEO Edward Parkinson told C-SPAN's The Communicators, set to have been televised this weekend. “You learn from mistakes,” he said. “We have and I think AT&T has, too.” Public safety “is a very, very different kind of customer and AT&T … from a cultural perspective, needed to learn that.” AT&T has done “a very good job of correcting some of the mistakes,” he said. It's an “enormous organization” that “really adopted the culture of FirstNet,” he said: “My job is to hold them accountable.” The Senate Communications Subcommittee had a hearing in September (see 2009240056). FirstNet is unique with its public sector oversight and public safety customers, Parkinson said. Making sure AT&T “maintains a focus” on public safety will be important beyond 2023 when the initial deployment ends, he said. Parkinson plans further outreach to public safety agencies in the Nashville area following a Dec. 25 bombing (see 2012280048) and can’t promise there won't be outages. “These types of events, one can never predict,” he said. FirstNet “will be stronger as a result of the lessons we learned,” he said. The network is 93% complete, Parkinson said: “From there, we’ll be able to look at where else can we expand the network, how else can we evolve the network.” More than 300 devices can use FirstNet’s Band 14, he said. Most FirstNet staff continue to work remotely, Parkinson said. “The pandemic has changed everything for everyone,” he said. “Post-COVID, the way that public safety responds to certain incidents and the type of information they’re going to need is going to change.” Public safety users were using twice as much data at the beginning of the pandemic as the average AT&T customer, he noted. FirstNet’s network will evolve as 5G launches and leads to 6G, but “public safety doesn’t necessarily want to be on the cutting edge,” he said. “They want to ensure that this is the technology that they can trust with their lives.” Parkinson said one focus of FirstNet next year will be working with the FCC to get license renewal for Band 14.

As the FCC is expected to have voted on emergency connectivity fund rules by this week (see 2104300084), stakeholders raised concerns prioritizing retroactive purchases and not taking a tech-neutral approach could shut many schools and libraries out. “There are a lot of good things about the order,” Schools, Libraries, Health & Broadband (SHLB) Coalition Executive Director John Windhausen told us. He cited not requiring competitive bidding and excluding smartphones. “Rules tend to favor hot spot deployment,” he said, and don't "give the schools and libraries the flexibility to look at other technologies that may serve their market better.” The FCC declined to comment Friday. Dozens of advocates, industry groups and providers spoke with staff to lobby for more flexibility. Schools and libraries should be allowed to use ECF funds for smartphones, T-Mobile told Wireline Bureau staff. Samsung agreed and told acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and Commissioner Geoffrey Starks' staff that smartphones “support video conferencing platforms, internet browsing, e-mail, document editing and sharing, and other software necessary to ensure full participation in remote learning activities.” Qualcomm told Rosenworcel’s staff it's “disappointed” with the decision. Whether schools and libraries that have already purchased services and equipment should get priority for reimbursement was a sticking point for education advocates (see 2104260070). The draft rules appear to favor retroactive purchases, Windhausen said. Prospective purchases should be given priority, ACA Connects told Commissioner Nathan Simington's and Commissioner Brendan Carr's staffers, because it would otherwise "be inequitable." One application filing window that prioritizes future purchases would "provide more certainty that support would be available for the upcoming school year," said Verizon. CTIA disagreed and echoed T-Mobile's call to include smartphones. The State E-rate Coordinators’ Alliance recommended starting retroactive reimbursement March 1, 2020, instead of the proposed July 1, 2020. Final rules should allow eligible schools and libraries to use funds for constructing self-provisioned networks, said Motorola, because “the limited exception to permit funding of network construction where there is no commercially available option is administratively unworkable." ENA Services recommended tweaking the language to require schools and libraries only certify that they were unaware of existing services to be reimbursed for new construction. NTCA agreed that a limited exemption for self-provisioning should be granted and raised concerns about allowing reimbursement for purchasing hotspots.

Nearly 18 million of the more than 22 million comments submitted to the FCC when it repealed net neutrality rules in 2017 were fake, reported New York Attorney General Letitia James' (D) office. More than 500,000 fake letters went to Congress. “Americans' voices are being drowned out by masses of fake comments and messages being submitted to the government to sway decision-making,” James said: “Instead of actually looking for real responses from the American people, marketing companies are luring vulnerable individuals to their websites with freebies, co-opting their identities, and fabricating responses that giant corporations are then using to influence the policies and laws that govern our lives." The report found the largest broadband companies spent $4.2 million on a campaign to submit more than 8.5 million fake comments to the FCC. The report didn't find evidence that the companies or their lobbying firms had direct knowledge of the fraudulent comments. Millions of fake comments were also submitted in favor of net neutrality rules, the report said. More than 7.7 million of the 9.3 million fake comments supporting the rules were submitted through automated software. Fluent, React2Media and Opt-Intelligence, the lead generators of fake comments, entered settlements and will pay $3.7 million, $550,000 and $150,000, respectively. Investigations are continuing. The report recommended implementing CAPTCHA tests or other technical safeguards to prevent comment submissions through automated software. This "demonstrates how the record informing the FCC’s net neutrality repeal was flooded with fraud," said acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, in a statement. "This was troubling at the time because even then the widespread problems with the record were apparent," Rosenworcel said. "We have to learn from these lessons and improve because the public deserves an open and fair opportunity to tell Washington what they think about the policies that affect their lives.” Rosenworcel had urged then-Chairman Ajit Pai to delay repealing the rules until an investigation was complete (see 1712040046). Pai declined to comment now.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals should affirm a lower court ruling upholding California's 2018 net neutrality law, said an opposition brief filed Tuesday (in Pacer, case 21-15430) by Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) (see 2102230072). Plaintiffs "miss the mark" in claiming preemptive force, and an injunction would "pose concrete, serious harms to the tens of millions of people in California," the brief argued. The law "does not conflict with statutory limits on the FCC’s power to regulate certain services as common carriers," it said: Plaintiffs "failed to establish irreparable harm or that the balance of equities weighs in their favor because they allege only that their members might need to adjust certain business practices."

A nationwide test of the emergency alert system will be Aug.11 at 2:20 p.m. EDT, said the Federal Emergency Management Agency in a letter to the FCC posted Tuesday in docket 15-94. The test will be originated using the legacy primary entry point system rather than the internet based common alerting protocol, a format similar to the last test, in 2019. “The public should be aware that full message text and multilingual messaging will not be available due to the over the air message delivery and relay used in this system of EAS message dissemination,” FEMA said. Along with the EAS test, FEMA will issue a wireless emergency alert test, “targeting only cell phones where the user has opted-in to receive WEA test messages.” The back-up date is Aug. 25.

Verizon said the FCC should take its time on a 2.5 GHz auction, the next expected 5G auction after 3.45 GHz, in comments posted Tuesday in docket 20-429. Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel says further action will be clear after comments. T-Mobile, viewed as the most likely bidder among major carriers (see 2009180029), seeks a 2021 airwaves sale. About 8,300 geographic overlay licenses will be on the block. “Oddities related to the existing licensing structure still need to be resolved before the Commission can hold a successful 2.5 GHz auction,” Verizon said: “The exact spectrum that will be made immediately available will vary from license to license. The Commission is overlaying licenses on top of approximately 2,000 existing licenses, almost all of which are subject to active spectrum leases -- the terms of which are not public.” Even still, the swath remains of interest to national carriers looking for 5G spectrum, the company said. “Meaningful licensing” here “has been suspended for nearly 30 years” with much of the frequencies “particularly in rural areas, lying fallow,” T-Mobile said. Then-Chairman Ajit Pai had proposed a single-round, sealed-bid auction design rather than the more traditional simultaneous multiple round (SMR) format. Commissioners OK’d 5-0 an NPRM in January seeking comment. “Employ familiar and time-tested auction procedures” T-Mobile urged: “Not only is an SMR auction well understood by the Commission and bidders alike, but it would also allow bidders to engage in price discovery, which is the hallmark of what makes an auction economically rational and the touchstone for sincere bidders.” T-Mobile wants SMR because it would gain an advantage, AT&T said. “T-Mobile has already leased large portions of the spectrum at issue from the underlying [educational broadband service] licensees, and thus all other potential bidders know that T-Mobile has a compelling interest in obtaining these overlay licenses to fill out its existing position,” AT&T said: SMR “would be fundamentally uncompetitive, and would essentially hand most of the spectrum to T-Mobile at rock-bottom prices.” It would take months to play out, meaning a prolonged quiet period, AT&T said. Verizon supports SMR, saying a single-round auction is “antithetical to the Commission’s longstanding goals of allocating spectrum based on fully transparent market principles." A single-round approach would “deter auction participation, including by the smaller bidders the Commission believes may benefit,” UScellular warned. SMR auction promotes “price discovery” as over rounds, the carrier said: “While bidders can garner some publicly-available valuation information prior to an auction, this limited information cannot serve as a reasonable substitute.” The Competitive Carriers Association urged a prompt auction and SMR design.

As the FCC considers tougher secure telephone identity revisited (Stir) and signature-based handling of asserted information using tokens (Shaken) rules (see 2104290082), major carriers said they’re protecting customers from unwanted calls, in filings mostly posted Monday in docket 17-59. Banking and other groups warned that rules should ensure calls customers want still get through, in response to the Governmental Affairs Bureau request for input for its second call blocking report. "Customers are harmed when their banks’ outbound calling numbers are mislabeled, or calls from those numbers are blocked, because they may not receive lawful calls affecting their financial health,” the American Banking Association said: “It is critical for customers that these calls be completed without delay.” Incompas heard reports that call blocking is being used “on a more regular basis to block or divert legitimate traffic,” and said it “repeatedly raised concerns that call blocking could be used to erect barriers to competition and discriminate against competitive providers and their legitimate use cases.” Industry is “making great progress protecting consumers from unwanted robocalls” but “robocallers continuously deploy new tactics,” Verizon said: The company is seeing “a concerning increase in a new ‘dual seizure’ technique that bad actors use to efficiently insert millions of messages daily into nonconsenting consumers’ voice mailboxes without the calls ever causing the consumers’ devices to ring.” T-Mobile had a drop in robocalls a year ago, possibly because the pandemic closed some call centers. “Once calls resumed, new scams targeting subscribers purporting to relate to COVID-19 testing, vaccinations, unemployment insurance and stimulus checks arose,” T-Mobile said, noting its call blocking tools help. FCC efforts “have empowered AT&T to better protect its network and customers from illegal and unwanted robocalls,” the company said: “AT&T blocks illegal robocalls consistent with the Commission’s orders and has integrated the STIR/SHAKEN verification results into its call blocking analysis.” NCTA noted major cable operators adopted Stir/Shaken. “Policy advancements, industry investments in call authentication, blocking and labeling, and traceback, and aggressive law enforcement collectively are impacting the landscape,” said USTelecom: “No single initiative alone will solve the problem of illegal and unwanted robocalls, but each step makes an incremental difference.”

Vice President Kamala Harris and acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel compared the push by President Joe Biden’s administration for universal broadband connectivity to the 1936 Rural Electrification Act. Biden tasked Harris Wednesday with leading the push for the $100 billion broadband spending component of the administration’s infrastructure proposal (see 2104290076). White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Thursday “this is something that was important to [Harris], that she wanted to take on specifically.” Rural electrification “was one of the great examples of the role of responsibility of the federal government to meet the needs of the people where they are and to invest in America in a way that we will be competitive,” Harris told reporters after a Friday event in Cincinnati. “Broadband is the next example.” Regardless "of who they vote for, with which party they registered, that's what [people] want,” Harris said. “That's what they want to see their government focus on.” Lawmakers “in the 1930’s decided that instead of waiting for the electricity divide between urban and rural areas to fix itself, they would do something about it, and they passed the Rural Electrification Act,” Rosenworcel wrote Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., on April 12 and published Friday. “This history is also a reminder that we can help build infrastructure and make change with the right policies in place. We did this with rural electrification, and we can do it again with bold action to connect all to broadband.” Policymakers “need to consider new policies to get 100 percent of us connected to broadband nationwide,” as the FCC opens up the $3.2 billion emergency broadband benefit (see 2104290085), Rosenworcel said.