Almost all unique net neutrality comments to the FCC favored retaining regulations from a 2015 order, said Ryan Singel, a fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society (CIS). Attempting to filter out fake and form comments from 22 million submitted in a 2017 proceeding, he focused on "semantic outliers" and matched 646,041 unique comments to addresses in particular congressional districts. "A manual analysis of 1,000 of these comments showed that 99.7% of the comments opposed the repeal," said Singel's 44-page report Monday. “It shouldn’t come as a surprise that nearly every single one of those comments that wasn’t written by a telecom lobbyist opposed the repeal," said Evan Greer, Fight for the Future deputy director. Noting the study's findings, Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel tweeted that the FCC "rolled back the rules anyway. Washington is not listening to the American public. It’s not right -- and we need to keep up the fight." FCC spokespersons didn't comment Tuesday. CIS "is pretty much a wholly-owned subsidiary of Google, one of net neutrality’s largest supporters. So, the study is corporate PR," emailed Peter Flaherty, National Legal and Policy Center chairman: "The whole public comment process was hopelessly debased. I'm not sure what the Big Tech firms are now trying to prove. I think the Commissioners had enough input -- both fake and real -- to understand the arguments." Singel responded: "None of the work that CIS does on net neutrality is funded by corporate donations, and this study was not commissioned by anyone, let alone Google." CIS discloses that Google is one of several donors but "does not accept corporate funding for its network neutrality-related work." Singel says his funding comes from Stanford Law School, as disclosed here. "The report I released relies on a publicly available dataset which was analyzed with disclosed methods (including code) that make it easy for anyone to replicate the results or criticize its methodology," Singel emailed. "As a former journalist who once wrote an analysis piece for Wired called 'Why Google Became a Carrier-Humping Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey,' I find the accusation that my work is controlled by Google both hilarious and desperate." New York State's attorney general Tuesday vowed to investigate fake comments (see 1810160071).

Expect an even more-heated battle over spectrum between satellite and wireless interests at next year's World Radiocommunication Conference than at past WRCs, said former Global VSAT Forum (GVF) Secretary General David Hartshorn Tuesday at the VSAT Congress. Now head of Geeks Without Frontiers, Hartshorn said 4G has been a successful technology, but satellite services are starting to complain about 4G interference in the C-band, raising questions about what effects might come from 5G. He said the C-band is interesting to wireless, but so too is the Ka-band "and watch Q and V." GVF Secretary General David Meltzer said it remains to be seen at WRC-19 what kind of ripple effect the C-band proceeding before the FCC has on other countries.

Somos will become North American numbering plan administrator and pooling administrator under separate one-year bridge contracts, said the FCC Tuesday. That confirmed a Somos announcement Monday (see 1810150057). Some will take over from Neustar, while the commission works to consolidate functions under a new, competitively bid, long-term contract aimed at a "more cost-efficient and effective operation," said the agency. It said NANPA administers phone numbers for member countries and the PA administers number pooling functions in the U.S., including as the routing number administrator for non-dialable numbers on emergency calls. Neustar declined to comment.

The FCC awarded Somos contracts to be the North American numbering plan and pooling administrator, including routing number administrator, the company said Monday. "Somos will work for a successful transition with [incumbent] Neustar, in a manner that provides the least external impact," said toll-free numbering administrator Somos' CEO Gina Perini. The FCC and Neustar didn't immediately comment.

Wireless service continues to return to storm-ravaged parts of Florida, Georgia and Alabama, the FCC reported Monday, but Verizon Wireless said continuing fiber cuts are slowing efforts in the Florida Panhandle. As of 11 a.m., providers reported 5.2 percent of cellsites were out in 110 counties, said the commission's Hurricane Michael impact update. That was down from 6.2 percent Sunday, 11.5 percent Friday (see 1810120054) and 18.8 percent Thursday (see 1810110060). Verizon Wireless said it's working "round the clock" to restore service and has seen "positive movement," as 99 percent of its network is in service in Georgia and 98 percent in Florida, with the Panama City and Panama City Beach areas experiencing the most problems. Fiber connections -- "needed for cell sites and some mobile assets to work" -- are "a significant challenge," it said. "As soon as we have fiber repaired and start to see sites come back on air, we experience new cuts resulting from other restoration efforts happening in the community such as clearing roads, residential property clearing, and replacing electric poles." The FCC reported 157,371 cable and wireline subscribers without service in Florida, 61,991 in Georgia and 3,445 in Alabama, down from 252,748, 103,775 and 18,244, respectively on Friday. Two TV stations, 13 FMs and two AMs were off-air, respectively, down from three, unchanged and down from three, Sunday. No public safety answer points were reported down.

FCC headquarters reopen Tuesday after being closed Monday due to water damage, it said. "Early today, sprinklers were activated to put out a small fire on the west side of the 5th floor, and the water caused localized damage on that floor as well as several floors below where the sprinklers went off," said an email to staff Sunday. "The closure will allow remediation teams and relevant staff to ensure that the facility is fully functional before staff returns." Employees were teleworking Monday as damage was being assessed, emailed a spokesperson. Filings were posted Monday in the electronic comment filing system. The fire started in a small refrigerator and was detected by the system, activating the sprinklers, which put out the fire before a fire engine and truck arrived, said a D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department spokesman. He said the department received a call at 8:42 a.m. Sunday and its personnel arrived in four minutes.

Rules designed to speed deployment of small cells and 5G take effect Jan. 14, says a Federal Register notice scheduled for Monday. The FCC approved the changes in September over concerns by Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel (see 1809260029).

Industry groups are renewing their fight against an FCC policy statement that triples damages for amounts owed to USF and other funds. In a docket 16-330 ex parte posting Thursday, CTIA, NCTA, USTelecom and Incompas recapped a meeting with FCC Chief of Staff Matthew Berry at which they said the agency's way of defining a continuing violation in recent years runs contrary to the one-year statute of limitations for nonbroadcast notices of apparent liability contained in the Communications Act. The groups argued that four particular categories shouldn't be considering continuing violations, repeating an argument made to the Enforcement Bureau (see 1802010021). The groups petitioned in 2015, challenging the policy statement (see 1503060066).

A $600 million e-connectivity pilot program could be leveraged into $1 billion in broadband support, said Rural Utilities Service acting Administrator Chris McLean at a Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition conference Friday. He said RUS is looking at providing a mix of grants and loans, and while the former are scored dollar-for-dollar for budgetary purposes, loans aren't, allowing funding to be stretched. RUS hopes it can accept applications "early next year," he said, amid contracting and IT "contingencies." Electric co-ops are eager to participate, seeing broadband as enhancing their grids and economic opportunities in their rural communities, said Brian O'Hara, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association senior director-regulatory issues. "Interest is only growing." One complication is co-ops must get at least 85 percent of revenue from members to retain tax-exempt status, with last year's tax overhaul broadening the definition of revenue, he said. The RUS mandate is to target funding on rural areas where at least 90 percent of households lack "sufficient access" to 10/1 Mbps service, but O'Hara called for efforts to deploy 25/3 Mbps service. He said grants could be a "game changer," particularly in sparsely populated areas, because loans often "don't move the needle" making a business case. McLean quipped grants are "like dating," as "you hope it goes well," but loans are "like marriage," as RUS and recipients "have to live with each other." RUS wants project participants to have "skin in the game" and make serious commitments, and believes community partnerships are vital, he said. Program challenges include determining actual, not advertised, data speeds and figuring out how to measure service quality, he said. O'Hara credited the FCC Connect America Fund Phase II subsidy auction with expanding broadband support beyond incumbent telcos, including to electric co-ops, which he said will get about $225 million cumulatively over 10 years. He voiced interest in the Remote Areas Fund auction, but said the bigger deal will be what happens after 2021 to about $1.5 billion in annual CAF II funding currently going to large telcos. Public schools in Kent County, Maryland, provide students -- 62 percent of whom qualify for free meals -- with laptops and other devices, said Laura Jacob, the system's technology supervisor. The county government played a key role by building a 110-mile fiber network with 70 hot spots to expand home internet access, she said.

Congress should provide one-time funding to "forklift all 911 centers across the country at least to the level of technology that we've got now and that can match what FirstNet has,” APCO Chief Counsel Jeff Cohen said in an interview for C-SPAN's The Communicators, to be televised Saturday and likely put online Friday. Getting to next-generation 911 will take at least $10 billion, Cohen said. Congress is mulling NG-911 legislation (see 1809260062). The bill should be bipartisan, say that 911 must be IP-based, uniform and interoperable across country, and require states receiving grants to show they have a funding mechanism to sustain the network, Cohen said. APCO is concerned that early NG-911 deployments won't be interoperable: "If one state or one region deploys a connecting network, it will allow all the 911 centers connected to it to work together and share data [but] that's not necessarily the case if a 911 center needs to share data with another agency." State 911 fee diversion is a “terrible practice," he said. Congress can try to stop it by conditioning 911 grant programs, but the size of grants a state could lose must be significant compared with the amount a state is diverting, he said. "You need pain," which could be provided by a $10 billion NG-911 grant program, he said. Commissioner Mike O’Rielly and the FCC are doing well to “name and shame” diverters, but while the number may be shrinking somewhat, the practice stubbornly continues, he said.