FCC staff is working with Universal Service Administrative Co. to prepare a national verifier of Lifeline eligibility for launch, said Chairman Ajit Pai in an update to Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., posted Friday in commission docket 18-5. "USAC continues to focus on addressing [Federal Information Security Management Act] compliance to ensure the National Verifier will be a secure system," Pai wrote. "USAC has completed several steps in this process and is making significant strides toward completing all FISMA requirements." He said commission staff and USAC are working to finalize dates, and stakeholders will be given advance notice about the launch once the dates are finalized. Both "continue to work on the expansion of the National Verifier in additional states to minimize the impact of the initial delay and are close to finalizing data sharing agreements in two additional states," Pai wrote.

The FCC is willing to investigate alongside the Department of Homeland Security if “particularized evidence” of unlawful use of cellsite simulators, often called StingRays, is found, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai wrote Friday to Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y. (see 1806010056). Engel, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and other lawmakers repeatedly pressed the FCC to investigate StingRay use in the U.S. and particularly Washington, D.C., with mounting evidence of activity from DHS. Pai told Engel, ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, DHS “has taken the lead in assessing the potential threat from certain uses of cell-site simulators,” and the agency identified the technology as “an existing and emerging threat.” If "we had particularized evidence that certain devices were being unlawfully used within the United States, we would of course investigate the matter alongside our federal partners and take all appropriate enforcement actions,” Pai wrote, noting DOJ and the FBI also are addressing the issue. Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel responded that “cell phone surveillance devices have been detected in Washington near the White House. Today the @FCC declined to investigate. This makes no sense.” An FCC spokesman declined further comment.

Removing barriers to broadband deployment, such as pole attachment permitting and costs, needs to be an FCC and congressional priority, said American Cable Association President Matt Polka in an interview on C-SPAN’s The Communicators that was to be broadcast over the weekend and was posted online. Added TDS Senior Vice President-Corporate Affairs Drew Petersen, "It's not a glamorous issue," but such attachments can cost close to $40 per pole in rural areas requiring multiple poles, adding up to a significant financial hurdle to deployment. While 5G holds big promise, it likely won't be deployed in rural and suburban areas for years, said Petersen, an ACA board member. Polka said continued deployment of broadband -- including obtaining the financing and recouping costs -- is the biggest challenge facing cable ISPs. He said the FCC Communications Act Title II broadband service rollback opened the door to companies being more innovative in how they recoup those costs. He said as the country considers infrastructure-related spending or proceedings, broadband needs to be kept in mind. Petersen said TDS' most expensive portion of business is its fiber footprint, followed by access to video content. He said it has seen "some" cord cutting, though subscription VOD is largely complementary. TDS, which operates in 31 states, is expanding video subscriber numbers through bringing in IP-based video via its fiber network, Petersen said. Since cable operators are increasingly broadband-centric, whether "American Cable Association" is an outdated name "is a question we ask ourselves all the time," Polka said: "Our members are broadband forward" and ACA's board considered a name change a couple years ago, though it opted to keep the moniker because of its familiarity. Asked about AT&T buying Time Warner, Petersen said the urge to grow through deals is understandable, but smaller MVPDs and their subscribers end up paying higher prices for content to make up for the favorable terms and conditions big, merged companies are able to secure. Polka said Sinclair/Tribune should be denied even with divestitures of some stations.

The need for FCC regulations, relevancy and function is "fading" like “a snowman in springtime,” due to the rise outside the agency's jurisdiction of the “app economy,” Commissioner Mike O’Rielly blogged Friday. Since services like Facebook and Netflix are increasingly competing or replacing more traditional FCC licensees, the FCC should relax regulations, O’Rielly said. Many focuses of FCC attention “need to be scrapped immediately,” he said. “Why, for instance, should the Commission spend one more minute adjusting the wireline separations accounting rules?” Licensees shouldn’t be thought of as incumbents “based on legacy notions of competition instead of marketplace realities,” he said. The current commission has relaxed regulations in many areas, “but there is capacity to do more if entities would do the work to make the proper showings,” the commissioner said. “If an existing FCC regulatee is in the voice, video, or data business, they should be knocking down our doors to demand fundamental and colossal relief.” The alternative to relaxing more regulations would be to “advocate for new Congressional powers to regulate these services,” but that’s “futile and unnecessary,” O’Rielly said.

The FCC extended comment deadlines into late summer on a USTelecom petition for incumbent telco forbearance relief from unbundling discounts and other wholesale duties. Instead of comments being due Thursday and replies June 22, they will now be due Aug. 6 and Sept. 5, respectively, said a Wireline Bureau order Friday in docket 18-141, partially granting various requests. The bureau also issued a protective order. Many parties, from other telecom associations to state utility regulators, sought more time, and some also opposed the deregulation that USTelecom sought (see 1805210049). The ILEC association was OK with an extension (see 1805220056).

The American Public Power Association decried “process and outcomes” of the FCC Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee, in a letter to BDAC Chair Elizabeth Bowles posted Wednesday in docket 17-83. BDAC has no representative for public power utilities, and it shows, APPA said. “While BDAC purports to be a representative body, its composition is so overwhelmingly comprised of private industry representatives that there can be no real suggestion that the ‘model’ codes developed by BDAC are consensus documents that reflect the input and views of all stakeholders.” The committee also has taken heat for having few local representatives (see 1805020059). Pole attachment recommendations in the draft model codes “would have significant detrimental operational and financial impacts on utility operations,” the association said. “These measures would compromise the safety and reliability of electric distribution infrastructure and would subsidize the private communications industry at the expense of public power utility customers.” The draft municipal code “arbitrarily and capriciously seeks to impose a single set of pole attachment regulations on all public power utilities in clear contravention of … Section 224 of the Communications Act,” it said. APPA opposed creating a centralized register of network support infrastructure in each state as unnecessary and burdensome. A state code proposal to require public entities including power utilities to make publicly owned dark fiber available to private entities at cost-based rates is “one-sided and overly intrusive,” it said. An FCC official noted that National Rural Electric Cooperative Association CEO Jim Matheson is a BDAC member on the State Model Code and Competitive Access to Broadband Infrastructure working group.

The Supreme Court again gave the government more time to respond to petitions appealing a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirming the FCC's 2015 net neutrality order. The high court approved the DOJ solicitor general's latest request to extend the deadline for all respondents, from Monday to Aug. 15, said a note Wednesday in its docket on Daniel Berninger v. FCC et al., No. 17-498. Some believe the government is waiting for the FCC's recent net neutrality repeal order to take effect, which occurs June 11, so it can move to dismiss the 2015 order litigation.

Business regulations can have a legitimate policy reason for existing but are also anticompetitive and distort the market and need to be examined to see if they are justified, said DOJ antitrust chief Makan Delrahim at an agency antitrust roundtable Thursday, according to prepared remarks. He cited Justice filing a statement of interest in March on TIKD Services' lawsuit against the Florida Bar about the company's app helping dispute traffic tickets as an example of the market potentially "us[ing] states as tools for their anticompetitive goals." He said Michigan's sales law preventing direct sales of new cars to consumers, seemingly aimed at Tesla, is "a particularly troubling example of how incumbents can work to craft regulations laser-focused on preventing entry." Public Knowledge said Senior Counsel John Bergmayer discussed the need for reform to the broadcast compulsory license and retransmission consent regime, including a rollback of the network nonduplication and syndicated exclusivity rules and elimination of basic tier buy-through rules. “In some areas, the problem is a lack of FCC rules," Bergmayer said. "In some areas, a lack of enforcement. But in some areas rules that benefit incumbents that no longer need government protection stick around far past their expiration date." The Center for Individual Freedom also cited retrans (see 1805300067).

AT&T said it won't continue challenging FTC broadband authority, declining to appeal a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals en banc ruling that the commission has authority over the non-common-carrier activities of common carriers, such as telcos (see 1802260031). Broadband is considered a non-common-carrier activity under the FCC's reversal of Communications Act Title II net neutrality regulation. “We have decided not to seek review by the Supreme Court, to focus instead on negotiating a fair resolution of the case with the Federal Trade Commission,” said an AT&T spokesman Thursday. An FTC lawsuit in the Northern District of California (No. 14-cv-04785-EMC) alleged AT&T Mobility promised millions of wireless customers unlimited data, then throttled the speeds they got. The company says it no longer throttles unlimited customers once they hit a monthly data allotment. The FTC didn't comment.

The FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee will meet June 8 in the Commission Meeting Room, said a Federal Register notice. The meeting is to start at 9 a.m. The committee will be updated by FCC staff on recent developments and “may discuss topics including, but not limited to, consumer protection and education, consumer participation in the FCC rulemaking process, and the impact of new and emerging communication technologies,” the notice said.