FCC orders seeking to help rate-of-return telcos and a few tribal carriers are to take effect May 31, the day comments will be due on a cable channel listing NPRM. Two orders in docket 10-90 that provide up to $545 million in additional high-cost USF subsidy support to rate-of-return carriers and clarify their expense and cost-recovery rules (see 1803230025) are to appear in Tuesday's Federal Register, with an effective date 30 days after publication, which would be May 31. The FR is to publish Tuesday another order relaxing operating expense restrictions on high-cost support for an estimated five rural carriers primarily serving tribal lands (see 1804050028), triggering the same 30-day effective date of May 31. It's also to publish Tuesday an NPRM in docket 18-92 seeking comment on eliminating rules requiring cable carriers to keep channel listings in their main offices (see Notebook at end of 1804170038), with comments due in 30 days, May 31, and replies in 45 days, June 15.

The Supreme Court declined to review an appeal in FCC pole-attachment litigation. An order list noted Monday without comment that justices denied a cert petition in Ameren et al. v. FCC et al., in docket 17-819. Ameren and other electric utilities had appealed an 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that upheld a 2015 FCC order aimed at driving down telecom pole-attachment rates to cable rate levels (see 1707310065 and 1511240071). Commission and Ameren representatives didn't comment.

There were 14 comments filed on an FCC broadband ISP transparency rule under the Paperwork Reduction Act, a commission spokesman told us Monday. The Office of Management and Budget must approve the information collection requirements in the rule before the commission's "internet freedom" order repealing Title II net neutrality can take effect. OMB didn't comment. None of the almost two dozen trade groups and ISPs we queried acknowledged filing comments, but numerous parties said they didn't file: the American Cable Association, AT&T, Comcast, Competitive Carriers Association, Cox Communications, CTIA, Frontier Communications, Incompas, ITTA, Mediacom Communications, NCTA, NTCA, Sprint, US Cellular, USTelecom and Wireless ISP Association. Others didn't respond or had no comment.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai will visit Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida this week for a series of events on expanding high-speed internet access and closing the digital divide, with an eye on jobs, said an advisory Friday. Pai plans to participate on roundtables with House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., in New Orleans and with Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., in Tampa. Among other stops will be a housing project in Iberville, Louisiana, “where high-speed broadband has been deployed,” a Navy facility in Gulfport, Mississippi, and a cable broadband facility in Pascagoula, Alabama. Pai plans to meet with local leaders in Mobile, Alabama. He also plans to visit a broadband provider in Quincy, Florida, and the James Madison Institute in Tallahassee. Also in Florida, he will tour a veterans’ telehealth center in Lecanto and a cable broadband facility in St. Petersburg.

What FCC Chairman Ajit Pai told lawmakers related to the incentive auction is the additional allocation of repack funding gives broadcasters access to 92.5 percent of their estimated repacking costs (see 1804260068).

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon of Washington denied a DirecTV motion to have it dismissed as a defendant in DOJ's antitrust litigation seeking to block AT&T's buy of Time Warner (see 1804170031), according to a court minutes notation Friday in docket 17-cv-02511-RJL.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai wants to open a rulemaking on the contribution methodology for telecom relay services (TRS). At a House Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee hearing (at about 56:00) Thursday (see 1804260068), Pai said he hopes to circulate a draft NPRM on the matter in the next couple of weeks. He was responding to Rep. Kevin Yoder, R-Kan., who asked for an update on a letter exchange he and Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., co-chairs of the Congressional Deaf Caucus, had with Pai last year. They had asked Pai to act on a petition for rulemaking to revise the TRS contribution methodology, which was supported by deaf and hard-of-hearing advocates; and Pai answered that the commission "was making every effort to conclude its review of this matter as quickly and equitably as possible" (see 1711220017). IDT petitioned in 2015 to include intrastate telecom revenue in the TRS contribution base, which currently assesses a percentage of interstate and international telecom revenue. Deaf groups and others backed the petition, the VON Coalition opposed it and USTelecom was wary (see 1602050058). Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Inc. (TDI), one of the supportive groups, "will be thrilled to see" an NPRM, emailed Executive Director Claude Stout Friday. "It is very important that we keep the Fund sufficient to meet the annual costs of the relay services for calls we make to our hearing contacts or vice versa. Relay services have been 'an equalizer' for us to function in a more level playing field." The FCC, IDT Telecom, USTelecom and VON didn't comment Friday.

NAB and members of the FCC Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment (ACDDE) disagreed in filings posted Thursday to docket 17-289 about the best way to do a broadcast incubator program. The FCC should institute a program that doesn’t depend on congressionally authorized tax credits and avoids limiting joint sales and shared services agreements, NAB told Media Bureau Chief Michelle Carey in a Monday meeting, said a filing. NAB “supports the FCC’s adoption of a fully-formed incubator program at this time, rather than one that is contingent on future Congressional action that may or may not occur,” said the filing. Incentivizing incubators with ownership rule waivers would “plunge” the program “into the politics of broadcasting’s ‘100 Years War’” over media ownership, said late replies by 22 individual members of the ACDDE, the body’s Broadcast Development Working Group. Limitations on sharing arrangements between incubator participants would prevent abuse, the committee members said. Since rules don’t limit broadcasters not involved in incubator programs from such relationships, harsher rules shouldn’t be imposed on incubator participants, NAB said. It favors a “new entrant” standard in deciding who would be eligible to be incubated, but the committee members said the FCC should use the “Overcoming Disadvantages Preference,” a mechanism for designating eligible entities that could survive constitutional challenges. The committees and NAB also had some agreements, with the association agreeing “Native Nations” is a possible race neutral standard that could be used by the agency, and the committee members agreeing with several NAB suggestions about how an incubator program could be operated.

Tech and utility interests said the FCC should retain census-tract-sized licenses for priority access licenses in the 3.5 GHz citizens broadband radio service band. They countered arguments by AT&T and T-Mobile (see 1804240067) that the FCC should adopt larger sizes to make PALs more viable. “The Commission has previously and rightly concluded that its rules should ensure that the 3.5 GHz band remains compatible with the full range of users and business models that the CBRS rules were intended to support in urban areas,” said a filing in docket 17-258. Among those signing were the American Petroleum Institute, Edison Electric Institute, Enterprise Wireless Alliance, Exelon, General Electric, Google, Motorola Solutions, pdvWireless, the Port of Los Angeles, Southern Linc, Union Pacific and the Utilities Technology Council. “To support their claims, AT&T and T-Mobile highlight a single implausible scenario in an attempt to show that the existing rules do not easily support large-carrier business models,” the filing said. “The Commission should recognize this example as only one of many possible deployment scenarios for major carriers, which is not demonstrative of the utility of the band for all carriers’ deployments over multiple contiguous census tracts, much less those of other potential innovative users.” The two carriers didn't comment Thursday. NCTA said it supports a proposal on the PALs by Charter Communications, which offers an alternative to CTIA and the Competitive Carriers Association's plan (see 1804230064). The operator wants the 3.5 GHz band licensed in the top 10 percent of metropolitan statistical area cellular market areas on a county basis, the next 275 largest CMAs licensed by MSA and the remaining CMAs by county. NCTA has before advocated 3.5 GHz priority access licenses should be granted on a county basis (see 1708090058). The cable group said, posted Thursday, that county-sized licenses in rural and urban markets "could make all the difference" in helping attract different investors with different models and maximizing participation. T-Mobile said in a filing the use of census tracts would create problems, especially in cities. “Licensing PALs by census tracts in urban areas will not expand the pool of providers meaningfully able to participate in an auction -- it means that any auction winner in an urban area will secure an authorization that will be significantly impaired and may be unable to be practically used,” T-Mobile said.

The Senate confirmed all five of President Donald Trump's FTC nominees Thursday evening under unanimous consent. The confirmed nominees include antitrust lawyer Joseph Simons, whom Trump plans to designate chairman (see 1802280044). The other confirmed nominees are former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Assistant Director Rohit Chopra; Noah Phillips, aide to Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas; Rebecca Slaughter, former chief counsel to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.; and Delta Air Lines' Christine Wilson (see 1801250055, 1801250066 and 1803260049). The confirmations followed negotiations that lasted through our deadline Thursday. All five nominees had “cleared the hotline” on the Senate Republican side by Thursday afternoon, but the Democrats were “trying to reach an understanding” with the White House, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., told us ahead of the deal (see 1804260050). "We'd like to get them cleared if we can" because the FTC is “a big agency with a big mission,” he said. Democratic FTC Commissioner Terrell McSweeny is to depart the commission Friday.