FCC inaction on the Competitive Enterprise Institute June 2016 petition for administrative reconsideration (see 1606100043) falls "far short" of an egregious-level delay that would justify a writ of mandamus, the agency said Friday in a docket 17-1261 opposition filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. It said precedent says mandamus doesn't necessarily follow from it not meeting the 90-day statutory deadline for responding to that petition. CEI filed a petition for writ of mandamus in December, saying the agency withheld action "for an unreasonable amount of time" on its administrative reconsideration petition about the broadband network overbuild conditions on Charter Communication's buy of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks and said that inaction makes the FCC's order nonfinal "and hence unreviewable" by the court. CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman said Monday the FCC made errors of fact and logic that the group will point out in its response to be filed in a couple of weeks.

The USF contribution factor for Q2 will drop from 19.5 percent to 18.4 percent of carriers' U.S. interstate and international (long-distance) telecom end-user revenue, emailed industry consultant Billy Jack Gregg Friday. He said Universal Service Administrative Co. Q2 projection of USF revenue was $12.8 billion, about $66 million less than the previous quarter, which he combined with the previously announced Q2 USF demand projection of $1.97 billion (see 1802010024) to produce the contribution factor estimate. The decline in revenue "continues the downward trend in the USF contribution base, which places upward pressure on the USF assessment factor," he said. "USF revenues for the four quarters ending [in Q2] are $4.55 billion lower than revenues for the four quarters ending [in Q2 2017], an 8.1% decline."

If legislators take action on net neutrality, they should recognize the FCC should be in charge of enforcement rather than the FTC, said Commissioner Mignon Clyburn in an appearance on C-SPAN’s The Communicators, set to be telecast Saturday. The FCC is capable of quick action on open Internet issues, but the necessary showings to trigger FTC intervention would make relying on that agency cumbersome, she said. “People want action,” Clyburn said. Any legislative solution should have “strong legal footing,” encourage infrastructure investment, and allow for consumer protection “in real time,” Clyburn said. If net neutrality legislation can accomplish all of that without relying on Title II of the Communications Act, she’s willing to consider it, though she said the FCC “got it right” in 2015. Without Title II authority, there could be issues with legal challenges to Connect America Fund policies, Clyburn said. Such challenges could damage the USF, a “deeply unsettling” prospect, she said. Consumers need net neutrality protections because ISPs now offer bundles of services that could incentivize anti-consumer actions, Clyburn said. Companies changing their statements about whether they consider concepts like paid prioritization acceptable is evidence there's a need for strong net neutrality regulation, she said. Proposals by the FCC majority on 5G don’t sufficiently account for the needs of local communities, Clyburn said. She said some jurisdictions might have restrictive siting rules or high rents for carriers, but bad actors are a small portion of the overall landscape. The FCC shouldn’t “regulate on the fringes,” she said. Treating small cells differently “makes all the sense in the world,” but the FCC should work “collaboratively,” she said. Clyburn also took the FCC majority to task over inmate calling, where she said FCC policies are hurting families: “The FCC has not done it’s job.”

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai turned down a National Rifle Association musket for winning its Charlton Heston Courage Under Fire Award, Politico reported Thursday, citing a commission source who read from Pai letters sent to the NRA and the American Conservative Union. An FCC spokesman said Friday he couldn't release the letters now, but confirmed the details of the report. Pai was "surprised" by the award announced at ACU's Conservative Political Action Conference Feb. 23 (see 1802230037), said the report, and his staff asked that the handmade long gun not be presented to him until vetted by career ethics attorneys at the FCC Office of General Counsel. Pai's letter said he had to "respectfully decline the award" on the advice of counsel, and noted he had also been advised he won't be able to accept the award upon leaving government, the report said. Pai was criticized by some parties for not quickly turning down the award, including by Walter Shaub, Campaign Legal Center ethics senior director and former U.S. Office of Government Ethics director (see 1802270035). The NRA and ACU didn't pass along the letters.

Friday's sizable East Coast windstorms didn't cause significant communications network damage, operators said. A Frontier Communications spokeswoman emailed that portions of its West Virginia and New York service areas had spotty issues due to commercial power outages but didn't experience any widespread damage. A Sprint spokeswoman didn't report any problems and emailed that in advance of major weather events the company equips local cell sites with fixed and portable emergency backup generators and pre-staging equipment. A Comcast spokeswoman emailed Friday afternoon that it was too early to assess any storm effects, but the company was "well prepared." Verizon Wireless said its network in the Washington D.C. area is performing as designed: "In areas with power outages, our investment in network redundancy, specifically generators, is benefiting our customers and first responders." Charter, AT&T and T-Mobile didn't comment. Federal offices in the Washington, D.C., area were closed Friday due to the weather, according to the Office of Personnel Management.

Free Press challenged the FCC net neutrality repeal in the court where most other petitions have been filed: the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Free Press' petition noted it had filed an initial protective petition in the 1st Circuit that was voluntarily withdrawn in agreement with the FCC, which said it wouldn't trigger a court venue lottery until after its order was published in the Federal Register. "Free Press has a rock-solid legal argument against the FCC’s repeal of the Net Neutrality rules," said Policy Director Matt Wood Thursday. "The agency is dead wrong to think it can take away nondiscrimination protections, grounded in Title II of the Communications Act, that prevent ISPs from picking and choosing what speech they’ll transmit and what they’ll block or degrade. [FCC Republicans] failed to assemble a shred of credible evidence against classifying internet-access providers as common carriers under the law." The FCC declined comment.

The California Public Utilities Commission sought more time to comply with FCC elimination of a federal Lifeline low-income USF port freeze for voice and broadband services (see 1711160021). With the new rule to take effect March 19, the CPUC asked for an implementation extension until July 15 so it can determine what, if any, changes are needed to the state's LifeLine program, said a waiver petition posted Wednesday in docket 11-42. Also this week, a Telrite emergency petition sought a waiver extension of recertification and other rules for Lifeline subscribers in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands until the Wireline Bureau determines it would be in the public interest to lift the waivers. The Alaska Telephone Association said FCC grant of relief to Lifeline providers in the state from several minimum service duties would give eligible low-income Alaskans living in remote areas "a choice between mobile wireless or fixed service at affordable rates." ATA's reply comments noted NTCA and WTA supported its petition and there was no opposition (see 1712060038). Hawaii's Department of Hawaiian Home Lands commended FCC efforts to address various policy initiatives raised in a recent NPRM, some of which faced much resistance in recent comments (see 1802210045 and 1802220061).

Betty Sanders, Charter Communications senior director, was speaking for herself and not her company when she expressed concern at NARUC that a proposed manual resubmission of number-porting requests, under an LNPA transition contingency rollback plan, would be a huge burden for Charter (see 1802130025).

Straight Path and Verizon paid a civil penalty of more than $600 million to the Treasury in connection with a 2017 settlement Straight Path entered into with the FCC Enforcement Bureau before the sale and transfer of its licenses to Verizon (see 1701120046). “This payment is the largest civil penalty ever paid … to resolve a Commission investigation,” the FCC said in a news release. “The settlement resolved an investigation into allegations that Straight Path failed to use the spectrum it was awarded, and thus violated the Commission’s buildout and discontinuance rules in connection with approximately 1,000 licenses in certain millimeter wave spectrum bands.” The agency said the licenses are important to 5G. The deal closed Wednesday.

Parties updated the FCC this week on the local number portability administrator transition, complicated by a dispute over a contingency rollback plan to incumbent Neustar if the systems of incoming LNPA iconectiv initially fail. North American Portability Management said the transition is progressing and remains on track for a "final acceptance date" of May 25 "but faces some risks." Backed by the FCC, NAPM's transition oversight manager (TOM) facilitated "intensive" daily sessions among stakeholders "in an effort to identify a mutually-agreed approach for contingency rollback" under the May 25 deadline, said NAPM's February LNPA report Wednesday in docket 09-109. "These sessions concluded on February 16, 2018 without agreement" (see 1802200051). Chairman Ajit Pai had asked the parties to agree by Feb. 16 (see 1802020070). "To mitigate risk during the active transition period, significant effort has been spent in establishing an industry-led contingency rollback plan," NAPM said.