Disability Belongs, a nonprofit led by people with disabilities, urged the FCC to reach out to all those affected before eliminating a requirement that telecommunications relay services providers support the largely obsolete ASCII transmission format. Other commenters saw little risk from permanently deleting the requirement.
Virgin Islands Telephone's petition concerns the company's request to extend transitional high-cost support that's set to expire at the end of the year under a 2023 order (see 2509250041).
The Taxpayers Protection Alliance asked the FCC to act quickly on rules that could speed up the transition of carriers away from legacy copper networks (see 2507240048). Providers “are now required to replace outdated technologies, such as copper lines, with more copper lines in the case of a natural disaster,” said a filing Friday in docket 25-208. This mandate is “ostensibly” to quickly reconnect customers, the alliance said. “If the FCC removes regulatory red tape, providers can speedily reconnect customers by replacing old technology with new, more efficient technology.”
Somos filed a petition Friday urging the FCC to make major changes to how phone numbers are assigned, moving the agency away from its legacy systems to an IP world. The petition comes as the FCC shutters the North American Numbering Council (see 2506240074). This transition “is essential as spammers and cyber criminals supercharge their scams with AI to exploit the US telecommunications systems,” Somos CEO Gina Perini said in an email.
Comments are due Oct.10, replies Oct. 17, on MCC Network Services’ application to purchase MTCO Corp., said a public notice Friday. MTCO provides communications services in central Illinois and owns a 75-mile fiber-optic link. MCC owns a fiber-optic network in central Illinois and manages a fiber-optic network in Illinois, Indiana and Missouri.
The FCC Wireline Bureau said in a notice Thursday that interconnected VoIP numbering authorization applications filed by three providers lacked some of the information required under the commission’s rules. The three providers are Porting.com, CallTower and ConnectTo Communications. The bureau reached out to request the information, and “to date, the applicants have not complied with the requests. As a result, the Commission has not released public notices accepting the applications for filing.” Meanwhile, the bureau approved an application by E. Ritter Communications under its streamlined approval process.
Virgin Island Telephone, formerly known as Viya, asked the FCC to act on the company's request to extend transitional high-cost support that's set to expire at the end of the year under a 2023 order.
Subsea cables face a growing challenge of finding space on the seafloor for new systems while still ensuring the safety and reliability of existing infrastructure, TeleGeography's Greg Bryan wrote Thursday. The International Cable Protection Committee recommends that new cables are separated from parallel existing cables by a distance of three times the water depth as protection from the grapnel hooks used to recover cables from the ocean bed, Bryan said. But that separation requirement becomes a problem in deep waters, and when dozens of cables cross the same region, "the mathematical reality quickly eliminates available routing options." Compounding the problem is a lack of information sharing in the subsea cable industry, Bryan added, suggesting that better data sharing could be achieved through nondisclosure agreements and coordinated working groups.
The FCC Wireline Bureau on Tuesday reminded incarcerated people’s communications service providers that they must file annual reports by Nov. 3. The FCC has delayed the reporting deadline three times. It was originally April 1.
Consolidated Communications is putting all its residential, business and wholesale lines under its Fidium brand, which launched in 2021 for its home and small business operations, the company said Monday. Consolidated has spent about $1.7 billion in fiber infrastructure since 2020 and expects to reach more than 80% of its footprint with fiber in the next few years, it said.