NTCA opposed Comcast's bid for a waiver from record keeping, retention and reporting rules under a 2013 FCC rural call completion order. Comcast didn't meet a waiver standard requiring it to show the requested relief wouldn't undermine the policy objective of the rules and special circumstances warranted deviating from the rules, said the NTCA comments Monday in docket 13-39. Comcast said that its engineers inadvertently didn't capture call detail record data for certain business customers due to the network complexities of a switching platform migration, but that its reported performance results were still accurate despite lower call volumes (see 1609160017). "Comcast makes no assertion that there are special circumstances that warrant grant of the requested waiver or that it was unable to collect the required Call Detail Record information. In fact, Comcast was apparently able to correct the problem ‘immediately upon discovering the errors,’" NTCA wrote. It said "neglect" doesn't constitute "good cause" for a waiver: "There is no reason to give any firm a 'free pass' with respect to regulations that it knew applied, that it had personnel available to address, and that it apparently could comply with quite readily once it ‘paid enough attention’ -- especially when the rules at issue are intended to assure service reliability and protect the livelihood and safety of consumers.”
Customs Duty
A Customs Duty is a tariff or tax which a country imposes on goods when they are transported across international borders. Customs Duties are used to protect countries' economies, residents, jobs, and environments, by limiting the flow of imported merchandise, especially restricted and prohibited goods, into the country. The Customs Duty Rate is a percentage determined by the value of the article purchased in the foreign country and not based on quality, size, or weight.
Despite claims of proprietary formatting for imported DVD sets, a classification protest lacked necessary information, Customs and Border Protection responded to an application for further review dated in June and released this month. The DVD sets, imported by Vintage, included digital catalogs, brochures, and educational, documentary and marketing videos, CBP said. Vintage protested CBP's classification of the DVDs under one subheading and said the media is better classified under another due to proprietary formatting. The classification hinges on whether DVDs include "proprietary formatting," previously defined by CBP as "encrypted in such a way that it can only read data if the devices with which the media are used contain a decryption algorithm that is not publicly available." While Vintage said "the subject DVD sets contain data that is encrypted in such a manner that they can only be played by a machine specifically encoded to read the data properly," proprietary formatting is not "necessarily tied" to the copyrightable content of the merchandise, CBP said. The associated duty rate is 2.7 percent.
The FCC invited input on a Comcast bid for a recordkeeping and reporting waiver under a 2013 rural call completion order, with comments due Sept. 26, replies Oct. 5. Comcast requested a partial waiver of its "obligation to report, record, and retain the call completion information" for certain rural and non-rural enterprise customers for the period through June, said a Wireline Bureau public notice in docket 13-39 listed in Friday's Daily Digest. Comcast has been migrating its business VoIP service to a new IP multimedia system switching platform, but some enterprise customers are still served by legacy soft switches, and company engineers inadvertently didn't capture call detail record data for certain customers due to the network complexity, said the company's Sept. 9 petition. Comcast said its Form 480 reports provide an accurate measure of its rural and nonrual call competition performance because the only likely impact of the omitted data was that the reports reflected lower call volumes. Including omitted pre-July data it recovered from one affected system didn't materially change Comcast's overall call performance metrics, and all omitted data from July have now been recovered and further confirm the performance, it said.
Online service providers and platforms are focuses of proposed rules outlined Wednesday by the European Commission. In reform packages for telecom and copyright, part of the digital single market strategy, the EC said it wants service providers to monitor content uploaded by subscribers to ensure it's not copyright-protected, and proposed extending rules now applied only to traditional operators to internet companies offering equivalent services. The commission wants to grant "neighboring rights" to news publishers to help them monitor the use of and seek remuneration for works posted by aggregators and search engines. The measures aren't aimed solely at American companies, and will offer legal clarity to all internet players, said EC Digital Single Market Vice-President Andrus Ansip in a webcast media briefing.
Industry parties generally criticized and state authorities backed FCC proposals to expand communications network outage reporting requirements. Commission proposals to extend network outage reporting duties to broadband providers drew opposition from wireline and wireless telcos, sparked calls from cable interests for a more targeted solution, and were supported by state regulators and 911 administrators. Comments were posted Friday and Monday in docket 15-80 on a Further NPRM approved in May along with an order revising Part 4 network outage reporting system (NORS) rules over two partial dissents (see 1605250061). Replies are due Sept. 12.
TracFone and others urged the FCC to undo its planned phaseout of Lifeline support for stand-alone voice service, as parties commented on petitions for reconsideration of the agency order extending the low-income subsidies to broadband and revising program administration (see 1603310056). Consumer advocates and some Lifeline providers opposed various recon requests by telco and cable trade groups (see 1606240077). NCTA and USTelecom opposed a Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission petition to clarify the state role on FCC-designated Lifeline broadband providers (see 1607200057), while Sprint supported clarification. Comments were due Friday, and some were posted Monday in docket 11-42.
CLECs continue to press the FCC to curb ILEC business data service prices and practices (see 1607220040), while a cable group asked for "light touch" regulation of new entrants. Level 3 sought rules to counter ILEC "lock-up plans," said a filing posted Thursday in docket 16-143 on the company's arguments to a Wireline Bureau official. To limit ILEC opportunities to use circuit-portability conditions to lock up BDS demand, the commission should bar incumbents "from setting the terms of circuit-specific plans in non-competitive areas at longer than two years," said Level 3, arguing customers should be allowed at the end of the term to pay the same price on a month-to-month basis. ILECs should be prohibited from imposing "terms for volume commitment plans in excess of one year in non-competitive areas," it said. Level 3 also asked the FCC to apply tariff filing duties to ILEC commercial agreements for provisioning circuit-based and packet-based dedicated services "in non-competitive areas." It said some ILECs weren't filing agreements, preventing efforts to uncover unreasonable discrimination. Level 3 asked the agency to prevent market power abuse by prohibiting ILECs from "tying" BDS sales "in non-competitive markets to the sales of other products." It also urged the FCC to ensure protections adopted this spring and recommended in the filing take effect as soon as possible, including a "fresh look" proposal to give customers new rights to avoid volume shortfall penalties and early termination fees. Separately, Level 3's counsel told Wireline Bureau Chief Matt DelNero that BDS regulation would be more effective "if it includes price caps and tariffs." An FCC Further NPRM sought comment on eliminating BDS tariffs (see 1604280057). Level 3 would support a benchmark pricing regime to constrain BDS prices "in non-competitive areas," but a collective effort to develop such a proposal has so far been unsuccessful, it said, calling price-cap regulation and tariffs "far superior" to available benchmark options. Other CLECs this week also summarized BDS-related discussions: Windstream focused on its proposals for overseeing "wholesale Ethernet last-mile inputs"; Granite Telecommunications cited concerns about the FCC's decision to link a wholesale voice platform's termination to the issuance of new BDS rules; and U.S. TelePacific discussed a bureau decision suspending AT&T tariff filings (see 1607150062). The American Cable Association and members urged an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn "to continue the FCC’s traditional light touch approach to regulating competitive providers." They said small cable operators invested more than $300 million annually to deploy BDS facilities, but cable BDS rate regulation "would create significant disincentives" to invest and could hamstring smaller providers in particular.
Proposed District of Columbia copper abandonment regulations got support from the Communications Workers of America and the D.C. Office of People's Counsel, and opposition from Verizon. The CWA said it believes the D.C. Public Service Commission should strengthen its proposed rules, which also would cover voice service discontinuances, and the Office of People's Counsel suggested "minor" tweaks. Verizon said the proposals were unnecessary, would duplicate FCC rules and impede the transition "to better networks by inviting lengthy and costly investigations prior to any copper retirement and requiring unique notices in the District" without adding value to customers. Verizon previously objected to the D.C. PSC's plan (see 1604200046). Comments were filed Monday in docket RM27-2016-2. Replies are due Aug. 15.
There are fewer consumer complaints about Frontier Communications and they have leveled off in Connecticut since a spike of consumer outrage immediately after it acquired AT&T’s wireline business in October 2014, said the state’s Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA). But there’s still “room for improvement,” the head of the state's Office of Consumer Counsel (OCC) said in an interview Monday. Frontier faced more transition trouble in April when it took over Verizon’s wireline business in Texas, Florida and California. Some legislators in those states are asking why regulators didn’t learn from Connecticut (see 1607080045).
Congress could help ensure optimal growth in already-booming digital data and trade flows by pushing to raise de minimis levels worldwide and to create a chief digital trade negotiator position within the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, industry officials told House lawmakers Wednesday. During a House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee hearing on digital trade, Internet Association CEO Michael Beckerman said he hopes the committee continues to work with the internet community to chart more “inclusive” trade agreements through actions such as creation of a digital negotiator position within USTR “to better reflect the realities of today’s digital internet economy.” Information Technology and Innovation Foundation President Robert Atkinson cited a McKinsey Global Institute study saying the $2.8 trillion value of international data flows in 2015 exceeded the value of global merchandise trade for the first time. Customs reauthorization legislation signed into law earlier this year raised the U.S. de minimis level -- the level below which imports are exempted from duty and paperwork -- from $200 to $800, and has helped U.S. small businesses accept returns from customers who bought shipments through e-commerce, PayPal Head-Global Public Policy Usman Ahmed said. More can be done, Ahmed said. “Through free trade agreements, addressing this issue of de minimis will be really impactful for small businesses, because they’re often dealing in low denomination of items that can be benefited by raising high de minimises around the world.” Subcommittee Chairman Dave Reichert, R-Wash., agreed free-trade agreement policies can lower barriers to global data flows, but acknowledged that future deals must improve upon previous ones that spurred several prohibitive data flow regulations. The Trans-Pacific Partnership “holds great promise” in dismantling these barriers, Reichert said, through eliminating tariffs on digital goods, and by including provisions that “encourage paperless trading,” prohibit data localization measures for all 12 TPP members, and require recognition of electronic signatures. “Resolving this issue and other outstanding issues, as well as developing implementation plans to assure that TPP will be fully implemented and enforced, is essential to getting Congressional support for TPP,” he said.