The Regulatory Mix, TMI’s daily blog of telecom related regulatory activities, is a snapshot of PUC, FCC, legislative, and occasionally court issues that our regulatory monitoring team uncovers each day. Depending on their significance, some items may be the subject of a TMI Briefing.
FCC ICS Data Collection And Customer Disclosures
The FCC is moving forward with obtaining Office of Management and Budget approval for the information collections associated with its annual ICS reporting requirement, the new consumer disclosure requirement, and the one-time mandatory data collection. Comments may be submitted until December 5, 2016. For the annual and one-time reporting requirements, FCC staff will develop a standardized template for the submission of data and provide instructions to simplify compliance with and reduce the burdens of the data collection. The template will also include filing instructions and text fields for respondents to use to explain portions of their filings, as needed. Providers will be encouraged file their data electronically via the Commission’s Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS).
FCC Rural Health Care Program Fine
The FCC issued a Notice of Apparent Liability proposing to fine Network Services Solutions and its chief executive $21,691,499 for apparent violations involving the Universal Service Fund Rural Health Care Program. (The Rural Health Care Program provides funding to eligible health care providers for telecommunications and broadband services.) The company is charged with violating the program’s competitive bidding rules, using forged and false documents to seek funding from the program, and violating the federal wire fraud statute. The FCC also ordered the company to refund $3.5 million in improper payments it received through the program. This is the FCC’s first enforcement action involving the RHC Program, and the first time it has proposed a fine for wire fraud in connection with a Universal Service Fund Program. The investigation was conducted by the Enforcement Bureau’s Universal Service Fund Strike Force.
Alaska USF Support
The Regulatory Commission of Alaska (RCA) is seeking comment on how it should respond to the FCC’s further notice of proposed rulemaking regarding the elimination and redistribution of duplicate support for 4G LTE wireless service under the Alaska Plan. See the Regulatory Mix dated 9/1/16. In particular, the RCA seeks comment on the mechanism for identifying and eliminating duplicative support in a given area, including whether support should be eliminated for each carrier and, if only one carrier will continue to receive support, the criteria for deciding which carrier prevails. It is particularly interested in which mechanisms proposed by the FCC would best promote stability and encourage carriers to deploy networks quickly and responsibly so that most if not all of remote Alaska will be able to enjoy the benefits of modern telecommunications. Initial comments are due December 6, 2016; reply comments are due December 13, 2016.
CRTC - Consumer Privacy and Nuisance Calls
The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission announced today that it will take measures to better protect the privacy of Canadians by reducing the number of unsolicited and illegitimate calls (also known as nuisance calls) that they receive. Telecommunications service providers must develop technical solutions, within 90 days, to block illegitimate nuisance calls within their networks. Once approved by the CRTC, these solutions will ensure a minimum level of protection for all Canadians.
To help Canadians better filter unwanted calls, the CRTC is also encouraging telecommunications service providers to offer their subscribers call management features. Service providers must report to the Commission within 180 days with details on the filtering services they offer or propose to offer to their customers.
