The FCC's robocall response team sent cease and desist letters Wednesday to Solid Double and CallWin regarding the "transmission of apparently illegal robocalls." Solid Double received a letter following a complaint through the FCC's private entity robocall and spoofing portal, a news release said. The companies were directed to report to the Enforcement Bureau within 48 hours about steps taken to mitigate any illegal traffic and within 14 days on plans to prevent future illegal traffic.

The National Tribal Telecommunications Association (NTTA) raised concerns about tribal broadband issues in separate meetings with aides to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and Commissioners Geoffrey Starks, Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington. The group also met with Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau staff. NTTA emphasized the need for "additional steps to address the tribal digital divide" and "sustainability funding" to ensure services remain available once they are built, said an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 10-90. The group also urged the FCC to ensure providers obtain "affirmative tribal consent from the tribal government" if they want to deploy networks on tribal lands.

Consumers' Research told the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a letter filed Monday (docket 22-60008), that it disagrees with the 11th Circuit's Dec. 14 opinion that Communications Act Section 254 contains a "sufficient 'intelligible principle'" (see 2312140058). The group said Section 254 is unconstitutional because it allows the FCC to "daisy-chain its power." Consumers' Research also disagreed with the 11th Circuit's ruling on its nondelegation challenge, saying that "letting private proposals automatically become binding ... is the definition of a private nondelegation violation."

Establishing broadband as a Title II service would deter investment, according to a Phoenix Center study released Tuesday. Conducted by Phoenix Center Chief Economist George Ford, the empirical analysis found the "looming threat of Title II regulation" is "a chronic obstacle to infrastructure investment as periods of lighter regulation are perceived as temporary." Ford also argued that the FCC's rules on digital discrimination are a "threat to economically rational investment decisions and discourage investment."

CEOs of Google Fiber, Allo Fiber and Ting Internet urged the FCC to update the definition of broadband standard to 100/100 Mbps in a letter posted Tuesday in docket 22-270. "American families today need a standard that will allow them [to] fully function in today’s society," the letter said: "An asymmetrical standard implies that entertainment use cases for the internet are more important than productivity uses that consistently require more upload bandwidth." Adopting the standard would also ensure "certain low-income and rural America will not be getting internet that is already antiquated the day it is installed," the CEOs said.

Verizon agrees with concerns that CTIA and USTelecom raised on draft data breach rules, teed up for a Wednesday FCC commissioner vote (see 2312070034), said a filing posted Friday in docket 22-21. A Verizon representative spoke with an aide to Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. “The description in the draft of what constitutes ‘sensitive personal information’ is extremely broad and is inconsistent with other data breach reporting and privacy regimes,” Verizon said.

National Emergency Number Association representatives met with FCC Public Safety Bureau staff on the group’s i3 standard and an ATIS standard for IP multimedia subsystems (IMS), in an attempt to offer clarity, said a filing posted Friday in docket 21-479. “There is some confusion with respect” to next-generation 911 standards, NENA said. “The IMS911 specification, ATIS 0500036, implements the NENA i3 standard in an existing IMS … system,” the group said: “It is a standard targeted towards existing IMS systems to offer i3 based NG9-1-1 services over their existing network. IMS911 and NENA i3 are complementary, and not competing, specifications and systems implementing them are expected to be fully interoperable.” NENA said all known NG-911 systems in the U.S. are using only the i3 standard at this point.

A new NTCA study found that its members offer fiber services with average downstream speeds of at least 100 Mbps to about 84% of their customers, the group announced Wednesday. More than 67% of customers have access to Gigabit downstream speeds. "This year’s survey reinforces and underscores NTCA members’ abiding commitment to the communities they serve, advancing broadband built to last in rural America, and highlights how rural consumers are making greater use of these services," NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield said. Conducted in August by Association Research, the study found that nearly 60% of the respondents’ customers subscribed to downstream speeds of at least 100 Mbps compared with about 49% in the 2022 survey.

The FCC's rules implementing the Safe Connections Act take effect Jan. 14, said a notice for Tuesday's Federal Register. Commissioners adopted the item in November (see 2311150042).

FCC staff granted USTelecom and the Competitive Carrier Association's petition to extend for three additional filing periods the FCC's waiver of broadband data collection rules allowing filers to submit information by a nonlicensed professional engineer, said an order Thursday (see 2309120062). Adopted by the chiefs of the Wireline Bureau, Wireless Bureau and Office of Economics and Analytics, the order required filers to also preserve "additional network information for expeditious submission to the commission upon request."