Howard Buskirk

The FCC was in the hot seat Tuesday at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which heard oral argument in League of California Cities v. FCC (case 20-71765) on a challenge to a wireless siting declaratory ruling approved in June 2020 under former Chairman Ajit Pai (see 2006090060).

Industry observers expect the FCC's Thursday forum on AI to be mostly an information gathering session as the agency focuses on one of the hot topics of the year but said questions remain about how large a role, or even what role, the FCC could play in rapidly emerging field. The AI forum is the agency's first since 2018 (see 1811300051).

The FCC appears unlikely to grant T-Mobile special temporary authority to launch service in the markets where it won licenses in last year’s 2.5 GHz auction, which ended almost a year ago. The agency declined to award the licenses, or grant a STA, after its auction authority expired earlier this year (see 2304260058).

Industry groups supported a March petition by the Competitive Carriers Association seeking tweaks to the FCC’s 911 outage reporting rules, approved 4-0 by commissioners last year (see 2211170051). APCO and the Boulder Regional Emergency Telephone Service Authority (BRETSA) opposed the petition in the initial comment round (see 2306270045). But most groups waited for the reply round to weigh in.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision last week in the student loan case, Biden v. Nebraska, didn’t touch on communications law, but it delves deeper into the "major questions doctrine" laid out a year ago in West Virginia v. EPA (see 2206300066). Legal experts told us the opinion, by Chief Justice John Roberts, appears to further expand when the doctrine may apply and moves the court further away from the Chevron doctrine. The case also has implications for the most controversial items addressed by the FCC, including net neutrality, experts said.

This has been a quiet year for FCC’s Technological Advisory Council, which last met Dec. 8, but members remain focused on a few remaining reports, all focused on 6G, and the FCC is still focused on the group, a spokesperson said. The FCC announced last week TAC will meet Aug. 17 (see 2306300059), in what is expected to be the final meeting under its current charter. TAC met four times last year and has generally had quarterly meetings.

Lawyers at Venable said Thursday U.S. Supreme Court justices will likely find it irresistible to use an upcoming case, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, to clarify the status of the Chevron doctrine (see 2305050038). The lawyers noted during a webcast that the brief seeking review of the case (docket 22-451) was written by Paul Clement, U.S. solicitor general under George W. Bush, and is salted with citations to decisions by many of the conservative justices inviting a review of Chevron.

Carriers are still working through how to approach the cloud, experts said Thursday during a webinar by data services company Pure Storage and GSMA’s Mobile World Live. Experts said the hybrid cloud, with data in both public and private clouds, and at on-premise data centers, is starting to become a reality.

Dish Network is building a 5G stand-alone network that depends on software and is rooted in the cloud, Marc Rouanne, Dish Wireless chief network officer, said Wednesday at Silverlinings’ Cloud-Native 5G Summit. Other experts warned that the cloud, and 5G, also present new security concerns with an expanded attack surface.

FCC nominee Anna Gomez likely faces a relatively easy road to confirmation after avoiding any real trouble during her Senate Commerce Committee confirmation hearing last week (see 2306220067), industry officials and others told us. Gomez was careful throughout the panel, never committing outright to voting for reclassification of broadband as a Communications Act Title II service, while also stressing the importance of FCC oversight. Some observers questioned whether the Senate would be able to confirm any Democrat to the fifth FCC seat if the Gomez nomination fails.