A trio of GOP ex-officials and politicians with ties to the tech sector backed former Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden during the Democratic National Convention’s Monday session. Former Rep. Susan Molinari of New York, who was Google vice president-policy and government relations 2012-2018 (see 1811020020), called Biden “exactly what this nation needs at this time” and criticized President Donald Trump as “disappointing.” Quibi CEO Meg Whitman, who previously led eBay and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, said Biden’s economic plan, if enacted, would “strengthen our economy for working people and small-business owners.” Whitman was the GOP’s 2010 California gubernatorial nominee. Former Trump Department of Homeland Security Chief of Staff Miles Taylor, on leave from a Google security strategy role, also endorsed Biden during the Monday DNC session. Trump’s re-election campaign criticized Molinari for being “a registered lobbyist for Russia” while at the Washington Group and noted Whitman’s support for 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Trump called Taylor a “former DISGRUNTLED EMPLOYEE” and said the Democrats “will take anyone against us.”
Songwriters of North America, Music Artists Coalition and Nashville Songwriters Association International were three groups that spoke on behalf of songwriters at DOJ’s music licensing workshop (see 2008170042).
The FCC said a forum on 5G open radio access networks, postponed in March because of the COVID-19 pandemic, will happen virtually Sept. 14. Chairman Ajit Pai and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are scheduled to speak. Pai will moderate an industry panel on virtualized networks. “Open and virtualized radio access networks may help operators deploy more secure, cost-effective 5G networks,” Pai said Tuesday. The U.S. must “lead the way in researching and developing innovative approaches to mobile network deployment,” he said. The session starts at 10:30 a.m. EDT. "Open RAN networks enable providers to bring together best-in-class vendors, including from the U.S., unleashing innovation and unlocking the economic potential enabled by 5G,” emailed Stephen Bye, Dish Network executive vice president-chief commercial officer, saying Dish is building "the nation's first cloud native Open RAN based 5G network.”
The citizens broadband radio service auction bids continue to climb, hitting a net $4.3 billion after four rounds Monday. The auction first hit $1 billion Aug. 3, climbing to $3 billion Aug. 11. New Street said in a Friday note when prices in large urban areas like New York and Los Angeles were close to 50 cents MHz/POP, “demand fell sharply as bidders pulled out of those markets. Many of those bids were then parked in counties where supply exceeded demand, creating a rotation of bids that drove up gross proceeds while leaving aggregate bids little changed.” Four more rounds are scheduled Tuesday.
Reject Broadnet Teleservices' ask that the FCC find the Telephone Consumer Protection Act doesn’t apply (see 2007210049) to calls made “by or on behalf of federal, state, and local governments when such calls are made for official purposes,” consumer groups told the FCC. “There is no legal authority to support defining local governments as anything other than ‘persons’ fully covered by the TCPA’s requirements,” said the National Consumer Law Center, the Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Reports, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and Public Knowledge. “None of the reasons cited by Broadnet in support of this interpretation actually provide a real justification for Broadnet’s request, as most of the calls described as needing to be made either can already be made under the TCPA’s emergency exception, or because the local government would have received prior consent for the calls from the recipients,” they said, in a filing posted Monday in docket 02-278.
Aug. 19 is the deadline for comments on an ACA Connects' request or a stay of the Aug. 31 deadline for earth station operators to make C-band clearing lump sum elections (see 2008140033), the FCC Wireless Bureau said in a public notice in Monday's Daily Digest. ACA asked for the stay pending resolution of its application for review of the C-band final cost category public notice's exclusion of the cost of integrated receivers/decoders, bureau said, it said Friday in docket 18-122.
There are 23,522 cable and wireline subscribers without service due to the “Midwest Derecho” in the 24 Iowa counties covered by the current activation of the FCC’s disaster information reporting system, said Monday’s report. There were 38,088 subscribers without service Sunday. The affected areas also have outages at 2.4% of cellsites, a slight improvement over Sunday's 2.7%. Eight FM stations and one AM station are out of service, and no public safety answering point reported being down, the report said.
FTC Chairman Joe Simons’ two-year recusal in the agency’s antitrust case against Qualcomm ended in May, a spokesperson confirmed (see 2008110065). The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Qualcomm in the case this past week. The FTC can appeal if the commission approves.
NTCA members taking part in the FCC's Keep Americans Connected pledge this spring racked up on average $80,000 in uncollectible debt and need Congress to help cover that expense, NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield told C-Span's The Communicators, scheduled to be telecast this weekend. She said she hopes whatever stimulus bill Congress passes will include funding for that. There has been "some bridging" of the digital divide in recent months as providers try to connect as many people as they can, but a sizable gap remains and none of the stimulus money spent so far has been directed at connectivity for low-income or rural Americans, she said. Asked about the various infrastructure bills, she talked up the Keeping Critical Connections Act (S-3569) spearheaded by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. She said the FCC's designation of Huawei and ZTE as a national security threat to communications networks affects a handful of NTCA members, with rural wireless providers more affected, and that Congress will also need to look at funding for replacing hardware from those companies.
The largest cable ISPs added 1.4 million broadband subscribers in Q2 of this year, the most additions since Q1 2007 and up from the 530,000 added the same quarter a year ago, said Leichtman Research Group Thursday. The largest cable ISPs ended the quarter with 70.6 million subs, it said. Landline telecoms ended the quarter with 32.7 million subs, down 155,000 in the quarter, similar to what they lost in Q2 2019, it said. Charter Communications' 850,000 net adds were more than for any provider in any previous quarter, it said.