The Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment meets April 28 at 10 a.m. and will hear from FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioners Geoffrey Starks and Brendan Carr, said a public notice Tuesday. “The meeting will be conducted in a wholly telephonic and electronic format” due to COVID-19, the PN said. The committee will hear reports from its three working groups: Digital Empowerment and Inclusion, Access to Capital and Diversity in the Tech Sector.
CTA plans to proceed as scheduled with CES 2021 Jan. 6-9 in Las Vegas, though the show will have changes, emailed the association Tuesday. “Almost every major exhibitor has signed up.” The show will “implement changes to enable social distancing,” said CTA. “These include widening aisles within our exhibit facilities, more space between seats in our conference program and other areas where attendees congregate.” The association will issue “best practices for exhibitors on demonstrating products and for attendees, such as wearing masks and avoiding shaking hands,” it said. CTA is working “on options to expand the show digitally,” it said. “Construction work continues during the pandemic on the new West Hall expansion at the Las Vegas Convention Center, said CTA. Local authorities recently began the work of pouring 600,000 square feet of concrete flooring in the main exhibit hall, it said: “The process will take between four and five months to complete -- a major step forward in the expansion construction, which is now 77% complete.”
The FCC Wireline Bureau denied more time for comments on public safety aspects of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s Mozilla v. FCC net neutrality decision. California’s Santa Clara County, Los Angeles, New York City and others sought the extension for comments that were due Monday, after a 21-day extension granted by the FCC (see 2004170029). The April 16 request citing COVID-19 was too late; rules say extension motions must be filed at least seven days before filings’ due date, said Monday's order. “It is not plausible that Requestors first became aware of their purported need for additional time less than seven days before the deadline for initial comments on April 20.” Democratic FCC commissioners sought extra time. "Local governments and public safety officials have asked for more time to comment so that they rightfully can focus on responding to the public health emergency at hand," said Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. "It’s shameful that the FCC did not heed their request.” Commissioner Geoffrey Starks tweeted, "We should've done better." It's "shameful" the FCC doesn't "think that the pandemic is enough of an emergency to provide more time for first responders to file comments about how the Commission can ensure that first responders can serve the public in emergencies like pandemics," said Benton Institute for Broadband and Society Senior Counselor Andrew Schwartzman. Sunday, the California Public Utilities Commission supported a 60-day extension to comments. The record wouldn’t be complete without Santa Clara County since the court specifically referenced its concerns, but COVID-19 may limit its ability to weigh in, the CPUC said in docket 17-108. “These parties should not have to choose between protecting public health and safety and participating in this proceeding.” The FCC declined to comment beyond the order.
The name of the California state senator is Scott Wiener (see 2004170059). His name was incorrectly listed on a webinar description.
Free Press asking the FCC to require broadcasters to air disclosures on inaccurate COVID-19 information (see 2004170062) was a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and a veiled attempt to reinstate the fairness doctrine, said FCC General Counsel Tom Johnson during a Federalist Society teleconference Monday. Free Press’ premise that COVID-19 White House briefings, pundit commentary and other reports are being aired without context is “demonstrably false” because of the intense scrutiny new outlets are applying to all pandemic information, he said. “People have a host of information sources,” Johnson said, saying those sources are “laser-focused” on any news item on the pandemic. The agency’s unusually fast response to the petition was because it was “styled as an emergency, in the middle of a crisis,” Johnson said. Those circumstances “made it a worthy exercise” for the agency to make a point about “policing broadcast journalism,” Johnson said. Free Press says it wasn’t seeking censorship, but Johnson said the disclosure requirements contemplated in the petition would have had a chilling effect on broadcast journalism. Requiring disclaimers for only one sort of media introduces “a regulatory thumb on the scale,” he said. Asked to compare Free Press’ request to similar comments made by President Donald Trump (see 1809040051) about pulling network “licenses,” Johnson said, “I don’t want to comment on anything that didn’t come through the door.” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has been consistent in his response to those sorts of comments and requests, Johnson said. Free Press co-CEO Jessica Gonzalez said in an interview that the petition was narrow in scope. She criticized the agency for using it as a tool to "score political points with some very extreme people." She said most broadcasters are doing a good job of airing accurate information about the virus.
T-Mobile's promised mobile virtual network operator agreement with Dish Network -- a key reason T-Mobile/Sprint was approved -- satisfies what the FCC hoped for when it approved the deal, said the Wireless Bureau and Office of Economics and Analytics in a letter to T-Mobile in Friday's Daily Digest. The pricing arrangement should let Dish's New Boost and T-Mobile "be aggressive competitors," and New Boost also will get terms at least as favorable as New T-Mobile gives its Metro brand or any successor brand, they said. The seven-year MVNO is also a year longer than the agency set as a minimum, it said.
AT&T was the seller of Connecticut operations to Frontier Communications (see 2004150063). See here and here for details on the 2014 deal.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai encouraged House Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, D-N.J., and Communications Subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle, D-Pa., “to speak out publicly in favor of the First Amendment -- and thus in opposition to” Free Press’ “misguided” emergency petition for inquiry into broadcasters airing allegedly false information about COVID-19 (see 2004060026). The agency rejected the petition this month, with Pai and other commission Republicans criticizing it as an attack on free speech (see 2004060073). Pallone and Doyle sought reassurance the agency won’t revoke licenses for airing legally protected speech. They cited letters President Donald Trump’s campaign sent to some broadcasters telling them their licenses could be “in jeopardy” if they continued to air ads from the anti-Trump Priorities USA Action Fund political action committee that say Trump called the epidemic a “hoax” (see 2004020069). “I have always stood firmly in the defense of the First Amendment for all Americans,” Pai said in letters to Pallone and Doyle posted Friday. “This has been my long-standing position, and there should be no question as to my commitment.” Pai cited the FCC’s denial of the Free Press petition. “Standing up for the constitutional rights of broadcast stations means that we must do so in all instances in which their rights appear threatened,” he said. “I hope that you agree.” Pai “is willing to cast aspersions on his opponents without using their names or addressing them directly,” emailed FP Vice President-Policy Matt Wood. He “continues to mischaracterize our petition. We did not 'demand' that the FCC 'take action to curtail the freedom of the press.' We asked the FCC to offer guidance on use of the public airwaves to spread COVID-19 disinformation that is quite literally killing people.” Pai “never said in his response that” the Trump campaign’s threats “were wrong or harmful,” Wood said. “He merely said, haughtily, that ‘there should be no question as to my commitment to these ideals.’ That's a non-answer.” The FCC didn’t comment.
The FCC’s April 23 meeting will be via teleconference and in a shortened format due to COVID-19, the agency said in a sunshine notice Thursday. As expected (see 2004150057), some major items will be voted during the meeting while the rest will be voted on circulation ahead of the meeting, the notice said. Commissioners will vote during the meeting on the 6 GHz rules and Further NPRM, the 5G rural USF fund and the orbital debris item. For the March meeting, some items were voted on the day before the meeting and others that morning, FCC officials said. In March, the agency prior to the meeting issued a deletion notice on the voted items.
Participants in NTIA’s software transparency initiative multistakeholder group should aim to make “progress” over the next six to eight weeks in its software bill of materials work ahead of the next expected meeting, said Office of Policy Analysis and Development Director-Cybersecurity Initiatives Allan Friedman during a Wednesday conference call. Group members noted continued progress on SBOM issues, including how to create an interoperable format for software companies to use to aid understanding of common data sets used in different software programs. The Framing Working Group released a naming-focused use cases document and noted identification issues as a major factor in their work. The Formats and Tooling WG focused on considering how automation could be helpful in making sense of software company-generated data are generating and finding knowledge gaps in current stakeholder-drafted SBOM documents. The Awareness and Adoption Working Group said its work has shifted away from earlier plans to do outreach to the technical community amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The group is creating an FAQ to answer questions about the SBOM process and encourage stakeholders to adopt NTIA’s coming end product. The group released a draft version of the FAQ ahead of the meeting. The Healthcare Proof of Concept WG said it’s been working on a proof of concept to share information collected from medical devices. The healthcare industry created its own proof of concept document before NTIA released initial SBOM documents last year. The NTIA-developed proof of concept includes input from hospitals’ security providers and software tool providers that collaborate with medical device manufacturers, the subgroup said.