The FCC is suspending “noncritical” domestic and international travel for employees (see 2003040060) and its involvement in “non-critical large gatherings that involve participants from across the country and/or around the world.” That's until further notice as a preventive measure related to the coronavirus, said a public notice Wednesday. Chairman Ajit Pai, Commissioner Brendan Carr, and Media Bureau staff were all slated to participate in the NAB Show April 18-22 in Las Vegas. The commission and NAB didn’t comment. The agency is also barring visitors to headquarters and facilities who in the past 14 days “have been in any country that is the subject of a COVID-19- related CDC Level 3 Travel Warning.” Those countries are currently China, Iran, Italy and South Korea, the PN said. “Similarly, employees and contractors who, during the most recent 14 days, have been in any of these countries are being asked not to enter FCC facilities.” An aide to Commissioner Geoffrey Starks said a planned hearing on artificial intelligence co-hosted by the commissioner will still take place in Detroit March 16. “The Chairman’s Office, in consultation with the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, the Office of Managing Director, and Office of General Counsel, will continue to monitor developments and will implement additional precautions (or relax current precautions) should circumstances warrant,” the PN said.
Comments are due March 30 for the FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs biennial report to Congress required by the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, said a public notice in Tuesday’s Daily Digest on docket 10-213. CGB seeks comment on compliance with accessibility rules for “telecommunications and advanced communications services, equipment used with these services, and Internet browsers built into mobile phones,” and accessibility barriers involving newer communications tech, the PN said. The biennial report is due Oct. 8.
Coronavirus could hurt NBCUniversal Q1 revenue 7%-9% due largely to closure of its Osaka, Japan, theme park, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said at a Morgan Stanley investor conference Tuesday. Earlier that day, America's Communications Association said it's going ahead with its summit in Washington, D.C., next week, working with the Grand Hyatt venue to ensure "a clean environment with the best on hand in prevention and immediate care." Fox said Tuesday it won't attend the Morgan Stanley conference Wednesday due to "an abundance of caution" about coronavirus health concerns. Verizon Chief Financial Officer Matt Ellis, also at Morgan Stanley, said coronavirus currently is having a "not significant, not material" impact on the business. Comcast's Roberts said the Olympics are "full steam ahead," and if there's a disruption of the games, insurance would cover lost costs. He said construction of Universal's theme park in Beijing was down for several weeks but has since resumed and the park should open on time. Ellis said Verizon doesn't expect New T-Mobile and the emergence of Dish Network in the wireless space to affect his carrier's market share.
DOJ Antitrust Division Competition Policy Section Chief David Lawrence noted the FCC cited “remarkable efficiencies” in T-Mobile’s proposed purchase of Sprint as among the reasons the commission approved the deal in October (see 1910160058), speaking at a Tuesday Incompas event (see 2003030064). Lawrence temporarily transferred to the commission as head of its T-Mobile/Sprint Transaction Task Force (see 1806270068). FCC engineers found “real complementarities between” the T-Mobile and Sprint networks, and the commission’s order approving the deal requires the two carriers to build out their combined network “to a tremendous swath of the country,” Lawrence said. He wouldn’t discuss DOJ’s separate review of T-Mobile/Sprint, saying the agencies’ merger reviews are usually very similar and “tend to be very long” and “very thorough.” Lawrence noted a belief that good antitrust policy “puts competition in control.” That approach is especially important to the telecom sector because it’s now “really at the heart” of the U.S. economy, he said. It's "the goose that lays the golden eggs,” with 5G now poised to “be the next golden egg,” Lawrence said. U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero ruled last month against states’ challenge to T-Mobile/Sprint (see 2002110026). The California Public Utilities Commission will vote on the deal April 16 (see 2002240053).
Safe harbor rules should protect the telecom industry from liability when providers inadvertently block a legitimate call, they said, but companies placing outbound calls to customers demand efforts to ensure legitimate calls go through and corrective action when they don't, in comments to the FCC Wireline Bureau posted through Monday in docket 17-97. Public health and safety sectors report "alarmingly increased levels of blocked or mislabeled calls," said the Credit Union National Association. There's no comprehensive or reliable data on the effectiveness of blocking tools that identify illegitimate or fraudulent calls without also interfering with the ability of legitimate providers to have their calls completed or not mislabeled as spam, it said. USTelecom tells the FCC providers act with care and caution while call blocking. Providers are sensitive to overblocking, the accuracy of their analytics tools improve every day, and providers want to quickly address legitimate calls that are inadvertently blocked, it said. Industry can address concerns while under a safe harbor, it said. ACA International, which represents collection agencies, opposed a safe harbor and wants the FCC to rescind its call blocking declaratory ruling. It said current regulations give too much discretion to voice service providers to determine what types of calls can be blocked. Calls sent by alarm company central stations responding to an alarm continue to be blocked or labeled as potential fraud by voice providers, said the Alarm Industry Communications Committee. AICC urged the FCC to adopt a critical call list of numbers that may never be blocked, including central station numbers used to respond to alarms. But a database of whitelisted numbers "would be a target for bad actors to spoof and otherwise exploit, even with robust security measures," CTIA said. T-Mobile asked the FCC to work with stakeholders to adopt a narrow definition of critical calls, such as those from public safety answering points. T-Mobile also asked the FCC to remain flexible as it measures the success of call blocking. "The tactics used by scammers to target and reach consumers are always evolving," it said. Voice service providers should notify callers immediately upon blocking or labeling a call as spam, Twilio said, and designate a contact point for redress when calls are blocked erroneously. Industry must coalesce around a standard enabling transmittal of secure handling of asserted information using tokens (Shaken) and secure telephone identity revisited (Stir) call authentication information access across TDM-based networks as mandatory implementation deadlines approach, the Cloud Communications Alliance said.
The FTC had sent us a link to comments on its draft vertical merger guidelines (see 2002270043). We therefore are withdrawing a Freedom of Information Act request.
Commerce Department Deputy Chief of Staff and Policy Director Earl Comstock is leaving effective Friday, communications sector officials and lobbyists told us. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross confirmed Comstock’s impending departure Monday (see 2003020028). Ross noted Comstock had committed to “serve for three years.” Officials and lobbyists noted overarching controversy over his tenure, including his role in the department’s public disagreement with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai on 5G goals (see 1906120076). Comstock’s exit could provide a new opening for President Donald Trump’s administration to attempt to nominate a permanent replacement for former NTIA Administrator David Redl, though there appears to be little time left to feasibly advance a nominee through the Senate confirmations process, given the presidential campaign cycle, lobbyists said. Redl left abruptly in May, with some saying his disagreements with Comstock were a factor (see 1905090051). Work to find a permanent successor has been hindered by concerns about Comstock’s influence at Commerce (see 1908090070). Several officials pointed in December to Treasury Department acting Deputy Assistant Secretary-International Affairs Edward Hearst as a potential successor (see 1912160049), but he now appears to be out of the running because of objections to his tenure at Treasury, lobbyists said. Doug Kinkoph is acting NTIA administrator (see 1912230065). “The relationship between Earl and the NTIA was unprecedented and odd to be sure," said Gigi Sohn, Benton Institute senior fellow. "So are a lot of things about how this administration works.”
Senate passage of the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act (HR-4998) got more praise Thursday and Friday (see 2002270070), including from the bill’s original co-sponsors and FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks. The bill would allocate at least $1 billion to help U.S. communications providers remove from their networks Chinese equipment deemed to threaten national security. The House passed the measure in December (see 1912160052), meaning it now moves on to President Donald Trump. “The existence of Huawei’s technology in our networks represents an immense threat to America’s national and economic security,” said original bill sponsors House Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, D-N.J., ranking member Greg Walden, R-Ore., House Communications Subcommittee Vice Chair Doris Matsui, D-Calif., and Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky. "This bipartisan bill will help communities across the country by bolstering efforts to keep our communications supply chain safe from foreign adversaries and other dangerous actors, while helping small and rural providers remove and replace suspect network equipment.” Starks tweeted he’s “very glad to see bipartisan agreement around helping small carriers get untrustworthy equipment out of their networks.” The FCC “needs to work quickly to get these funds to providers,” he said, replying to our tweet reporting the development. “We’ll all be more secure when the replacement is done.” FCC national security supply chain rules barring equipment from Chinese vendors Huawei and ZTE from networks funded by the USF took effect in January (see 2001020027).
FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks and FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter will host a March 16 hearing in Detroit on 5G, big data, privacy, artificial intelligence and civil rights, the FCC announced Thursday. Rep. Brenda Lawrence, D-Mich., experts and advocates will join the 1 p.m. discussion at Wayne State University School of Law. “The benefits of 5G technology must meet the needs of all Americans, including low-income people, people of color, people living with disabilities, people residing in rural communities, children, and the many ways in which those identities intersect,” the announcement said. The discussion will include how to minimize privacy harms and data abuse of marginalized communities.
The telecom industry disagreed with Connecticut consumer advocates about whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit invited state net neutrality rules through its Mozilla decision. Connecticut’s Joint Energy and Technology Committee held a Thursday hearing on SB-5, a hybrid net neutrality/ISP privacy measure that would reverse repeals of past FCC orders on those topics. The court didn’t "free the states” to make rules, said AT&T in written testimony. “While the DC Circuit vacated the express preemption provisions in the 2018 Order, the Court stressed that its decision did not preclude the FCC from relying on established principles of conflict preemption or any other implied preemption doctrine to invalidate state laws that actually undermine that order.” USTelecom Vice President-Strategic Initiatives Mike Saperstein urged at “minimum” to “delay further consideration of this legislation until courts resolve the pending challenges to state open internet laws.” USTelecom is part of ISP lawsuits in Vermont and California, plus another against a Maine ISP privacy law. American Civil Liberties Union-Connecticut policy counsel Kelly McConney Moore wrote that state regulation is “clearly permissible” post-Mozilla. Pua Ford of Connecticut League of Women Voters agreed: “Connecticut may now confidently follow Washington, Oregon, California, and other states in drawing up its own regulations.” Industry said a national policy would be best. Consumer advocates said that’s not likely soon. “States enacting protections against the worst overreaching of the FCC order will help to make it more likely that the FCC and telecommunications companies come to the table with the states and other stakeholders to work together to find a more balanced compromise,” wrote acting Connecticut Consumer Counsel Richard Sobolewski. Maryland lawmakers heard similar testimony Wednesday (see 2002260057).