Providers are pushing back on a California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) proceeding that suggests regulating how much wireline and wireless carriers and ISPs can rely on portable generators to guarantee network resiliency. The proceeding, initiated this summer, asks about the right ratio of mobile generators to network facility sites to ensure system resilience, as well as where the mobile generators need to be stored to ensure that they're deployed in a timely fashion during disasters.
Given the deluge of financial scam calls, texts and emails that Americans constantly receive, Congress needs to clarify the enforcement authority that the FCC and other agencies have over abuse of communications channels, said the National Task Force on Fraud and Scam Prevention. The task force, convened by the Aspen Institute, issued a report Wednesday that proposes a national public-private strategy to prevent scam calls.
The U.S. “got lazy” in the last 15 or so years about participating in standards-setting bodies and paid the price with China dictating standards for 5G, said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., at SCTE’s TechExpo event Tuesday in Washington. “China flooded the zone,” he said, while the U.S. hasn't been sending as many people to standards-setting bodies. China’s 5G success is a “wake-up call,” and industry and government should agree that the U.S. has “got to get back in the game” and invest resources in standards-setting efforts.
The Benefit of the Bargain (BoB) version of BEAD is shaping up to be "a tremendous success," with state plans to date coming in $15 billion under what they were allocated, NTIA head Arielle Roth said Monday. Speaking at SCTE's TechExpo event in Washington, Roth said NTIA is also pressing states in some cases to submit cheaper final proposals.
SpaceX’s Starlink broadband service is likely to end this year with roughly 8.2 million subscribers worldwide and add 3.8 million in 2026, Quilty Space said during a webinar Thursday. Quilty analyst Caleb Henry said SpaceX’s growth is being driven by the renewed addition of U.S. subscribers after it temporarily leveled off at about 1.3 million in late 2023 and early 2024. The company now has about 2 million U.S. subscribers, he said.
FCC authority to change the national TV ownership cap remains unclear, and anything the agency does is likely to end up challenged in court, agency Chief of Staff Scott Delacourt said Wednesday at a Media Institute event. He also waved off the idea that the end of Chevron deference significantly changes how the FCC will defend its actions in court. The commissioners will vote on kicking off the 2022 quadrennial review of broadcast-ownership rules at its meeting next week (see 2509090060).
The FCC's arguments that its pole attachment regulatory authority extends to utility-owned light poles are legally dubious and practically untenable, utilities said in comments this week in docket 17-84. Commissioners adopted a pole attachments NPRM at the agency's July meeting (see 2507280053), and utilities, as expected, voiced their opposition to the light-pole proposal (see 2508290003). The proceeding also saw no clear consensus about requiring attachers to deploy within 120 days of pole make-ready work being done.
The FCC, which previously shot down SpaceX's plans to operate in the 2 GHz band, will likely think differently now, satellite spectrum experts said. The company applied Friday to launch and operate as many as 15,000 satellites to provide direct-to-device (D2D) service globally. The constellation would use spectrum that SpaceX is buying from EchoStar, including the 2 GHz band.
While operators of some low earth orbit (LEO) mega constellations are taking steps to reduce their visual clutter of the night sky, astronomers said trends such as more and bigger LEO satellites overshadow those efforts. The astronomers told us they don't expect to see U.S. regulation anytime soon focusing on those satellites' reflectivity and interference with astronomical observations.
As non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) satellite systems become more established, the FCC will face more pressure to revisit the rules, frameworks and spectrum-sharing approaches they operate under, space regulatory consultant Patricia Cooper said Thursday at a New America/International Center for Law & Economics webinar.