Dozens of ISPs of all sizes agreed to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's suggestion the industry not take adverse action against customers for the next two months amid the coronavirus pandemic, he announced Friday morning. Those companies won't terminate service to any residential or small-business customers because of inability to pay due to such disruptions; will waive any related late fees; and will open their Wi-Fi hot spots to anyone. Pai is also seeking that the providers make other changes, including related to bandwidth caps.
The FCC is encouraging staff to work remotely due to the coronavirus, we were told Thursday. This was expected. See here.
Due to the coronavirus, the FCC closed its building to visitors, Chairman Ajit Pai announced Thursday afternoon. He also noted in a series of tweets that the agency is encouraging its employees to work remotely, as we had just reported. See here. The commission cited the need for social distancing, which some experts say can help limit the spread of COVID-19.
The California Public Utilities Commission would conditionally allow T-Mobile to buy Sprint, under a proposed decision issued Wednesday by Administrative Law Judge Karl Bemesderfer. The PD tees up a commission vote at CPUC’s April 16 meeting.
NAB's annual show next month was canceled. CEO Gordon Smith cited the coronavirus.
COVID-19 caused CTA to cancel a raft of events through June, while moving another to a “virtual format,” said the association Wednesday.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai circulated a plan to deregulate what he calls telephone access charges, among items tentatively up for a vote at commissioners' March 31 meeting. It would detariff "the last handful of interstate end-user charges that remain subject to FCC regulation," he blogged Monday afternoon.
House Communications Subcommittee leaders agreed to let the Clearing Broad Airwaves for New Deployment (C-Band) Act (HR-4855) advance to the full House Commerce Committee Tuesday, but there hasn’t been an agreement yet on the bill’s underlying language, subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle, D-Pa., told us Monday night. HR-4855 would allocate most proceeds of the coming FCC auction of spectrum on the 3.7-4.2 GHz C band to fund telecom projects. It’s among 11 spectrum, media diversity and public safety communications measures the subcommittee plans to mark up Tuesday.
FCBA postponed its March events.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai will propose his colleagues vote at their March 31 meeting to require phone service providers to cut down on spoofed robocalls through caller ID authentication using secure telephone identity revisited standards and signature-based handling of asserted information using tokens. That would deliver on Pai's previous comments on Stir/Shaken and a newer law.