Comments are due Oct. 30, replies Nov. 16, on the proposed transfer of Conterra Ultra Broadband, Network USA, Detel Wireless, Broadplex and Network Communications licenses from Court Square Capital to EagleCrest and Draden Investors, said an FCC Wireline, Wireless and International bureaus public notice in Thursday's Daily Digest. The applicants also asked for a declaratory ruling allowing foreign investment in Conterra and Detel above the 25% benchmark set in the Communications Act and FCC rules, the PN said.
President Donald Trump signed Thursday morning a continuing resolution (HR-8337) to fund the FCC, FTC and other federal agencies through Dec. 11. The Senate passed HR-8337 Wednesday on an 84-10 vote, as expected (see 2009300053). Trump approved the CR nearly an hour after FY 2020 technically ended, but the White House OMB never formally declared a government shutdown.
A cable local franchise authority order “will survive judicial review," and the FCC “has no plans to reverse that decision” with Republicans in the majority, Chairman Ajit Pai said in letters to Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman and Donald Payne, both D-N.J., released Wednesday. The lawmakers wrote Pai in August urging the FCC to reverse the LFA order because of the “serious risk to funding for” public, educational and government access channels “and damage to state and local governments’ ability to regulate cable operators.” Wins by presidential nominee Joe Biden and other Democrats in Nov. 3 could result in a reversal of the LFA order (see 2009020052). The 2019 order clarified the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal’s 2017 remand that “cable-related, ‘in-kind’ contributions-including PEG-related contributions required by a cable franchise agreement are franchise fees subject to the statutory five percent cap, with limited exceptions as set forth in the statute,” Pai said. He wrote that the 6th Circuit rejected localities’ stay request (see 2003230045), so the order is “now effective.”
The FCC dropped its appeal of U.S District Court in Manhattan's summary judgment against it in a fight over a Freedom of Information Act request by New York Times Co. (see 2006260071), said a court mandate Tuesday (in Pacer, docket 18-cv-08607). The news outlet sued after being denied its request for the IP addresses and other data of net neutrality proceeding comments filed in the FCC electronic comment filing system.
The Office of Economics and Analytics laid out plans for FCC auctions in FY 2021, starting with the Dec. 8 C-band auction, in Tuesday's Daily Digest. Also teed up are auctions for the 2.5 GHz band, 3.5 GHz band, T band and FM broadcast construction permits. Commissioners vote on a 3.5 GHz NPRM Wednesday. Congress is rethinking a T-band sale (see 2009140020). The FM auction was delayed because of the pandemic (see 2003250052).
Before Wednesday's FCC meeting, commissioners voted to approve the order on caller ID authentication implementation and the order axing the requirement cable TV operators keep records in their online public inspection files about their interests in video programming services, the agency said Tuesday. The approved orders weren't released. People involved in the Stir/Shaken proceeding told us they expect no major changes to the draft order. The proceeding had gotten relatively little lobbying, probably because the Traced Act on robocalls is so detailed in its requirements, so a lot of key decisions are made by the statute already, said Kelley Drye telecom lawyer Steve Augustino. He said the bigger issue will be implementation by individual voice service providers, who will have to work carefully on what they have to change in their networks and in what time frame. Augustino said with the law setting the broad parameters, the FCC might be faced with waiver requests months from now as providers discover issues.
The FCC Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau will terminate more than 1,000 dormant proceedings, including dockets on newspaper/broadcast cross ownership, the digital TV transition and old Section 214 applications, said an order in Monday’s Daily Digest. “We believe that termination of these proceedings furthers the Commission’s organizational goals of increasing the efficiency of its decision-making, modernizing the agency’s processes in the digital age, and enhancing the openness and transparency of Commission proceedings,” it said. Three proceedings that were proposed for termination were kept open after the agency received filings opposing their closing: docket 15-146 on preserving white spaces for unlicensed use, docket 14-261 on MVPD programming distribution and docket 15-99 on the World Radiocommunication Conference. The rest of the proceedings listed in the order’s attachment will be terminated after it's published in the Federal Register, the order said.
Two former transportation secretaries under President Barack Obama, Ray LaHood and Anthony Foxx, agree connected vehicle technologies will make the roadways safer, they told an ITS America webinar Monday. The FCC is expected to approve reallocating part of the 5.9 GHz band as early as next month (see 2009090058). “We’ve got to maintain and make use of the broadband that’s been reserved” for safety “and make sure that we work harder to accelerate the use of connections,” Foxx said. “You hit the nail on the head around reserving the full safety spectrum,” said ITS America President Shailen Bhatt. Studies show vehicle-to-vehicle communications “would save lives and prevent accidents,” LaHood said. Today “it has almost become standard equipment that cars are talking to one another and talking to the people that are driving the cars,” he said. LaHood’s message as secretary was that every day, people get into a vehicle and don’t think about safety, he said: “That was our job at DOT, to think about safety in every mode of transportation.” Foxx said pilot automated vehicle projects DOT did in New York City, Tampa and rural Wyoming while he was secretary provided useful data: “We wanted to look at what kinds of improvements can occur in different environments.”
RSM was approved as C-band transition relocation coordinator, in an FCC Wireless Bureau order Friday. Its nomination for the job of coordinating relocation work among satellite and earth station operators and 3.7 GHz service flexible-use licensees (see 2008030049) was unopposed, the bureau said. Still to be filled is the contested job of C-band clearinghouse (see 2008250032).
The FTC appealed for 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals en banc review of its antitrust case against Qualcomm (see 2008190043). Siding with Qualcomm, the court “blesses the continued stifling of competition in multi-billion-dollar markets for cellular-communications chips on which much of the digital economy depends,” the FTC filed Friday (in Pacer). The three-judge panel disregarded precedent by “elevating patent-law labels over economic substance,” by “holding that facially ‘neutral’ fees cannot violate” antitrust law, saying “harms to Qualcomm’s customers are ‘beyond the scope of antitrust law’ and demanding a showing of ‘direct’ harm to competitors," the FTC said. The errors “cast doubt on fundamental matters of antitrust principle and will encourage monopolists to cloak anticompetitive practices beneath false invocations of patent law,” the agency wrote. The company didn’t comment.