Reject Broadnet Teleservices' ask that the FCC find the Telephone Consumer Protection Act doesn’t apply (see 2007210049) to calls made “by or on behalf of federal, state, and local governments when such calls are made for official purposes,” consumer groups told the FCC. “There is no legal authority to support defining local governments as anything other than ‘persons’ fully covered by the TCPA’s requirements,” said the National Consumer Law Center, the Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Reports, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and Public Knowledge. “None of the reasons cited by Broadnet in support of this interpretation actually provide a real justification for Broadnet’s request, as most of the calls described as needing to be made either can already be made under the TCPA’s emergency exception, or because the local government would have received prior consent for the calls from the recipients,” they said, in a filing posted Monday in docket 02-278.

Aug. 19 is the deadline for comments on an ACA Connects' request or a stay of the Aug. 31 deadline for earth station operators to make C-band clearing lump sum elections (see 2008140033), the FCC Wireless Bureau said in a public notice in Monday's Daily Digest. ACA asked for the stay pending resolution of its application for review of the C-band final cost category public notice's exclusion of the cost of integrated receivers/decoders, bureau said, it said Friday in docket 18-122.

There are 23,522 cable and wireline subscribers without service due to the “Midwest Derecho” in the 24 Iowa counties covered by the current activation of the FCC’s disaster information reporting system, said Monday’s report. There were 38,088 subscribers without service Sunday. The affected areas also have outages at 2.4% of cellsites, a slight improvement over Sunday's 2.7%. Eight FM stations and one AM station are out of service, and no public safety answering point reported being down, the report said.

FTC Chairman Joe Simons’ two-year recusal in the agency’s antitrust case against Qualcomm ended in May, a spokesperson confirmed (see 2008110065). The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Qualcomm in the case this past week. The FTC can appeal if the commission approves.

NTCA members taking part in the FCC's Keep Americans Connected pledge this spring racked up on average $80,000 in uncollectible debt and need Congress to help cover that expense, NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield told C-Span's The Communicators, scheduled to be telecast this weekend. She said she hopes whatever stimulus bill Congress passes will include funding for that. There has been "some bridging" of the digital divide in recent months as providers try to connect as many people as they can, but a sizable gap remains and none of the stimulus money spent so far has been directed at connectivity for low-income or rural Americans, she said. Asked about the various infrastructure bills, she talked up the Keeping Critical Connections Act (S-3569) spearheaded by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. She said the FCC's designation of Huawei and ZTE as a national security threat to communications networks affects a handful of NTCA members, with rural wireless providers more affected, and that Congress will also need to look at funding for replacing hardware from those companies.

The largest cable ISPs added 1.4 million broadband subscribers in Q2 of this year, the most additions since Q1 2007 and up from the 530,000 added the same quarter a year ago, said Leichtman Research Group Thursday. The largest cable ISPs ended the quarter with 70.6 million subs, it said. Landline telecoms ended the quarter with 32.7 million subs, down 155,000 in the quarter, similar to what they lost in Q2 2019, it said. Charter Communications' 850,000 net adds were more than for any provider in any previous quarter, it said.

The FCC voted 4-1 to cancel a 2016 proposal to fine AT&T $106,425 for E-rate violations because the notice of apparent liability was issued after the one year statute of limitations on the violations, said an order in Wednesday’s Daily Digest (see 1608260037). The original NAL argued AT&T’s failure to charge two Florida school districts the lowest corresponding price was a continuing violation of the rules. Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel dissented, saying she respected the procedural argument but believes there were merits to the previous FCC’s approach. The 2016 FCC’s stance that some violations should be treated as continuing would lead to more accountability for USF carriers, she said. She also said the date of violations should be pegged to USF disbursements. Commissioner Geoffrey Starks voted “concur” but raised similar concerns: “The Commission should consider how we can best promote timely detection of violations to avoid future problems with the statute of limitations.” Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said the original NAL would have failed on the merits if it hadn’t been canceled. “The previous Commission’s attempt to evade the applicable statute of limitations through its continuing violation theory was offensive to the rule of law and must be thoroughly rejected,” he said. “This NAL was dismissed because it was procedurally flawed," emailed an AT&T spokesperson. "But it was also substantively flawed, and egregiously so, as its core factual and legal claims were simply wrong.”

The FCC activated the disaster information reporting system and issued three public notices Wednesday on emergency communication procedures and contacting the agency in response to Monday’s “Midwest Derecho” in Iowa. Communications licensees in 24 Iowa counties are requested to report at 10 a.m. Thursday and every day after that until DIRS is deactivated, said the DIRS PN. The FCC “will be available to address emergency communications needs twenty-four hours a day throughout the weekend,” said a second notice, and the third provided bureau contact information for entities seeking emergency special temporary authority and other assistance to maintain or recover communications affected by the storm.

The next FCC Consumer Advisory Committee meeting will be held remotely at 10:30 a.m. EDT on Sept. 25, said a public notice Tuesday.

A DOJ report on ways to update the Administrative Procedure Act includes proposals to require agencies to disclose the data used in the rulemaking process, revive agency hearings for rules with major impacts, and to base the amount of scrutiny a new rule is subjected to on its importance. "Modernizing the Administrative Procedures Act," released Tuesday, collected the remarks of panelists and speakers at DOJ's December workshop on the subject. The current APA leads to overly costly and burdensome regulations that may at times infringe on the Constitution, said Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen in the report’s forward. The consistent theme of the workshop was that Congress should intervene to update the rules instead of relying on the current structure of executive orders and agency rulings, Rosen said. Legislation would “promote stability by codifying procedures that, in their current form, can be undone at the stroke of a presidential pen” and “honor the separation of powers.” said Rosen. “The Justice Department, which significantly shaped the original APA, hopes that the ideas and insights discussed in the report will encourage and inform much needed action by Congress to modernize the APA,” said the DOJ release on the report.