The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), since it covers Californians no matter where they are and since industry hasn't been able to rally around one alternative, is set to become the default privacy protection rules for the nation, Harris Wiltshire privacy lawyer Becky Burr said Friday at the FCBA annual retreat. CCPA will apply to a broader and deeper data set than the EU's general data protection regulation, meaning "significant" reworking of systems needs to be done before it takes effect Jan. 1, she said. "There's a bit of a scramble going on." There's much industry consensus that federal pre-emption is needed to avoid a proliferation of competing state laws, she said in Hot Springs, Virginia. Among proposals in Congress, most agree on the need for a larger role for the FTC, but they disagree on other topics like private rights of action, she noted. Burr said federal legislation that pre-empts CCPA seems unlikely to come to pass, and meanwhile 30-plus states are kicking around their own form of privacy bills. While the California legislature also is looking at changes to CCPA, a risk is that a significant change could give rise to another ballot initiative like the one that prompted creation of the law in the first place, she said. She said the idea of eliminating the right to cure before fines kick in for violations is dead with state lawmakers, but other provisions moving through the legislature would clarify its non-applicability to employees and contractors, modify its definition of personal information and eliminate the requirement companies maintain a toll-free line for allowing consumer opt-outs.

The man who threatened to kill FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s family over the net neutrality common-carrier repeal has been sentenced to 20 months in federal prison, said a sentencing order (in Pacer) from a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, and a DOJ release Friday. Markara Man, of Norwalk, California, sent three emails to Pai in 2017 that included threats to kill Pai’s children, lists of Arlington schools, and a picture of Pai and his family. Man confessed after being confronted by the FBI, but subsequently wiped data from a cellphone in what prosecutors said was an attempt to destroy evidence. Man will get credit for time served, and after the 20 months be on supervised release for three years and barred from possessing or using a computer without the permission of his parole officer. Court filings show that Man had sought a lighter sentence, arguing that he was mentally ill at the time of the incident and that he had no actual plans to carry out his threat. “Mr. Man committed this crime as a call for help. Now that he is diagnosed and treated it is highly unlikely he will reoffend,” said a sentencing filing (in Pacer) from Man’s attorney Edward Robinson. The sentencing documents require Man to serve his time in a facility where he can receive mental health treatment, but the court denied the defense’s request for lighter sentencing. The FCC didn’t comment. “Threatening to actually kill a federal official’s family because of a disagreement over policy is not only inexcusable, it is criminal,” said U.S. Attorney-Eastern District of Virginia Zachary Terwilliger in the release. “This prosecution shows not only that we take criminal threats seriously, but also that online threats of violence have real world consequences."

The C-Band Alliance has no problems with safeguards some content companies want to see in any C-band transition plan to protect video downlinks, it said in an FCC docket 18-122 posting Wednesday. The CBA said it will be talking specific provisions, including technical rules, the FCC could adopt to implement such safeguards. The content companies, earlier this month recapping meetings with aides to Chairman Ajit Pai and the other commissioners, said those safeguards must include having at least 300 MHz available for video downlinks in the repacked C band, meaning no more than 200 MHz of C band can be repurposed. They said protecting those downlinks from interference include having a sufficient guard band, reasonable power limits for 5G base stations and mobile units, minimizing out-of-band emissions and guaranteeing any earth station filters meet or surpass any assumed levels of radiofrequency rejection. They argued against allowing fixed point-to-multipoint transmissions in the repacked C band as making "a difficult spectrum management task impossible." They said the FCC could incentivize spectrum repacking that protects video downlinks by requiring that companies selling spectrum rights wouldn't see profits until after finishing a transition of incumbents and a provision of agreed-on protections to video downlinks, while not allowing mobile users to start operations in a given market until the repack is done. The content companies were CBS, Discovery, Disney, Fox and Univision.

USTelecom Senior Vice President-Advocacy and Regulatory Affairs Patrick Halley said the FCC's Form 477-centric approach to broadband mapping is more granular than ever but still limited (see 1905010089).

The first meeting of the FCC's rechartered Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC) will be June 13, said a public notice Thursday. The meeting will be at 9:30 a.m. in the Commission Meeting Room. The BDAC chair and vice chair are continuing from its first term, and other members also were listed (see personals section of this issue). The agency said the three BDAC working groups will be disaster response and recovery, increasing broadband investment in low-income communities and broadband infrastructure deployment job skills and training opportunities. The commission said Dec. 10 it planned to re-up the group, subject to General Services Administration approval, an FCC spokesperson emailed us. "That approval was obtained, and this [is] the first notice following that approval. The re-charter is for two years." The charter expires March 1, 2021, he said.

There's optimism Congress could shift its focus to infrastructure soon, said USTelecom President Jonathan Spalter in a recent interview for C-SPAN's The Communicators to be televised this weekend and posted here. “We hear a lot of talk about the opportunity to pivot Congress’s attention back to the idea of a national infrastructure framework,” he said. “We’ve heard figures of up to $40 billion” to bring fiber networks across the country, Spalter said. “A national bipartisan commitment to infrastructure could propel broadband access to all Americans who need or want it.” USTelecom is developing a more sophisticated U.S. broadband map with more data at the granular level. It’s started with maps in Virginia and Missouri with plans to create a scalable database with harmonized and digitized data (see 1903210041). “We have to know where the underserved areas are,” Spalter said, as well as where broadband isn't available at all. He noted that several million Americans may have no access to broadband, especially in areas where the terrain is too difficult to deploy fiber in or where the economics of scale prohibit it. “We’re working with the FCC to close that gap,” Spalter said. He said the broadband mapping data is necessary for regulators to fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities in subsidizing rural broadband expansion. He noted 5G technologies won't likely start in rural areas nor in underserved urban markets, “but it absolutely has to include our rural communities.” Spalter favors the principles of net neutrality but not the Save the Internet Act (S-682), which he suggested would return telco policy to outdated 1934-era public-utility-style rules. When asked about Democratic presidential candidates’ interest in breaking up larger social media giants, Spalter said he’d rather see Congress “break up the difficult red tape” for telcos and establish more shared responsibility by all actors who touch the consumers through the internet, so it doesn't fall more on ISPs.

All cable operators would only have to respond to "bona fide" leased access requests from prospective programmers under the draft order on the FCC's June 6 agenda, released Thursday. It also released its robocalls draft declaratory ruling and Further NPRM (see 1905150041) and draft aviation safety NPRM. Under the leased access draft order, bona fide requests would include desired length of contract term, nature of the programming and the expected commencement date for carriage. The draft order, along with eliminating the requirement cable operators make leased access available on a part-time basis, which was expected (see 1905150060), would give cable operators more time to reply to bona fide requests and would allow charge of an application fee of $100 per system-specific request. The FCC declined to block cable operators from refusing to carry leased access programmers on only a portion of the operator's system but said it would continue to evaluate programmer complaints about cable operator denials on a case-by-case basis. An accompanying draft FNPRM proposes modifying the leased access rate formula, tying rates to the tier on which the programming is carried. It seeks comment on whether changes in technology and the distribution market have left its leased access rules on shaky First Amendment grounds.

The National Tribal Telecommunications Association has "significant concerns with the broadband testing protocols" in July's order on measuring speed and latency at recipients of high-cost USF support for fixed locations, NTTA wrote the FCC on Tuesday. The group backed some NTCA and rural broadband advocate WTA fears on broadband performance testing. Testing protocols aren't "ready and will not be ready in time for testing to begin" in Q3, NTTA wrote, in a letter posted Wednesday in docket 10-90. "NTTA shares NTCA’s and WTA’s concerns about the requirement for carriers to test outside their networks, speeds and tiers to be tested, incompatible CPE [customer premises equipment], and the starting date." NTTA didn't immediately answer our questions. Other telecom groups have USF speed/latency worries (see 1905140019). The commission will "be addressing the issue in the near future," emailed a spokesperson.

Forward-thinking telecom companies can help facilitate disruptive changes to healthcare from broadband and digital health technologies, FCC Associate General Counsel Karen Onyeije said Monday during an FCBA event. She said cross-sector collaboration is crucial: “Think of the bedfellows we need to make.” The FCC plans to release an update on a broadband and opioid study in the next four to six weeks, said Onyeije. She's also chief of staff for FCC’s Connect2Health Broadband Task Force, which is designed to think five to 10 years out. Her agency is working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to map the use of broadband as a social determinant of health, and they’ve created a conceptual model that includes opioid overdose data and mortality data in the hopes that it could help healthcare entrepreneurs identify those at risk and intervene sooner. “How do we play to where the puck will be?” Onyeije said. She cautioned that if not done correctly, the move to digital health could exacerbate health disparities because the technological advances won't be available to those who need them most. David Siddall of DS Law said that medical body area network (MBAN) technology is a classic case of spectrum sharing. When MBAN developers sought spectrum, they spent three years negotiating a sharing and interference mitigation arrangement with trade groups in the flight testing industry. The spectrum-sharing arrangement in place allows for use of the products in most U.S. hospitals, although Siddall noted that in larger cities, there might not be enough spectrum to cover all the hospitals. “The solution is more spectrum, but spectrum doesn’t grow on trees,” he said. Given the right spectrum, MBAN devices could be used to monitor patients in the home or ambulances, as well, he said. The first MBAN devices (wearable, bandage-size monitors) have yet to launch. Siddall believes product developers want to coordinate the technology with European standards first.

The type of LECs USTelecom asks the FCC to remove some unbundled network element rules from are incumbent providers (see 1905130050).