Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced this week that Katie Arrington was appointed as acting DOD chief information officer. Arrington formerly ran for Congress in South Carolina but lost a primary to Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C. Leslie Beavers, who has been acting CIO since John Sherman left the job last year, returned to serving as principal deputy CIO. The DOD CIO position requires Senate confirmation. The telecom industry closely watches it, especially as DOD examines the future of the lower 3 and 7/8 GHz band, which carriers target in part for 5G (see 2406100043).
The Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition supports waiving the April 1 funding request filing deadline for the rural Healthcare Connect Fund, it told the FCC Wireline Bureau in an ex parte meeting Monday, according to a filing posted Wednesday in docket 02-60. The waiver request was originally made by the Colorado Hospital Association and intended to allow the Universal Service Administrative Co. time to give the system the ability to handle the filings. “Various factors have delayed the standard application processing time over the course of this funding year,” said SHLB, detailing processing issues and delays caused by the application portal. The proposed 90-day extension is “justified” given the diversity in applicant types “and variations in applicant experience and expertise in filing.”
The FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council will meet March 19 at FCC headquarters, the FCC said Wednesday. The meeting, which starts at 1 p.m., is the group's first during the current administration. It last met in December (see 2412180041).
FailSafe offers technology that can help identify callers who try but fail to get through to 911, the company told the FCC Friday. The company said it provides “the Intelligent Signaling Network data that accompanies every wireless, landline and [IP] call into actionable 911 alerts.” Its “methodology takes the regulatory spotlight off recalcitrant carriers, which frankly, never wanted the 911 reporting job in the first place,” said a filing in docket 15-80. “Instead it focuses on people affected, rather than estimates based solely on carrier performance.”
Nokia announced Friday the closing of its $2.3 billion purchase of Infinera, creating what it said will be an “optical networks powerhouse.” The companies announced the deal in July (see 2406280042). Infinera employees will join Nokia’s optical networks business. Infinera CEO David Heard becomes chief strategic growth officer for Nokia’s infrastructure business.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s letter to Verizon concerning its diversity practices (see 2502270072) -- which referenced its pending purchase of Frontier -- sets “a dangerous precedent,” FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks said in a statement Friday. “I strongly oppose conflating policy agendas with an unrelated transaction review. This is even more troubling given that the pleading cycle for this transaction has closed,” Starks said. “Leveraging transaction reviews in this fashion [will] only chill investment when it is sorely needed.”
During a panel at NARUC's Winter Policy Summit this week (see 2502250010), Michael Santorelli, director of New York Law School's Advanced Communications Law and Policy Institute, mentioned New York's Affordable Broadband Act, on which the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition for rehearing Monday. States shouldn't follow New York's lead because the law is "unnecessary and sets a dangerous precedent for legislative overreach," Santorelli said. Instead, he urged that states focus on "updating laws to facilitate broadband buildout."
NARUC's board of directors on Wednesday approved the two resolutions adopted by its telecom committee Monday (see 2502240060).
AT&T remains hopeful that Congress will extend current tax cuts, CFO Pascal Desroches said Tuesday during a Barclays financial conference. “When the first [Donald] Trump administration passed the tax incentives in 2017, it was really successful in stimulating investment,” Desroches said: “We added jobs, both nationally and in individual states. … I am hopeful, based on all the discussions, that we will see an extension of those tax cuts."
Carrier executives are managing their networks using AI, but progress is slow, with nearly 60% saying that only 20% or less is now managed by AI, according to a new Mobile World Live survey. Just 10% said AI systems are already managing more than 50% percent of their networks. Traffic prediction and anomaly detection were the top uses for AI, at 47% each, the survey found, followed by predictive maintenance (33%) and energy consumption (25%). Slice management came in at 16%, digital twinning 13%. Among the reasons for slow deployment, 50% cited skill gaps, 49% said data and model security concerns, and 39% said cost. Asked which AI tools they would deploy first, the largest portion of respondents, 49%, said network troubleshooting. Customer engagement pilots came in second at 42%.