Smart communications platform company Ooma said Monday that it agreed to buy Phone.com, a cloud-based business communications provider, for $23.2 million in cash. The deal will give Ooma about 87,000 business users, the company said.
States can't easily do targeted outreach, support migration or identify people still relying on analog telecommunications relay services due to their lack of access to customer data, according to the National Association of State Relay Administration. In a meeting with FCC staffers, NASRA board members urged the commission to allow an exemption for TRS vendors to share customer data with state TRS administrators for outreach and transition support, said a filing posted (docket 03-123). That would help ensure device solutions for households without broadband, the group said.
The Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe criticized the FCC’s approach to revising National Environmental Policy Act rules in an August NPRM (see 2509190053), according to a filing posted Monday in docket 25-217. “This is an irrationally rushed docket with questionable efforts to consult in a genuine or meaningful manner with Tribal Nations, without ample consultation opportunities, and with overly prescribed allowance for consultation,” the Minnesota tribe said.
New Verizon CEO Dan Schulman confirmed reports that the carrier plans to cut more than 13,000 jobs in what will be its biggest ever round of layoffs (see 2511130051). Verizon will begin reducing its workforce “across the organization” and “significantly reduce our outsourced and other outside labor expenses,” Schulman said Thursday in a message to employees. “Every part of the company will experience some level of change, and we will have conversations with every affected employee to ensure they are treated with the utmost respect and care.”
NTIA said Wednesday it's planning reforms to its tribal broadband programs aimed at reducing red tape and streamlining the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program and the Digital Equity Act native entity set-asides. The notice of funding opportunity for tribal broadband access is expected in the spring, it added. NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth said the realignment of the tribal grant programs "will reduce administrative burdens, prevent duplication, and ensure consistency across NTIA’s broadband initiatives. Most importantly, it will maximize the impact of this funding, helping to connect as many Tribal households as possible."
A cornerstone of the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline system, follow-up calls remain "largely unfunded, unmeasured, and underreported," wrote John Draper, Behavioral Health Link's president of research, development and government solutions, in a blog post this week. Reams of studies have found that structured and unstructured follow-up reduces suicides and leads to greater engagement in care, Draper noted. He said 988 administrator Vibrant Emotional Health's 2023 requirement that 988 centers do follow-ups within 24 hours was made with the assumption that centers would have the resources to do such outreach. But there's no systematic way of knowing if states understand that obligation and are funding it, Draper said. States and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration should create clear guidelines for 988 centers to collect and report follow-up data, he argued, and SAMHSA 988 grants to states should require that they guarantee that 988 centers get funds to provide and report on follow-up services.
U.S. fixed broadband revenue will grow from $104.8 billion in 2024 to $124 billion in 2029, a compound annual growth rate of 3.4%, ResearchAndMarkets.com said in a report Monday. The increase is driven “by growing demand for high-speed connectivity and efforts to extend fixed broadband connectivity to underserved areas, like the BEAD program,” it said. U.S. mobile data service revenue will grow from $177 billion last year to $213.3 billion in 2029, a 3.8% CAGR, “driven by rising demand for mobile data, increasing 5G subscriptions, and a higher volume of cellular [machine to machine]/IoT connections.”
The FCC should ask additional questions on automatic speech recognition (ASR) captions in its draft telecommunications relay service NPRM, ClearCaptions told an aide to Commissioner Olivia Trusty last week, according to a filing posted Monday in docket 03-123. The NPRM, set for the agency’s Nov. 20 open meeting, already asks about the quality of ASR functions on smart devices but “does not seek comment on key questions.” The agency should also inquire about the availability of ASR on smart devices, the costs of such devices, performance monitoring, and the FCC’s jurisdiction to impose minimum standards for consumer use of ASR on such devices, the filing said. In addition, the FCC should ask about privacy, technical support availability and what parties would be responsible for providing it, ClearCaptions said.
While state efforts to regulate AI are mushrooming, the Trump administration's plans to use FCC preemption powers to stop those efforts are unlikely to succeed, Phoenix Center President Larry Spiwak said in a paper last week. The administration's AI Action Plan, issued in July, directs the commission to evaluate whether state AI regulations interfere with its Communications Act obligations (see 2507230050). That presumably implies that the FCC should use its Section 253 and 332 authority to preempt those state laws, Spiwak said. But such efforts aren't likely to bear fruit, given the plain language of the Communications Act and recent case law, he argued. Instead, twisting the Communications Act for state AI law preemption "may open a Pandora’s Box of unintended consequences, perversely leading to a vast expansion of the FCC’s powers beyond its limited statutory constraints." Political efforts should focus instead on enacting federal legislation that would give that preemption authority, he added.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a right-of-center policy institute, urged the FCC to broaden its foreign-ownership reporting requirements “to cover all applicants for licenses, permits, and other authorizations.” That expansion would streamline efforts to block China and other foreign adversaries “from accessing the nation’s telecommunications network, while preventing states, entities, and individuals from circumventing reporting requirements,” said a filing submitted last month and posted Thursday in docket 25-166.