The FCC approved Thursday waiver requests from 11 additional parties seeking permission to launch early deployments of cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) technology in the 5.895-5.925 GHz band. The FCC has yet to finalize rules for C-V2X in the band -- an item pending since November 2020, when the commission approved an order opening 45 MHz of the band for Wi-Fi, while allocating 30 MHz C-V2X technology (see 2011180043).

The FTC, DOJ and California attorney general should investigate whether Google violated antitrust or copyright law last week when it blocked news websites in the state, the News/Media Alliance wrote in a letter to enforcers Tuesday. Google temporarily limited access to news websites, “retaliating” against the California Journalism Preservation Act (see 2307060034), a legislative proposal that would require platforms to pay news publishers for use of their content, the letter said. Google may have violated the Sherman Antitrust Act, the FTC Act or the Lanham Act, it said. The California News Publishers Association joined the alliance in its letter to California AG Rob Bonta (D). The letter's “baseless claims deflect” from the real issues with the legislation, Google said in a statement Wednesday: “This bill is unworkable and will hurt small, local publishers to benefit large, out-of-state hedge funds. We have proposed reasonable alternatives to CJPA that would increase our support for the California news ecosystem and support Californians' access to news.” Offices for the FTC, DOJ and Bonta didn’t comment Wednesday.

"The sky's the limit" when considering Chinese capabilities for conducting digital attacks on critical U.S. infrastructure, since China switched from focusing on economic and political espionage to a strategy that can only be pre-positioning for attacks, Brandon Wales, executive director of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said Wednesday. Also at a Semafor conference on digital infrastructure, Kathy Grillo, Verizon senior vice president-public policy and government affairs, said the lack of FCC auction authority could have significant ramifications in a handful of years for keeping up with growing data demands. Numerous conference speakers talked about AI’s potential and risks.

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez and carrier executives warned of challenges from the pending expiration of the affordable connectivity program and negative implications for the broadband access, equity and deployment program, speaking Wednesday at a Competitive Carriers Association conference streamed from Palm Springs, California. Gomez said she supports the proposed 5G Fund, circulated by Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel last month (see 2403260052), and is focused on concerns raised by CCA and others.

Votes are again delayed on foster youth and AT&T items at the California Public Utilities Commission. Both were scheduled for Thursday’s meeting, but CPUC staff postponed them until the May 9 meeting, said a hold list Tuesday. The commission originally planned to vote on both items at its Feb. 15 meeting and has now held them multiple times (see 2403200013). The first item would make the CPUC’s pilot foster youth program permanent (docket R.20-02-008). The second would deny AT&T’s corrective action plan explaining how it will correct failures and improve service after failing to meet the state’s out-of-service repair interval standard in 2021 (resolution T-17789).

Proponents of revised net neutrality rules are urging FCC commissioners to further tighten provisions on 5G network slicing, one of the more contested items in the proposed rules (see 2404050053). But officials on both sides said it’s not clear how many changes will be made to the order, prior to an expected 3-2 vote next week. Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel may need to make some concessions because the rules likely won’t pass without support from her fellow Democrats Geoffrey Starks and Anna Gomez.

Possibly facing the end of the federal affordable connectivity program (ACP), the California Public Utilities Commission should quickly modify grant rules to ensure service stays affordable, said The Utility Reform Network in petitions Friday and Monday. “We don’t have the luxury of time here,” said TURN Telecom Policy Analyst Leo Fitzpatrick in an interview Monday. The state cable association slammed TURN’s proposals. But the California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF), a group that has led efforts to sign up low-income Californians for ACP, supports having “another opportunity to discuss the imperative for California to have a back-up plan to replace the” federal program, said CEO Sunne Wright McPeak in an email Monday.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., is pressing the Commerce Department over NOAA’s proposal for creating the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of central California amid concerns over “new regulatory impediments” to permitting undersea fiber cable installations in that area. He noted NTIA’s role in implementing $48.2 billion in connectivity money from the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and contrasted that with NOAA’s evaluation of the Chumash NMS, which “envisions adding additional layers of dated bureaucratic red tape to the existing permitting process.” NOAA has acknowledged “‘several U.S. agencies have legal authority to regulate the laying and maintenance of cables off our nation’s shores,’ in addition to state regulatory requirements,” Comer said Friday in a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. “Despite NOAA’s admission,” the 2011 undersea cable permitting policy the agency “proposes to use for the permitting of undersea internet cables in the Chumash Heritage NMS … has been so onerous that the Committee could not identify a single example of a new undersea communications cable deployed in an NMS governed under the policy.” Some “of the designated NMS sites across the U.S. protect areas that undersea cables might seek to simply avoid,” but “the proposed designation of the Chumash Heritage NMS would fill the last gap off the California coast already utilized by numerous cables for trans-Pacific connectivity,” Comer said: “Substantial cost increases for internet infrastructure connecting the U.S. West Coast to Asia and U.S. Pacific territories, delays, and new maintenance restrictions created by imposition of the 2011 permitting guidance under the Chumash Heritage NMS designation, if left unaddressed, will seemingly occur if NOAA moves forward without mitigating onerous requirements that empower bureaucrats but offer little benefit to marine environments.” NOAA “has proposed substantial revisions to its Chumash Heritage NMS designation as a concession to facilitate undersea electrical cables for offshore wind energy projects” but has “invested little time or effort into analyzing the impact of the designation on existing and potential future use of areas for undersea fiber-optic cables,” he said. Comer pressed Commerce to brief House Oversight about how NOAA and NTIA evaluated the Chumash designation’s impact on undersea cables. NOAA “will review the letter and answer the congressman through official channels,” a spokesperson emailed us.

The net neutrality draft order on the FCC's April 25 open meeting agenda (see 2404030043) will face much the same legal arguments as the 2015 net neutrality order did, with many of the same parties involved, we're told by legal experts and net neutrality watchers.

The California Public Utilities Commission plans to propose a decision in Q2 2025 on possible updates to the state’s deaf and disabled telecommunications program, Commissioner Darcie Houck said in a scoping memo Wednesday in docket R.23-11-001. The CPUC will consider whether and how it should modify program rules “in light of the changing communications landscape and participants' needs,” among other issues, it said. The agency will hold hearings and workshops from April to July and will collect more comments in Q4 this year, the memo said.