New Jersey could soon add cable service-quality requirements, despite companies seeking to reduce regulation. Board of Public Utilities members voted 5-0 Wednesday to propose readopting the state’s Administrative Code Title 14 Chapter 18 rules for cable TV with substantial changes, including new required metrics and reports and changes to pole attachment rates and public, educational and government (PEG) access channel rules.
Just 30 of 197 providers filed responses to letters from the FCC asking them to review certain census blocks provisionally won during the RDOF Phase I auction and consider withdrawing those bids by its Monday deadline. Most said they're willing to accept the offer if the commission agrees to waive any penalties.
The FCC or FTC is likely to investigate, and possibly impose sanctions on, T-Mobile for a data breach, experts said Wednesday. The breach included information from about 7.8 million current T-Mobile postpaid customer accounts and the records of more than 40 million former or prospective customers, T-Mobile said. Data from about 850,000 prepaid customers was also exposed. A Dish Network spokesperson confirmed that Boost customers weren’t affected.
Internet regulation is “overdue in many ways and justified,” Facebook General Counsel Jennifer Newstead told a Technology Policy Institute event Tuesday. She noted the tremendous attention on internet regulation, including privacy, online safety, content moderation, data sharing and competition. “We are advocating in a number of areas that there be a very careful and focused look at what changes might be necessary,” she said.
ASPEN, Colorado -- The FCC is “far from gridlock,” despite the commission’s 2-2 split, but the agency could do more to reach “bipartisan, low-hanging fruit,” Commissioner Brendan Carr told us Tuesday before speaking on a Technology Policy Institute panel. “If you had asked me in January or February, do you think you’ll be in August without the White House naming a chair, I would have said no,” he said. “That said, hats off to the chair.”
Verizon and AT&T, counting on early C-band deployments to narrow T-Mobile’s lead on mid-band spectrum, warned of potential delays in the clearing process that could complicate plans to build out in the C band starting later this year. Both companies have been at the FCC to urge an expedited process for the Relocation Payment Clearinghouse (RPC) to make payments to licensees to clear the band on an expedited basis.
The Environmental Health Trust (EHT) and allies plan a push at the FCC in coming months to get the agency to take a deeper look at the health risks of RF, in the aftermath of Friday’s U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit remand of 2019 RF safety rules to the FCC for further work (see 2108130073). During a call with reporters Monday, the group urged the FCC to accept new evidence as it addresses the remand.
ASPEN, Colorado -- The Facebook oversight board may gradually expand its membership and could theoretically double from 20, the Technology Policy Institute was told Monday. More members could handle additional cases, TPI heard. Though there's no current plan to vastly increase its size, some members probably will be added, including later this year, the Facebook panel's representatives told us on the event's sidelines.
ASPEN, Colorado -- Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen hopes to settle with T-Mobile over the satellite-TV company's concerns that the wireless carrier plans to turn off an older 3G network that serves Dish prepaid customers. Ergen told a Technology Policy Institute event he thinks something could be worked out. It's a message he repeated in a brief encounter with a T-Mobile representative who approached him afterward. Ergen also noted he hadn't heard of any T-Mobile data breach (see 2108160056).
ASPEN, Colorado -- Privacy is a policy area with bipartisan potential at the FTC, Commissioner Noah Phillips told us between panels at the Technology Policy Institute conference Monday, though he doubts the agency’s authority to issue rulemakings for the entire economy.