Expect the FCC to allow its Communications Decency Act Section 230 rulemaking proceeding to stagnate through the transition to President-elect Joe Biden's administration, experts said in interviews. It would be unwise to move forward without a clear majority and could create unnecessary work for staff, they said.
Consumer complaints about Frontier Communications' service quality have risen, according to state commission data obtained by Communications Daily. Regulators in 16 states provided data about 2015-19 complaints voluntarily or through Freedom of Information Act requests. Officials in some states with increasing complaints weren't surprised to see similar problems elsewhere. The telco said it works with state commissions to meet service quality metrics.
PC component shortages continued to dog HP and Dell in their October quarters as the supply chain buckled under the weight of heavy consumer demand for telework and remote-learning connectivity tools, the vendors reported on their Tuesday evening investor calls. IDC ranked HP and Dell second and third behind Lenovo in calendar Q3 global PC share.
Democrats defended the record of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., this week, after she announced she’s stepping down as top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee (see personals section, Nov. 25). Dick Durbin, Illinois, who's next in line, said he will seek the position while remaining minority whip. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who ranks behind Durbin, said he’s looking forward to a caucus decision.
Analog Devices CEO Vincent Roche thinks 5G is “at the early stages of a multiyear -- probably decade -- ramp” up, he told a Tuesday investor call for fiscal Q4, ended Oct. 31. He thinks 2021 will bring deployments of 5G “more globally beyond China,” he said. “I expect America to be the primary driver, probably toward the second half of 2021.”
Wireless ISPs are expected to drive deployment of priority access licenses in the citizens broadband radio service band, likely being the first to deploy after the FCC finishes assigning licenses from the PAL auction that ended Aug. 25. Some larger auction bidders are starting to lay out plans. Experts and others said in interviews that auction winners will likely start to use their licenses in Q1, after the FCC finalizes channel assignments and conveys the licenses.
Political ad spending in 2024 is likely to exceed 2020's record $8.5 billion, and it's conceivable -- if unlikely -- that spending in the Senate runoff in Georgia alone could reach $1 billion, Gray Television President Pat LaPlatney told the Media Institute. LaPlatney said most projections for the runoff are $200 million, but “it’s 2020; anything can happen.” Numbers that seemed “aggressive” before the 2020 race “have all been exceeded,” he said Monday.
Two top Senate Republicans told us they expect language aimed at hindering Ligado’s L-band plan rollout to make it into a conference version of the FY 2021 National Defense Authorization Act currently under negotiation. What it will ultimately look like remains uncertain. The House and Senate passed NDAA versions (HR-6395/S-4049) earlier this year that included anti-Ligado provisions (see 2007200052). Iridium, National Emergency Number Association and other critics of the proposal urged leaders of the Armed Services committees to push for all Ligado language from the two versions to be kept in a combined NDAA bill.
Dish Network still has de facto control over SNR Wireless and Northstar Wireless. The two designated entities remain ineligible for $3.3 billion in DE bidding credits they sought for licenses they won in the AWS-3 auction. They don't owe the FCC that amount, having defaulted on 197 licenses and paid full price for the remaining spectrum they won in the 2015 auction. That's according to an order on remand Monday by the full commission regarding the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upholding in 2017 the FCC's denial of AWS-3 auction bidding credits to the DEs but giving them a chance to negotiate a solution (see 1708290012).
Huawei's proposed "New IP" sparked charges the company and possibly the Chinese government are trying to hijack the internet. ICANN, ITU and others said the protocol's specifications and purported uses are so hazy it can't be considered as an internet replacement. Huawei said it's trying to improve existing IP versions 4 and 6 and denied it's working for the Chinese government. The project's link to Huawei, however, "is a guarantee, in the current geopolitical environment, that it will be politicized," blogged Internet Governance Project founder Milton Mueller.