Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., oppose “telecommunications policy provisions” the Senate Appropriations Committee included in its report on the chamber's version of the FY 2020 FCC-FTC budget bill, including language to shape FCC spectrum policy. Senate Appropriations voted unanimously last week to advance the FCC-FTC bill with report language to pressure the FCC to hold a public auction of spectrum on the 3.7-4.2 GHz C band (see 1909190079). Senate Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee Chairman Roy Blunt, R-Mo., meanwhile, is sticking by his decision to maintain CPB's annual funding at $445 million in its draft FY 2020 bill (see 1909180058).
The FCC’s fourth court loss on quadrennial updates to media ownership rules (see 1906130052) rolls those updates back and could have consequences for pending and just-completed deals such as Nexstar/Tribune and Apollo/Cox and for future radio deregulation, said broadcast attorneys on both sides of the issue in interviews Monday.
Re-establishing the Office of Technology Assessment seems to have significant lawmaker support, though there are questions of under what agency it should be housed and the proper funding level, said House Commerce member Jerry McNerney, D-Calif., Friday at the Telecommunications Policy Research Institute. He said there's a need for nonpartisan expertise on issues and OTA's disbanding in the 1990s was "a tragedy."
A 2018 anti-sex-trafficking law violates the First Amendment, so a lawsuit against the statute (see 1806290044) should proceed, advocates argued Friday before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. DOJ countered that plaintiffs don’t have a reasonable fear of prosecution because the speech doesn’t promote illegal sex activity.
The proposal on the FCC's Thursday agenda to update and streamline DBS rules comes as that industry's future is increasingly a question mark. An FCC official told us the vote (see 1909050043) is likely 5-0 and the item is seen is a housekeeping matter completing work of aligning DBS registration rules and procedures with other satellite services.
Attention is turning to the California attorney general’s rulemaking to implement the California Consumer Privacy Act, after lawmakers made minor CCPA tweaks in their session ended this month (see 1909160045). The law takes effect Jan. 1, but enforcement won’t start until the earlier of July or six months after AG Xavier Becerra (D) issues rules. Neither businesses nor consumer privacy groups got everything they wanted, and will be watching the AG rulemaking closely, they said in interviews last week.
Make sure small phone carriers with legitimate spikes in incoming calls don't get swept up in a coming FCC order redefining how phone companies are deemed access stimulators, said representatives of rural LECs and other small LECs in interviews last week and in docket 18-155. Chairman Ajit Pai's draft gets a vote Thursday (see 1909050043). The rules would shift financial responsibility for tariffed tandem switching and transport services away from interexchange carriers to the access-stimulating LEC for terminating traffic.
What 5G will mean for smaller, rural carriers remains unclear. At the Competitive Carriers Association conference last week in Providence, Rhode Island, attendees told us there are more questions than answers. A recurring theme was members will concentrate for now on 4G LTE, which has a long runway ahead.
Broadcasters and industry analysts widely expect a record-breaking amount of political advertising revenue from the 2020 presidential election. Though the pie is bigger than ever, the broadcast share is steadily shrinking. “There’s an ocean of money coming, ” said Kip Cassino, former political ad analyst for Borrell Associates: “But in reality the broadcasters shouldn’t be so happy -- they’ve lost almost all their share advantage” over digital.
The FCC Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee focused on disaster recovery Thursday, hearing an update by a working group preparing reports. The disaster recovery work is the furthest along of any being done by the newly reconfigured BDAC, officials said. “This is not a game,” said Jonathan Adelstein, president of the Wireless Infrastructure Association and vice chair of BDAC’s Disaster Response and Recovery working group. “This is life and death. I think our working group has stepped up to that level of urgency.”