A Project Rise Partners purchase of Paramount Global would mean fair and balanced news coverage, representatives told FCC acting Media Bureau Chief Erin Boone and other staffers, according to a docket 24-275 filing posted Thursday. It recapped a meeting at which PRP -- chaired by Daphna Edwards Ziman, head of independent network Cinemoi, and Moses Gross, managing trustee of Malka Investment Trust -- reiterated its arguments that Tencent's investment in Skydance Media raises national security concerns and that Skydance Media buying Paramount could mean higher consumer prices (see 2503060035). PRP told the FCC it "will seek a return to the vision and practice of CBS’s -- the Tiffany Network’s -- formative titans, Bill Paley and Walter Cronkite, free from bias, dedicated to excellence and presenting the news in the way that it is." It said it would return "to the principles underlying the dormant Fairness Doctrine [and] provide an organizational structure that allows and considers public input to capture all viewpoints and prevent news coverage distortion."
Counsel for Assist Wireless, enTouch Wireless, Easy Wireless and Access Wireless spoke with aides to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to ask that the agency grant applications for review that they filed on upward revisions for reimbursement of services provided in the last month of the Lifeline COVID-19 waiver period. The Wireline Bureau rejected their appeals of the Universal Service Administrative Co.’s denials of the upward revisions to their Lifeline reimbursement claims, said a filing posted Thursday in docket 11-42. The bureau “wrongly found that the revisions would violate the FCC’s rules by providing reimbursements for Lifeline subscribers who were not eligible for reimbursement based on when the Bureau’s final waiver of the Lifeline usage rule ended.”
NextNav envisions itself providing backup to GPS for positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) as part of a “system of systems” that includes space- and terrestrial-based solutions, said Renee Gregory, its vice president-regulatory affairs, during an FCBA webinar Wednesday (see 2504020062).
The FCC activated the disaster information reporting system and mandatory disaster response initiative in response to communications impacts from severe weather and flooding in 17 counties in Kentucky, said a public notice Wednesday. A DIRS update released Thursday showed no cellsites or broadcasters down, with 793 cable and wireline subscribers without service in the affected areas. The FCC also issued public notices on priority communications services, FCC assistance availability and emergency communication procedures for licensees that need special temporary authority. The Public Safety Bureau also issued a reminder for entities clearing debris and repairing utilities to avoid damaging communications infrastructure.
The departure of Elon Musk as a top adviser to the Donald Trump Administration could have significant implications for telecom policy, depending on when he leaves and how that changes his relationship with Trump, experts said. Among Musk’s companies is SpaceX, parent of Starlink, which stands to benefit from pending changes to the BEAD program (see 2503170045). Musk called reports of his imminent departure "fake news."
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr pushed back against a probe by Senate Homeland Security Investigations Subcommittee ranking member Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., of eight investigations of broadcasters that the Enforcement and Media bureaus launched since Carr took over Jan. 20 (see 2503140055). The FCC probes thus far focus on broadcasters that have carried content critical of President Donald Trump or otherwise face claims of pro-Democratic Party bias. Carr has, in some cases, said the scrutiny is focused on other matters (see 2502110063). House Commerce Committee Democrats are also investigating Carr's broadcaster actions (see 2503310046).
Satellogic told the FCC Space Bureau on Monday that it was withdrawing its application seeking authorization for a planned 120-satellite X-band earth exploration service constellation (see 2403080002). The company didn't elaborate.
The FCC Wireless Bureau on Tuesday approved 12 additional licenses in the 900 MHz broadband segment for PDV Spectrum, all in Texas. The FCC approved an order five years ago reallocating a 6 MHz swath in the band for broadband while maintaining 4 MHz for narrowband operations (see 2005130057).
As the FCC considers a tiered approach to non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) constellations' regulatory fees, it isn't finding consensus about where to draw the lines. That's according to comments last week in docket 24-85 as the agency solicits input on ideas raised during the FY 2024 space regulatory fee proceeding (see 2502260017).
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez is asking the Enforcement Bureau to investigate scam calls targeting San Francisco’s Chinese community, one of which involved a scammer posing as a Mandarin-speaking FCC employee. “This is why it's so important for government to continue to reach communities who may be targets of these sophisticated scams in the languages they speak,” Gomez posted Friday on X. The call is part of a wave of scams in March involving callers posing as police officers and health care providers, said the San Francisco Police Department in an online warning. In many instances, the caller posed as a Chinese health care provider and convinced the recipient that someone had submitted their personal data to make a health care claim in China. "The suspects then transferred the calls to other suspects, who claimed to be police officers from a city in China. The suspects claimed they wanted to file police reports for the victims’ compromised personal information,” SFPD said. This eventually led to callers being persuaded to use apps like Skype for video calls with people dressed as police officers as part of the scam, it said. In the incident with the false FCC employee, the scammer connected the victim “to several suspects posing as different Chinese police officers in multiple Chinese cities,” and the victim was eventually persuaded to wire $23,000 to clear their name of a supposed crime.