FCC Commissioner and incoming Chairman Brendan Carr on Tuesday discussed empowering local broadcasters, moving "aggressively” on USF revisions and opening up the space economy and jumpstarting spectrum policy. Speaking at the Practising Law Institute's 42nd Annual Institute on Telecommunications Policy & Regulation, Carr said he's “really looking forward” to taking the commission's top seat.
Public Knowledge supported an AT&T request to discontinue, effective Sept. 15, residential local service in nine wire centers in Oklahoma “where there is virtually no demand for the service.” The FCC Wireline Bureau sought comment on the application, due Thursday in docket 24-220. PK was the first to file. The group’s “sole addendum is to request that AT&T make regular reports in this docket as to the progress of the transition,” said a filing Monday. “This will assist the Commission and the public to monitor the progress of the transition, and provide other incumbent local exchange carriers with a guide to conducting their own transitions.” AT&T said last month it grandfathered the service in 60 wire centers in 13 states, with FCC approval. The local service is “outdated and prohibitively expensive for AT&T to maintain,” AT&T said: Discontinuing it “will benefit the public and serve as an important step toward meeting both AT&T’s and the Commission’s goals of advancing the IP revolution.”
Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) support recipients must notify the FCC Wireline Bureau if they can’t meet the program’s third-year service milestone, said a reminder public notice posted Monday. The milestone requires “building out to at least 40% of each support recipient’s RDOF locations,” the PN said. The bureau must be notified by the carrier’s third-year service milestone deadline, which is Jan. 15 for carriers authorized in 2021 and Jan. 15, 2026, for those authorized in 2022, the PN said. “An RDOF support recipient that does not meet its third-year service milestone shall be subject to quarterly reporting and have its support withheld if warranted in accordance with the Commission’s rules,” the PN said. The bureau announced a host of RDOF defaults last week (see 2411270049).
The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau on Wednesday asked for comment in 30 days on a petition for rulemaking by Fine Point Technologies seeking standardized broadband speed testing protocols. “This proposal is aimed at ensuring consistent, reliable, and equitable speed testing for broadband users, regardless of the specific hardware or proprietary technology implemented by individual manufacturers,” said a company filing. “Proprietary testing protocols tied to specific [equipment] manufacturers can create discrepancies that misrepresent actual user experiences, potentially leading to misinformation or unmet expectations,” Fine Point said. Comments should be filed in RM-11991.
The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau approved the reassigned numbers database administrator's request that subscribers’ unused queries to the reassigned numbers database will be added to the queries purchased with a new subscription. Subscribers have asked that unused queries “roll over to the new subscription ... prior to using 100% of their queries,” said a notice in Wednesday’s Daily Digest. The administrator “recommended this modification as it better meets the needs of subscribers,” the bureau said: “We have reviewed the Administrator’s recommendation and find it reasonable. The proposed change serves the interests of fairness by allowing a subscriber to, within certain parameters, keep the queries it has paid for but not yet used.”
The FCC Wireline Bureau approved a waiver for Indiana’s Rural Telephone Corp. (RTC) of the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund milestone and noncompliance rules to permit it to pay early a portion of the required support recovery for defaulting on eligible census blocks within census block groups (CBGs) in its RDOF-funded service area. “Our grant of this limited waiver serves the public interest because we are able to safeguard the public’s funds by recovering support early for CBGs RTC will not serve pursuant to its RDOF obligations,” said an order posted Wednesday in docket 10-90. The waiver also “enables RTC to come into compliance with its RDOF obligations in its remaining CBGs, allowing RTC to continue receiving support, so that RTC can serve consumers with voice and broadband,” the bureau said.
The FCC’s Wireline Bureau in a public notice Wednesday formally announced a host of Rural Digital Opportunity Fund defaults and said the defaulting companies will face RDOF penalties and, for one of them, possible enforcement action. The defaults -- by Mercury Wireless, PVT Networks, Cable One, Sparklight and Fidelity Cablevision -- were previously announced by the companies in letters to the Wireline Bureau, and encompass census block groups (CBGs) in Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri and New Mexico, the PN said. Mercury's defaults are being referred to the Enforcement Bureau “for further consideration,” the PN said. Mercury is defaulting on 9,082 model-estimated locations in Indiana out of the 13,529 it agreed to serve, and 55,175 of 77,925 locations in Michigan, the PN said. It also defaulted on all 8,398 locations it agreed to serve in Illinois, all 29 locations in Kansas and all 5,023 locations in Missouri. “We expect carriers to live up to their deployment commitments, and those who fail to meet their obligations can jeopardize the opportunity to bring broadband to the promised areas and undermine the integrity of the programs,” said the PN. “Such defaults are particularly regrettable when the carrier waits years after authorization to default, making it difficult to correct the problem and otherwise accommodate the defaulted areas in other deployment programs.” Many funding programs make areas ineligible for broadband deployment funding where a provider is already under an enforceable commitment to serve, the PN said. Formally announcing the defaults and informing other governmental entities “avoids leaving these areas unserved for the duration of the RDOF deployment terms because providers may now have access to alternative funding to serve these areas,” the PN said. “This was a very difficult decision for Mercury to make, as we continually strive to deploy highspeed broadband throughout rural America,” the company said in a letter Monday informing the FCC about some of the Michigan defaults. “Factors outside of the company’s control, including rising costs and competitive encroachment, have rendered deployment to many RDOF CBGs economically unviable and ultimately unachievable,” it added.
Non-geostationary orbit startup Hubble Network is seeking authority for a four-satellite constellation that would operate in the UHF and S bands, providing Bluetooth Earth-to-space connectivity, according to an FCC Space Bureau application posted Tuesday.
SpaceX received the FCC Space Bureau go-ahead to provide commercial supplemental coverage from space services using its Starlink satellites, as expected (see 2410290033). In an FCC Space Bureau order issued Tuesday, the bureau said the direct-to-smartphone service -- in partnership with T-Mobile and using 1910-1915 MHz unlinks and 1990-1995 MHz downlinks on a secondary basis -- is unlikely to cause harmful interference with in-band terrestrial operations. In addition, the bureau said it's in T-Mobile's "best interest to ensure that SpaceX will not cause harmful interference." The bureau's "rigorous analysis" of SpaceX plans indicate the satellite company can adjust its equivalent isotropically radiated power in a way that won't cause interference with Omnispace, which had raised interference concerns with the agency (see 2410080045). The bureau said it also believes SpaceX can adequately protect adjacent-band users against interference from its downlinks. The bureau said it was deferring consideration of SpaceX's request for relaxed out-of-band power flux density limits (see 2408130008) but signed off on the company operating its second-generation satellites at a lower, 340-360 km orbital shell for D2D service (see 2403250003). And the bureau approved SpaceX's use of very high frequency beacons in that altitude range. The agency had signed off earlier this month on VHF beacons for second-generation Starlinks but not at those altitudes (see 2411210045).
Noting the lack of action on its 2019 applications for review (see 1905150057 and 1908020007), beIN Sports is urging that the FCC address the issue before the commission's January meeting. In a docket 13-384 filing posted Tuesday, it said carriage issues raised against Comcast that resulted in the applications for review still need addressing. The sports channel said the applications for review should be treated as reconsideration petitions, allowing the Media Bureau to make decisions about them.