The FCC Wireline Bureau approved Tuesday the withdrawal of the Catasauqua Area School District in Pennsylvania from the FCC’s schools and libraries cybersecurity pilot program. The district said it recognizes the importance of the program but lacks the financial support to continue.
Hawaii legislators voted Monday to request that the state comptroller cooperate with the state public library system, Office of Planning and Sustainable Development, and Hawaii Broadband and Digital Equity Office to increase resident participation in the state legislative process. The resolution, SCR-53, would shift the responsibility of coordination from the Legislative Reference Bureau to the comptroller. The offices would be tasked with identifying rural and underserved communities "with a need for better telecommunication access."
Critics of T-Mobile’s proposed buy of wireless assets from UScellular spoke with an aide to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to elaborate on their concerns. The groups at the meeting were the Rural Wireless Association, Communications Workers of America, Public Knowledge, New America’s Open Technology Institute and the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. Joined by EchoStar, the same groups also met with aides to Commissioner Anna Gomez.
Better submarine cable network security starts with walling off untrusted vendors and adversary nations, trade groups and national security interests told the FCC in docket 24-523 this week. Many criticized the NPRM -- which proposes rules changes aimed at addressing national security and law enforcement threats to cables -- as creating more complexity and burdensome regulations and flying in the face of the FCC's "Delete, Delete, Delete" deregulatory agenda. Commissioners adopted the subsea cable NPRM unanimously in November (see 2411210006). The subsea cable industry has said it hoped the Trump administration would alleviate the particularly onerous regulatory burdens it faces (see 2502260042).
The FCC's World Radiocommunication Conference Advisory Committee held its third meeting Tuesday as it prepares for the next WRC in 2027, approving early proposals for U.S. positions. The meeting was the first under the current Trump administration and finished in 20 minutes. The committee last met in August (see 2408050034).
USTelecom noted that the FCC is looking to get rid of outdated rules through its “Delete” proceeding (see 2504140046) and shouldn’t now layer on new pole attachment rules. USTelecom representatives met with Wireline Bureau staff on the issue, according to a filing posted Monday (docket 17-84). “At a time when the Commission is looking to cut burdensome and counterproductive regulations from its rulebooks, it should avoid imposing prescriptive make-ready rules that fail to account for the operational realities of broadband deployment,” USTelecom said.
Some space operator interests, including SpaceX and the Commercial Space Federation, are keen on shot clocks for satellite and earth station licensing determinations, according to docket 25-133 filings posted Monday in FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's "Delete" proceeding. Space industry filings also included several companies targeting technical rules and requirements. Other "Delete" proceeding submissions presented deregulatory ideas from telecom, broadcast and cable interests (see 2504140046 and 2504140063).
The FCC Media Bureau has approved another TV deal that involves a top-four duopoly, according to an order in Friday’s Daily Digest. The deal involves Marquee Broadcasting’s proposed purchase from Imagicomm of KIEM-TV Eureka, California (NBC), and low-power KVIQ-LD Eureka (CBS). “The evidence in the record demonstrates that splitting up the two top-four network affiliations would likely lead to a reduction in network programming and local news in the Eureka [designated market area], which would not serve the public interest,” the order said. Although the top-four prohibition historically hasn’t applied to LPTV stations, the FCC’s 2018 quadrennial review order extended it to those stations and multicast streams. Oral argument in the broadcaster legal challenge of that order was held in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last month (see 2503190064). The bureau approved another top-four deal by Gray Media earlier this year (see 2503120066), and media brokers told us they expect to see an increase in such deals being proposed since the agency now seems more open to them.
Given the scope and scale of the reforms the FCC adopted in its 2024 incarcerated people’s communication services order, pushback by facilities and IPCS providers is to be expected, the Brattle Group and Wright petitioners' representatives told FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's office. In a docket 23-62 filing posted Friday recapping the meeting, the Brattle and Wright reps said there's no compelling evidence necessitating a change to the IPCS reforms. They discussed a Brattle analysis of cost data and argued that the price caps in the 2024 order allow a balance of IPCS providers recovering their costs and a reasonable profit while providing "just and reasonable rates" to consumers. Separately, provider NCIC Correctional Services requested an unredacted version of the Brattle analysis.
States, political subdivisions, tribes and Alaska Native villages or regional corporations have until the July 17 deadline to submit information on the amount of revenue collected in 2024 in 988 fees and charges and how that revenue was used, the FCC Wireline Bureau said Thursday (docket 18-336). The data will be used in a report to Congress, it said.