The FCC Wireless Bureau sought comment Monday on an application from Watts Bar Maritime and Amateur Radio School (WBMARS) in Tennessee to serve as a commercial operator license examination manager. The bureau said 12 entities are certified to serve in that role. “WBMARS asserts that examinations will be offered upon request and administered on-site or remotely in almost all U.S. states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands beginning within 10 days following approval,” the bureau said. Comments are due April 17, replies May 2, in docket 24-89.
Representatives of the Alaska Remote Carrier Coalition met with Wireless Bureau staff to discuss the Alaska Connect Fund (ACF), a filing posted Monday in docket 10-208 said. They discussed “the need to mandate certain eligibility requirements for the wireless ACF in Alaska” and “impacts of transitioning from an Alaska Plan location-based platform to a hexagonal-based platform,” the coalition said.
The FCC released the Further NPRM added to an order on a voluntary cyber trust mark program that commissioners approved 5-0 last week (see 2403140034). The final order includes numerous other tweaks to the draft, addressing security and excluding motor vehicles and related equipment. The order and FNPRM were posted in Monday’s “Daily Digest.”
The 60-day settlement process to resolve mutually exclusive applications from December's low-power FM station construction permit application window began Friday and stretches to May 14, said an FCC Media Bureau public notice Friday. The PN also identifies 109 groups of mutually exclusive application, involving 264 applications. Two applications were dismissed for having “significant technical and/or legal defects,” the PN said.
Vexus Fiber will pay $100,000 for violating the FCC's affordable connectivity program rules. An Enforcement Bureau order Friday said Vexus admitted it violated the program's rule prohibiting downselling broadband services to ACP-eligible households by "preventing customers from applying the ACP benefit to any residential broadband internet access service plan they selected."
CTIA representatives “discussed the value of supporting broadband access, including through Wi-Fi hot spots and wireless internet services” in a meeting with FCC Wireline Bureau staff. The commission recently sought comment on a proposal to use E-rate to support hot spots (see 2311090028). “Consider lessons learned from the Emergency Connectivity Fund” and its approach to usage monitoring, said a filing posted Friday in docket 21-31. “CTIA agrees that requiring participants to take ‘reasonable actions’ to monitor the usage of supported equipment and services strikes a fair balance between the burdens to track usage and the need to avoid wasteful spending,” the group said: “As an applicant driven program, the obligation to monitor usage should rest with applicants, who are able to set usage expectations for students and patrons, periodically access and review usage, identify and understand usage trends, and communicate any necessary adjustments to service providers.”
The National Multifamily Housing Council and National Apartment Association raised issues with the FCC's NPRM concerning broadband in apartment buildings in separate meetings with commission aides (see 2403050069). The "regulation of bulk billing agreements between property owners and broadband providers is not only unnecessary, but would raise broadband prices for consumers who belong to the nation’s most vulnerable populations," the groups said, adding it would "hamper deployment of advanced technology by innovative broadband providers" and "limit competition by favoring the large incumbent providers." The groups met with an aide to Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, Commissioners Brendan Carr, Nathan Simington, and Geoffrey Starks, and Wireline Bureau staff, said an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 17-142.
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announces additions to the Bureau of Media Relations: Raven Hill, from the Maryland Department of Education, as co-deputy director; Becky Lockhart, from the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau; Laura Nichols, ex-Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, as digital director; and Jason Schiavoni, ex-Smithsonian Institution, as website/digital experience director; and the retirements of David Wright from the Public Safety Bureau; Wayne Liang, from the Enforcement Bureau; Vanessa Lamb from the Office of Managing Director; and Hillary Burchuk from the Office of Inspector General.
The FCC approved an NPRM seeking comment on regulatory fees changes for space and earth stations due to the agency reorganization that replaced the International Bureau with the Space Bureau and the Office of International Affairs. The FCC “anticipated that the changes in the industry that resulted in the creation of the Space Bureau would likely also result in changes in the relative FTE [full-time equivalents] burdens between and among space and earth station fee payors,” the NPRM said. The item, released Wednesday, seeks comment on proposed changes to the allocation of fee burdens between geostationary orbit and non-geostationary orbit space stations, the creation of additional fee categories within the NGSO category, and on keeping the fee for small satellites at the same level as FY2023 going forward, with annual adjustments to reflect the percentage change in appropriation from the previous year. It also seeks comment on proposals assessing fees on all authorized space stations rather than just operational ones, increases to the fee for earth stations, and on an alternate method for assessing space regulatory fees. The alternative methodology “is a more comprehensive departure from the way that space station regulatory fees have been assessed since 1994” and would eliminate separate categories of regulatory fees for GSO and NGSO space stations, the NPRM said. Comments on the NPRM are due April 12, replies April 29.
A May 13 effectiveness date for the January FCC order requiring that carriers implement location-based routing for calls and real-time texts to 911 (see 2403130028) means the implementation deadline for nationwide carriers is Nov. 13, the Public Safety Bureau clarified Thursday. The deadline for non-nationwide carriers is May 13, 2026. By that second date, all providers must deploy a technology that supports location-based routing for real-time text to 911 originating on their IP-based networks, the bureau said.