Alaskan carriers told the FCC that the agency appears to be on the right track with the eligible-areas map and the draft performance plan template for the Alaska Connect Fund, though they suggested that further changes are needed. The map is viewed as critical to mobile support in the state. Reply comments were posted Thursday in docket 23-328.
The Better Business Bureau’s National Advertising Division said Thursday that T-Mobile should drop claims in an eight-minute promotional video that “AT&T and Verizon have announced price increase over price increase a combined ten times in the past two years.” AT&T had challenged the claims, which NAD found to be inaccurate.
House Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee ranking member Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Thursday that he won't seek reelection this year. Hoyer, a former House majority leader, holds a key role in shaping FCC and FTC appropriations. He clashed with FCC Chairman Brendan Carr during a hearing in May over how much the Wireline Bureau based its approval of Verizon’s $20 billion purchase of Frontier on the carrier agreeing to end its workforce equity programs (see 2505160050). House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., lamented Hoyer's planned departure and praised his work on the panel. Hoyer has been in the House since 1981.
The FCC Wireline Bureau reminded Priority 1 recipients of grants from the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program about the May 8 deadline “to complete the permanent removal, replacement, and disposal of covered communications equipment and services in their networks,” said a notice in Wednesday’s Daily Digest. The bureau said it’s encouraged by the progress that recipients have made since additional funding was made available last year to replace Chinese gear in their networks. More than three years have passed since July 2022, when the bureau approved the applications of Priority 1 recipients, “and they should be fully prepared to meet the … deadline.”
The FCC Wireless Bureau said Wednesday that it won’t extend the Jan. 15 deadline to file reply comments on an NPRM proposing changes to wireless infrastructure rules. Cities, including Boston, Dallas and Washington, sought the extension last month. Local and state governments raised concerns about the FCC proposals in initial comments (see 2601020017). “We find that the request does not provide adequate reasons to extend the time for commenters to file reply comments in this proceeding,” the bureau said in docket 25-276. Initial comments were due Dec. 31.
The FCC Public Safety Bureau asked for applications starting Wednesday for lead administrator of the commission’s voluntary cybersecurity labeling program. The application window closes Jan. 28. UL Solutions, selected as lead cybersecurity label administrator (CLA) during the Biden administration, withdrew last month, said a bureau notice Tuesday.
The FCC should recognize that customers don’t think of VoIP as an information service, said Vantage Point in an ex parte meeting Tuesday with Wireline Bureau staff. “Under current statutory status, a major policy benefit of classifying VoIP as a telecommunications service is the opportunity to have a uniform national policy” instead of the “patchwork quilt of variations across the country differing state to state” that would result from classifying it as an information service, said a filing in docket 25-304. Vantage Point also said collapsing the number of interconnection points to create fewer than one per state would be “inequitable” and isn’t supported in the record.
The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau on Tuesday ordered the extension to Jan. 31, 2027, of the effective date of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) requirement for callers to treat any called party's revocation of consent as applicable to all future robocalls and robotexts from that caller on unrelated matters. The bureau said the extension of the waiver of that rule will give more time to review the record compiled in response to the TCPA further NPRM adopted by commissioners in October (see 2510280024).
Comments are due Feb. 4, replies March 6, on Gigapower’s petition asking the FCC Wireline Bureau to preempt local pole-attachment requirements in Rock Hill, South Carolina, to allow the company to provide telecommunications services, said a public notice in Tuesday’s Daily Digest. Due to a prior agreement with provider Comporium, Rock Hill “is requiring Gigapower to rearrange attachments to City-owned poles or to replace poles to obtain access, despite the existence of adequate available space” on existing poles, Gigapower told the agency. Rock Hill’s actions “are tantamount to a de facto moratorium that the Commission should preempt,” the petition said.
Comments are due Feb. 5, replies Feb. 20, on Tango Networks' request for a waiver of the FCC's numbering access rules, according to a Wireline Bureau public notice Tuesday. Tango wants the agency to waive the requirement that an applicant for initial numbering resources must show that it's authorized to provide service in the requested area, the notice said.