The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission chair was overruled by colleagues on telecom deregulation at a teleconferenced meeting Thursday. Vice Chair John Coleman and Commissioner Ralph Yanora supported Coleman’s motion to slash more rules than proposed in the draft order. Chair Gladys Brown Dutrieuille voted no to the motion and the item overall. “There are areas of Pennsylvania today where competition is ineffective,” she said.
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline "needs considerably more resources" at its crisis centers to respond to text and chat volume now, and will need more staffing and training when the ability to text to 988 is fully implemented nationwide, Lifeline administrator Vibrant Emotional Health emailed us Thursday. The FCC will vote Nov. 18 on setting a July 16 deadline for carriers to support texting to 988 (see 2110270049). The draft order was released Thursday.
Senate Homeland Security Committee ranking member Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Senate Privacy Subcommittee Chairman Chris Coons, D-Del., are gathering information on legislation that would require social media platforms to open their algorithms to independent research, Portman said Thursday.
No changes have been proposed internally to a draft FCC order clarifying ATSC 3.0 multicast rules, though the item hasn't been OK'd by all commissioners, said agency and industry officials in recent interviews. Broadcasters say approving the item -- which stems from an NAB petition for clarification -- will speed the transition to 3.0. “Anything we can do to expedite 3.0 deployment will be for the benefit of viewers and platform users,” said One Media Executive Vice President-Strategic and Legal Affairs Jerald Fritz.
A revised draft of the Build Back Better Act budget reconciliation bill (HR-5376) released Thursday retains funding for next-generation 911, the FCC Emergency Connectivity Fund and other telecom programs included in a House Commerce Committee-approved proposal, albeit with less money than first proposed and as expected (see 2110010001). The $1.75 trillion measure also includes reduced amounts of broadband affordability and some other telecom money Senate Democrats sought (see 2109020072).
5G wireless is just getting started and how it will look a few years ahead no one knows for sure, speakers said Wednesday and Tuesday at Mobile World Congress Los Angeles. 5G will build on other changes in technology and, unlike 4G, which was primarily oriented to the consumer market, has the biggest implications for businesses, speakers said.
California agencies are advancing on broadband action items from the state’s multibillion-dollar effort to increase access, the California Broadband Council was told its final 2021 virtual meeting. The council is seeking to do more to sign up consumers for the emergency broadband benefit (EBB), said Chair Amy Tong. Much work must be done to implement recent $6 billion broadband funding and California Advanced Services Fund (CASF) revamp laws, said California Public Utilities Commission Assistant General Counsel Helen Mickiewicz on an FCBA webinar later Wednesday.
Text providers would need to support texting to 988 when the nationwide suicide prevention hotline goes live on July 16, under proposed rules to be voted on at the FCC's Nov, 18 meeting. Also on the agenda announced Wednesday are an enhanced competition incentive program aimed at making more spectrum available for small carriers and tribal entities, a proposal to let broadcasters verify the patterns for FM directional antennas using computer modeling, and approval of U.S. market access for a French microsatellite constellation. See our bulletin here.
President Joe Biden’s designation of Jessica Rosenworcel as the first woman to hold the permanent FCC chair and his intent to nominate Democratic ex-FCC official Gigi Sohn as the first openly LGBTQ+ commissioner are being hailed as milestones. Biden also is renominating Rosenworcel to the commission. See our report here.
Open radio access networks are making progress but have a way to go, especially for more advanced networks, speakers said during TelecomTV's virtual Open RAN Summit Tuesday. Speakers said 4G and earlier markets could get virtualization first. A lot of work has been done, “but there’s still a hell of a lot to do,” said Neil McRae, BT chief architect.