The Senate failed to invoke cloture Wednesday on the shell bill (HR-3684) for a bipartisan infrastructure package under negotiation. Republican members of the group working on the measure believe the legislation will be ready next week with enough GOP support to proceed. A 157-page draft of part of the bipartisan measure’s broadband language gives NTIA responsibility to define low-cost broadband service options for grantees. It would set a minimum speed threshold below what fiber advocates are seeking for projects receiving money from a $40 billion pot slated for NTIA-administered state-level grants. The overall proposal, which President Joe Biden backed last month, allocates $65 billion for broadband (see 2106240070).
The FTC unanimously approved a policy statement Wednesday aimed at bolstering consumers’ rights to self-repair and access to third-party independent repairs by vowing to crack down on manufacturers whose restrictions are deemed to violate antitrust or consumer protection laws. The agency also rescinded a merger-related policy statement on a party-line vote (see 2107190066).
State telecom commissioners seek smart broadband spending in a federal infrastructure package, they said in virtual and in-person interviews during NARUC’s Denver conference this week. COVID-19 highlighted broadband gaps and will forever change how policymakers look at internet issues, they said. “One of the only good things to come out of the pandemic is the realization that we need broadband,” said Alexandra Fernandez-Navarro, Puerto Rico Public Service Regulatory Board associate member.
President Joe Biden will nominate Jonathan Kanter to lead DOJ’s Antitrust Division, the White House announced Tuesday. Congressional Democrats and consumer advocates called Kanter the right pick to strengthen antitrust enforcement against Big Tech. Some questioned the potential for Kanter to recuse himself in DOJ’s antitrust case against Google.
The NARUC Telecom Committee advanced proposed resolutions on the emergency broadband benefit, outage and disaster information sharing and recommendations by the association’s broadband task force. At the panel’s partially virtual Tuesday meeting, members revised the EBB measure’s language on how long to extend EBB, after South Dakota Public Utilities Commission Chairman Chris Nelson objected to NARUC seeking the benefit’s renewal. The proposals still require OK by the NARUC board Wednesday.
House Science Committee Chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, told us she’s still deciding whether to pursue spectrum legislation, after a Tuesday committee hearing in which lawmakers and witnesses offered a mixed assessment about whether Congress needs to intervene now. The panel, as expected, focused on the interagency spectrum policy fracas among the FCC, NTIA and other entities, and specifically the disagreement over possible 24 GHz band interference risks to weather data collected by federal satellites in the adjacent 23.8 GHz band (see 2107190067).
DENVER -- The first major in-person gathering of state telecom regulators from across the U.S. was much like NARUC's pre-pandemic gatherings. State commissioners, staffers, lobbyists, industry lawyers and executives, plus a few reporters, gathered in person at what one hotel employee described as the largest facility in Denver, with some 1,200 rooms and nearly 100% occupancy. Almost no attendees wore masks, and social distancing was inconsistently followed.
Some work is likely getting started on the next net neutrality order, before an eventual Democratic majority at the FCC, and industry experts said crafting an NPRM likely won’t be a heavy lift for commission staffers who have been working on the issue for years. In a recent executive order, President Joe Biden encouraged the agency at the least to restore the rescinded 2015 rules (see 2107090063).
States and localities are loosening pandemic-related restrictions, but federal and state courts are a more mixed bag, our informal survey found. State courts likely will be fully open by Labor Day and generally done with COVID-19 precautions, said Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht, who's president of the Conference of Chief Justices (CCJ). Federal courts are more scattered in their moves.
GAO urged the FCC and NTIA to strengthen their collaboration on spectrum policymaking and management, including a long-sought update to those agencies’ memorandum of understanding, ahead of a Tuesday House Science Committee hearing. House Science leaders are expected to again register their ire during the Tuesday hearing over the FCC’s disagreement with NASA and NOAA on possible 24 GHz band interference risks to weather data collected by federal satellites in the adjacent 23.8 GHz band. The lawmakers sought the GAO study in 2019 (see 1912110068). The partly virtual panel will begin at 10 a.m. in 2318 Rayburn.