FCC efforts at cutting costs of small-satellite licensing should help reverse the trend of U.S. operators going elsewhere to seek licensing, Alliance of Commercial, Cube Experimental and Small Satellites Director Tony Azzarelli told us Wednesday at Satellite 2020. He and others said on a panel that smallsat regulation is failing to keep up with market changes. Organizers ended the event a day early, on Wednesday and citing COVID-19 (see 2003110036).
House Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee Chairman Mike Quigley, D-Ill., told us he’s eyeing attaching a rider to the subcommittee’s FY 2021 appropriations bill aimed at allocating proceeds from the FCC’s coming auction of spectrum on the 3.7-4.2 GHz C band. Quigley raised concerns about the FCC’s current C-band auction plan during a Wednesday House Appropriations Financial Services hearing on the commission’s FY 2021 budget request. The C-band plan drew criticism from Senate Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee Chairman John Kennedy, R-La., during that subpanel’s Tuesday FCC budget hearing (see 2003100022).
The path to closing T-Mobile/Sprint eased Wednesday as a California Public Utilities Commission judge proposed conditional OK. Hours earlier, the state's Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) agreed states wouldn't appeal clearance by U.S. District Court for Southern District of New York. CPUC Administrative Law Judge Karl Bemesderfer’s proposed decision tees up a vote at commissioners' April 16 meeting.
NAB will not "move forward" with the April 18-22 NAB Show at the Las Vegas Convention Center "in the interest of addressing the health and safety concerns of our stakeholders," said CEO Gordon Smith Wednesday afternoon. The decision to cancel came (see 2003110042) after the NAB executive committee voted unanimously by phone earlier Wednesday to scrub the event.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will steer clear of making “pronouncements broadly” about whether shows and conferences should be canceled or postponed during the COVID-19 outbreak, said Nancy Messonnier, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases director. CDC is recommending “consideration of what’s going on in the locale where the event is being held, and also where people are coming from and what the event is and how big it is,” Messonnier told journalists Monday.
Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) and Cory Booker (N.J.) introduced legislation Tuesday that would require dominant companies to prove their exclusionary conduct doesn’t harm competition. Klobuchar, ranking member of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, announced the legislation during a subcommittee hearing (see 2003090037). Yelp Senior Vice President-Public Policy Luther Lowe said he knows dozens and dozens of CEOs who don’t speak publicly about Google’s anticompetitive behavior due to fear of retaliation.
The FCC released drafts Tuesday of proposed items for the March 31 commissioners’ meeting, including details of proposals to deregulate voice incumbent pricing and require authentication of caller ID information, plus Media Bureau proposals on ATSC 3.0 and program carriage. Chairman Ajit Pai outlined the agenda Monday (see 2003090050).
Broadcasters and device manufacturers widely support an FCC proposal to allow AM radio stations to voluntarily go all-digital, in comments posted in docket 19-311 by Monday night’s deadline. New rules should involve “a straightforward procedure for stations to notify the Commission of a change to all-digital operations and, likewise, a notification of reversion to analog or hybrid operations,” said Bryan Broadcasting, the originator of the petition that spawned the NPRM. Hubbard and others praised all-digital AM. The company operates such a station under experimental license (see 1911200056).
Section 230 of the Communications and Decency Act may need to be revisited, suggested Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. A quarter century after enactment, 230 immunity "has not always been a force for good, particularly in light of some of the extraordinarily broad interpretation given to it by some courts," DAG Rosen told a Free State Foundation conference Tuesday. He listed some criteria to consider in such revamp efforts.
The Senate Intellectual Property Subcommittee will explore site blocking as a form of internet piracy prevention, Chairman Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told us Tuesday after a hearing. Ranking member Chris Coons, D-Del., said he’s “open to it,” and it needs to be weighed against the speech concerns.