T-Mobile expects to fully integrate UScellular assets into its network in two years, faster than its original expectation of three to four years, the carrier announced Thursday. T-Mobile finalized the $4.3 billion deal last month, giving it UScellular's wireless assets, including customers and spectrum (see 2508010012).
The House Appropriations Committee voted 35-28 Wednesday night to advance the Financial Services Subcommittee’s FY 2026 funding bill, which would maintain the FCC’s annual allocation at $390.2 million and proposes reducing the FTC’s funding to $388.6 million (see 2507210064). The panel earlier voted 32-27 against an amendment from Rep. Frank Mrvan, D-Ind., to strike language in the bill’s report that directs the FCC to study alternatives to the commission’s lapsed affordable connectivity program (ACP) “to ensure that low-income Americans stay connected.”
The House Communications Subcommittee has rescheduled a hearing on public safety communications issues for 10:15 a.m. Sept. 9 in 2123 Rayburn, the Commerce Committee said Tuesday. The subpanel originally planned to hold the hearing in July. I. “Our public safety community requires reliable communications to respond adequately during an emergency,” said House Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., and Communications Chairman Richard Hudson, R-N.C. “We look forward to considering ways to strengthen our public safety communications to better serve Americans in their moments of crisis.”
Communications Daily is tracking the lawsuits below involving appeals of FCC actions.
The House Appropriations Committee was debating at our deadline Wednesday afternoon the Financial Services Subcommittee’s FY 2026 funding bill, which proposes to maintain the FCC’s annual allocation at $390.2 million (see 2507210064). Meanwhile, House Appropriations’ Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee voted 11-7 Tuesday to advance its FY26 funding bill, as expected, without language to restore the $1.1 billion for CPB that Congress clawed back in July via the 2025 Rescissions Act (see 2508290060).
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and the Center for American Rights (CAR) have taken aim at CBS over edits to an interview featuring Noem, which aired Sunday on Face the Nation. In a release from the Department of Homeland Security the same day, Noem accused CBS of editing the interview to remove portions where she talked about criminal allegations against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the Trump administration has repeatedly sought to deport.
EchoStar is asking the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to require the FCC to change rules in the AWS-3 auction order that commissioners approved in July (see 2507240055). In the order, the FCC rejected arguments by EchoStar, parent of Dish Network, that the agency should use the same designated entity (DE) rules in the reauction that it employed in the original (see 2507220033).
The House Appropriations Committee said Thursday night that it plans to vote Wednesday on the Financial Services Subcommittee’s FY 2026 funding bill, which proposes to maintain the FCC’s annual funding at $390.2 million (see 2507210064). Financial Services advanced the measure in June with a set of riders that would bar the agency from using money to enforce certain policies that originated during the Biden administration and have been in Republicans’ crosshairs, including its 2024 digital discrimination order (see 2507220057). The markup session will begin at 10:30 a.m. in 2359 Rayburn.
The FCC Wireline Bureau is seeking comment on whether it should make changes to its rules for granting extensions to providers unable to implement Stir/Shaken requirements, said a Thursday notice. The FCC currently allows only two “categorical implementation extensions based on undue hardship” for providers who can’t obtain the service provider code token necessary to participate in Stir/Shaken and for small voice providers that originate calls via satellite using North American Numbering Council numbers, it said. The Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act instructs the commission “to annually ‘consider revising or extending’ any extension granted due to undue hardship, including whether an extension remains necessary,” the notice said. Comment deadlines will come in a Federal Register notice.
Meeting the goals of the budget reconciliation package to make 800 MHz of spectrum available for auction (see 2507070045) won’t be easy, especially with 3.1-3.45 and 7.4-8.4 GHz exempted from potential reallocation, warned Joe Kane, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation's director of broadband and spectrum policy. Kane spoke with former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly in a new webcast, part of a series for the Free State Foundation.