Some candidates for state utility commissions promised to take on broadband and other telecom matters if they win election this year. Eight states will elect utility regulators this year: Alabama, Arizona, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma and South Dakota. In addition, a New Mexico ballot question will ask voters to authorize millions of dollars for upgrading public safety communications. Meanwhile, Oregon voters will consider a universal basic income that would require Comcast and other big companies to foot the bill.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to grant certiorari earlier this month in a case from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates v. McKesson, could have implications beyond the FCC’s legal interpretation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, legal experts told us. SCOTUS began its current term Oct. 7.
Garmin International provided additional information to the FCC on its request for a waiver of rules for handheld general mobile radio service (GMRS) devices limiting them to one transmission every 30 seconds (see 2310060031). Garmin responded to a North Shore Emergency Association filing, which found an earlier filing on a September meeting of Garmin with FCC staff was inadequate (see 2407260036). “Garmin reiterated [during the meeting] that the data transmissions of its proposed GMRS device will have a reduced duty cycle and less practical effect on users of GMRS devices compared to the digital data transmissions currently permitted under the Commission’s GMRS rules, including by limiting data transmissions to interstitial channels,” said the latest Garmin filing, posted Tuesday in docket 24-7. “Specifically, Garmin is seeking to provide very short (50 milliseconds) digital data transmissions, such as GPS location data, once every five (5) seconds, provided that in non-emergency situations the channel being used has not been utilized for voice communications in the prior 30 seconds,” Garmin said.
The lame-duck session will provide a good chance to get kids’ privacy legislation signed into law, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told us Thursday.
The House Commerce Committee on Wednesday approved a pair of kids’ online safety bills on a voice vote, opening the door for potential floor action and negotiations with the Senate.
AT&T agreed to pay $13 million and strengthen its data retention practices to settle an FCC Enforcement Bureau investigation into the integrity of the carrier’s supply chain and “whether it failed to protect the information of AT&T customers in connection with a data breach of a vendor’s cloud environment,” said a Tuesday news release from the FCC. The agency refers only to “Vendor X.” In January 2023, the vendor “suffered a data breach that exposed information” of nearly 9 million AT&T wireless customers, according to a consent decree. “AT&T failed to ensure the vendor: (1) adequately protected the customer information, and (2) returned or destroyed it as required by contract,” the FCC said. “The Communications Act makes clear that carriers have a duty to protect the privacy and security of consumer data, and that responsibility takes on new meaning for digital age data breaches,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. Protecting customer data is a top AT&T priority, a spokesperson said in an email. “A vendor we previously used experienced a security incident last year that exposed data pertaining to some of our wireless customers,” the spokesperson said: Though AT&T systems weren’t compromised “we’re making enhancements to how we manage customer information internally, as well as implementing new requirements on our vendors’ data management practices.”
The FCC’s June rules for foreign-sponsored content violate the Administrative Procedure Act because the agency didn’t provide notice of plans for expanding the 2021 rules to cover political ads and public service announcements, said NAB in a petition for review filed Monday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. The 2024 order was a response to a D.C. Circuit ruling in favor of an NAB-backed challenge to portions of the FCC's 2021 foreign-sponsored content rules. The FCC “did not even attempt to provide a rationale for changing course,” to go after PSAs and issue ads, NAB said in the filing, which echoes arguments Commissioners Nathan Simington and Brendan Carr raised in dissents back in May. “Adopting rule changes nobody could have reasonably anticipated is a textbook example of unfair surprise,” Carr wrote at the time.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision to partially uphold an injunction against a California age-appropriate social media design law (see 2408160015) means similar legislation at the federal level is likely unconstitutional, a policy expert at the International Center for Law & Economics said Monday. Innovation policy scholar Ben Sperry argued that duty of care provisions in the Kids Online Safety Act, which the Senate passed last month 91-3 (see 2407300042), likely violate the First Amendment. The 9th Circuit found the Age-Appropriate Design Code Act’s (AB-2273) impact assessment requirement is violative because it requires that platforms make judgments about what online content could harm children. Sperry argued that under KOSA, platforms would be incentivized to censor all but “the most benign speech” to avoid triggering children’s anxiety or to avoid “bullying” claims.
ASPEN -- The president should have broad discretion without interference from Congress to remove commissioners at independent agencies when they commit offenses the White House deems "fireable," FTC Commissioner Andrew Ferguson said Tuesday.
Any incoming presidential administration must “be ready to implement a reindustrialization plan" and change financial rules to resurrect American manufacturing and compete with China, FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington wrote in China is Winning, Now What?, an essay in the fall issue of the journal American Affairs. The essay doesn’t mention the FCC, and it only touches on tech policy. Instead, it focuses on China’s superior manufacturing capacity and on the global dependency on Chinese products. “It would have been unthinkable for Cold War America to source key components in logistics and telecommunications from the Warsaw Pact,” Simington wrote. “And yet, our long history of peaceful relations with the PRC [People’s Republic of China] has led us to sleepwalk into exactly this unacceptable state of dependency.” Simington noted that the rise of electric vehicles has positioned China as a global competitor to the U.S. auto industry and said a collapse of American carmakers would deeply injure America. Should China become the dominant international automaker, it could “normalize the presence of hundreds of millions of vehicles packed with sensors, radios, and firmware on every road in the world,” Simington added. “The intelligence benefits alone are incalculable, but control of such markets will in addition weaken countries that the PRC routinely calls its geopolitical adversaries.” To address the matter, the U.S. should “use tariffs and waivers as precision tools for strategic products and industries” but it must also “address larger questions of tax, accounting, and finance rules that have contributed to an anti-industry investment environment,” Simington wrote. Federal spending should be reallocated “to promote world peace through American strength.” He added, “The social costs of failure, here and abroad, will blight the lives of generations yet unborn.”