Equitable broadband speed targets are "wise and worthy," but they must be attainable and nonarbitrary, Disruptive Analysis' Dean Bubley wrote Wednesday on LinkedIn. Arbitrary targets can exclude "perfectly good-enough solutions" that don't meet that threshold, he said. "'Gigabit connectivity' has a nice ring to it, which means almost nobody thinks to ask 'why not 700 Mbps or 1.3 Gbps?' when setting targets for broadband," he said. Broadband targets and metrics often haven't kept up with the development of low earth orbit satellite constellations, high-throughput geostationary satellites, high-performance fixed wireless access, and stratospheric or lower-altitude aerial platforms, he said. As a result, they often don't qualify for recognition, promotion or funding, Bubley wrote. Some governments, like Japan and the U.K., take satellite broadband seriously, he said.
ISPs told the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in two cases overturning the Chevron doctrine means the FCC’s net neutrality order must be stayed pending judicial review (see 2407010036). The FCC said Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and the other case had no implications for its order, which reclassified broadband as a Title II service under the Communications Act.
House Commerce Committee Republicans launched a probe Tuesday of NTIA’s communications with state-level broadband offices related to the $42.5 billion broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program. Long-standing Republican criticisms of BEAD, meanwhile, became a major issue during a House Communications Subcommittee hearing that morning on the FCC’s FY 2025 budget request (see 2407090049). Lawmakers sparred over the propriety of GOP Commissioner Brendan Carr publicly slamming the program.
An attorney for Rochester, New York, is examining the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which overturned a four-decades-old standard on judicial deference to regulatory agency decisions (see 2406280043). In February, U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Wolford for Western New York in Rochester found in favor of Crown Castle, Extenet and Verizon on their consolidated claim that the city violated sections 253 and 332 of the Telecommunications Act in the unlawful manner in which it assessed fees for telecom deployments within its jurisdiction. “My office is presently reviewing the Loper Bright decision to determine its implications for the instant matters, particularly as to this Court’s summary judgment analysis,” city lawyer Patrick Beath's filing said: “Plaintiffs believe that Loper Bright has no impact here. I need additional time to make that assessment and confer with my client.”
Advocates of expanding the use of very-low-power devices without coordination in other parts of the 6 GHz band filed a report at the FCC on a “comprehensive Monte Carlo analysis” of interference risks to broadcast auxiliary service TV pickup (TP). “The large majority (95%) of TP links had no exceedance over 100,000 simulation iterations,” a filing posted Monday in docket 18-295 said: “The risk of harmful interference from VLP devices to TP links was exceedingly small with a 0.0001% average probability of an exceedance across all TP links.” Representatives of Apple, Broadcom, Google, Meta Platforms and Qualcomm met with Office of Engineering and Technology staff to discuss the RKF Engineering Solutions report.
The First Amendment protects social media platforms’ ability to moderate content, the U.S. Supreme Court said Monday, sending the tech industry’s lawsuits against Florida and Texas laws back to the lower courts (see 2402270072). All nine justices agreed on remanding, but Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch disagreed with First Amendment-related aspects of the majority opinion, which Justice Elena Kagan wrote (dockets 22-555 and 22-277).
Industry lawyers continue to assess the potentially seismic implications of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and the other Chevron case decided last week (see 2406280043). Yet the after-effects are being seen already. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday directed parties in the net neutrality challenge to file not later than July 8 supplemental briefing material addressing the effect of the Chevron decision “on our analysis” of a motion to stay the order (see 2406280060).
The statute authorizing the federal TikTok ban -- the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act -- is unconstitutional, and it isn’t even “a close case,” four professors’ amicus brief said Thursday (docket 24-1113), urging that the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit reject it.
The commercial space industry widely objects to the FCC's proposed "object-years" approach for space safety, with numerous operators in comments last week calling it ineffective and more than one deriding it as "simplistic" (docket 18-313). Those comments were part of a record refresh in the FCC's orbital debris mitigation docket (see 2405020048). The FCC's object-years proposal would cap at 100 the number of years failed satellites in a constellation could remain in orbit. It has placed 100 object-years conditions on several non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) constellations in the past year (see 2406120006).
DOJ and NTIA should end VeriSign’s contract for .com domain name registry services and kill its no-bid “monopoly,” which has led to rising registration costs, the American Economic Liberties Project and advocates wrote the agencies Wednesday. VeriSign’s government-designated, no-bid contract should end before the Aug. 2 automatic renewal date, AELP wrote in letters that Demand Progress Education Fund and Revolving Door Project signed. They requested the agencies open the contract to a “fair bidding process” and set a “price cap” for registration of .com and other top-level domains. The advocates said DOJ should withdraw from 2018 interagency guidance, which they claim allowed the Trump administration’s NTIA to “remove contractual protections against price-gouging.” The department should probe VeriSign’s “kickback” arrangement with ICANN for possible antitrust violations, the letter said. ICANN is a nongovernmental organization that accredits domain name registries and registrars. VeriSign must obtain consent from ICANN to increase its prices, and in 2022, the company offered a $20 million “cash bonus” to win approval from ICANN, the groups wrote DOJ. VeriSign hiked its price from $6 during the George W. Bush administration to $10.60 today, a 70% rise, they said. Citing public statistics, the groups claimed VeriSign has a “gross profit margin and operating margin of nearly 90 and 70 percent respectively.” The company’s free cash flow was estimated at $925 million in April, they said: “Billions of dollars that could be devoted to maintaining infrastructure, improving service, or accommodating more affordable pricing structures are instead diverted to other ends.” They noted the company spent about 6% of revenue on research and development in 2023. The letter noted that when registration for .net domain names was opened to competitive bidding in 2011, the price for registration dropped from $6 to $3.50. NTIA, DOJ, VeriSign and ICANN didn’t comment Thursday.