Senate Communications Subcommittee member Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., praised the FBI on Monday night for investigating claims that during the Biden administration, the bureau and then-Special Counsel Jack Smith tracked her phone calls and those of eight other GOP lawmakers as part of a probe into the Jan. 6 Capitol siege. Fox News reported that in 2023 the FBI circulated a memo outlining the Jan. 6 team’s “analysis on limited” records of communications by Blackburn and the other Republicans, including current Senate Communications members Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming. The Fox News report indicated that the FBI tracked the phone numbers that lawmakers called and the locations of the callers and recipients.
President Donald Trump is pushing for Univision's return to the YouTube TV channel lineup. "I hope Univision, a great and very popular Hispanic Network, can get BACK onto the very amazing Google/YouTube," he wrote Saturday on Truth Social. Trump said Univision's removal from the YouTube TV package "is VERY BAD for Republicans in the upcoming Midterms." Univison was "so good to me with their highest rated ever political Special, and I set a Republican Record in Hispanic voting. Google, for the purpose of FAIRNESS, please let Univision back!" Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) said last week that the blackout was "obvious retaliation" for Univision hosting a town hall event during Trump's 2024 campaign (see 2509300037).
Real-time AI voice interfaces might undermine the role of phone numbers, Disruptive Analysis consultant Dean Bubley wrote Friday. Many AI chatbots have voice inputs with speech to text and then use large language models to parse the text and generate responses with a text-to-speech spoken reply. But now, several AI platforms also support speech-to-speech interaction with lower latency and more conversational fluidity, he said. That session initiation protocol combined with real-time AI "is a potential gamechanger" and could work as one side of a phone call or an entirely non-call voice application or service, he said. But it's unclear if telcos "are really prepared to engage with a 'number-optional' world for voice."
The American Library Association is disappointed that the FCC’s order canceling the Biden-era internet hot spots program cuts grants for FY 2025 applicants, said Megan Janicki, the group’s deputy director for strategic initiatives. FCC items eliminating that program, as well as one that provided Wi-Fi connections for students on school buses, passed Tuesday in a pair of 2-1 votes (see 2509300051), with dissents by Commissioner Anna Gomez.
Dean Bubley, founder of Disruptive Analysis, argued in an opinion piece Monday that private 5G will be critical to providing the bandwidth needed to handle the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. Private 5G “is increasingly used for connecting broadcast cameras, devices such as drones, handhelds for security staff, wireless payment terminals, and entry/exit gates” and “can be configured for the venues’ specific needs, with dedicated coverage and local control,” Bubley wrote in RCR Wireless. Carrier networks “will be insufficient to simultaneously meet all the requirements for the diverse Olympic venues and specialized applications, visiting fans, and non-participating LA citizens and businesses,” he wrote. Even using advanced 5G techniques like network slicing, “public networks’ limitations will likely require deployment of dedicated ‘private’ 5G networks.”
Noting its 28-page economic analysis, the International Center for Law & Economics told the FCC that Charter Communications' $34.5 billion purchase of Cox Communications is "pro-competitive." The proposed deal, announced in May (see 2505160060), is "a geographic expansion, not a horizontal consolidation of competitors." The two carriers have almost no footprint overlap, with fewer than 0.1% of their combined broadband serviceable locations served by both companies, the group said in a filing posted Wednesday (docket 25-233). Rather than reducing the number of options available to consumers in local markets, the deal instead lets New Charter reach the scale it needs to better compete against larger national broadband providers and vertically integrated tech platforms, it argued.
Illinois released its revised draft Tuesday for its final BEAD plan under NTIA's "Benefit of the Bargain" round. The state received 66% more applications than previous rounds, with an average cost of about $6,100 per location, wrote Office of Broadband Director Devon Braunstein. That's 21% less per location than the state's previous round, she noted.
The U.S. Secret Service stopped an "imminent telecommunications threat" near the United Nations and throughout the surrounding New York area, the agency said Tuesday. The threats targeted senior U.S. government officials and were capable of potentially disabling cell towers, initiating denial-of-service attacks and "facilitating anonymous, encrypted communication between potential threat actors and criminal enterprises."
T-Mobile asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Monday to rehear en banc the August decision by a three-judge panel upholding the FCC’s data fines against it and Sprint, which it subsequently purchased (see 2508150044). The 2nd Circuit recently upheld a similar fine against Verizon, while the 5th Circuit rejected one against AT&T (see 2509100056).
Cloud communications company Bandwidth opposed AT&T’s petition at the FCC to stop accepting applications for special access DS3 services wherever they’re still offered to new customers throughout the company’s 21-state legacy wireline footprint (see 2508180039). Bandwidth said that if the service ends, there’s “no reasonable substitute available” for time-division multiplexing, particularly for 911 call centers. Comments on the application were due Friday, and Bandwidth was the only company to file.