The U.K.’s Office of Communications on Thursday announced a consultation that examines opening the 6 GHz band for unlicensed use, while considering licensed use of part of the spectrum. The Ofcom proposal would provide for low-power indoor (LPI) use across the entire band on a license-exempt basis.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s announcement that the FCC will begin investigating regulatees with diversity, equality and inclusion programs appears to be among the first actions a federal agency has taken to enforce President Donald Trump’s DEI executive order, though the FCC’s authority in this area is unclear, attorneys and academics told us. In his letter Tuesday to Comcast, Carr said the agency plans “broader efforts to root out invidious forms of DEI discrimination across all of the sectors the FCC regulates.”
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s plan to investigate agency regulatees over diversity, equity and inclusion programs causes Commissioner Geoffrey Starks “grave concern,” he said in an emailed statement Wednesday. “From what I know, this enforcement action is out of our lane and out of our reach,” Starks said. “I have asked for a briefing to understand the Enforcement Bureau’s theory of the case, the authority relied upon, and any prior precedent.” In a letter Tuesday to Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, Carr said the FCC “will be taking fresh action to ensure that every entity the FCC regulates complies with the civil rights protections enshrined in the Communications Act and the agency’s [equal employment opportunity] rules, including by shutting down any programs that promote invidious forms of DEI discrimination.” Starks pointed out that as a commissioner, Carr excoriated the prior FCC’s digital discrimination proceeding as “a framework that gives the FCC a nearly limitless power to veto private sector decisions.” At the time, Carr said the FCC’s restrictions on digital discrimination were “motivated by an ideology of government control that is not compatible with the fundamental precepts of free market capitalism.” In a post Wednesday on X, he said, “I expect that every entity the FCC regulates will be complying with our civil rights laws.”
Skydance could address the Center for American Rights’ allegations about news distortion at CBS and the deal to purchase the broadcast network by privately agreeing to conditions on the company’s news operations proposed by CAR, the organization's president, Daniel Suhr, said in an interview Tuesday (see 2502110073). Suhr said he was encouraged by Skydance and CBS parent Paramount Global’s response brief stating that they're committed to fair and balanced journalism. “That’s good rhetoric. I just want to make sure it's not simply sentimentality, that there's something concrete to it, and if we can find a way to structure something that's concrete and accountable,” he said. The news distortion complaint and the Skydance merger are “different docket numbers and even different bodies of FCC doctrine,” but CAR’s underlying concerns in both proceedings are the same, Suhr said. “If they can address those concerns, I think that'd be real progress.” CAR, Fuse Media and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters submitted a joint ex parte filing Tuesday supporting one another’s positions and proposing conditions on the deal. CAR’s proposals include increased viewpoint diversity on the New Paramount board, editorial staff located in cities besides New York and Los Angeles, and an oversight board or ombudsman. The Teamsters and Fuse want Skydance to reach collective bargaining agreements with all employees and reserve space on streaming services for independent programmers. There’s precedent for companies reaching private agreements to address regulator concerns in lieu of merger conditions, said David Goodfriend, who represents Fuse and the Teamsters. “We're not trying to kill the deal,” he said. “We're not trying to be obstructionist. We just want to see the deal go through in a way that respects the public interest.”
“There is an obvious public interest in there being live media coverage of police street activity,” said Cato Institute Senior Fellow Walter Olson in a blog post Tuesday about the FCC’s investigation of a radio station that reported on Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids (see 2502050051). “Allowing the media to be scared away from reporting on police raids” takes the country “closer to a society where the media dare not report in real time on police raids at all, or even to one in which there might happen secret raids.” Media reporting “can expose bad practices by police, and it can also reassure by helping to establish that police practice was proper,” he said. The FCC’s investigation of the station “inevitably invites comparison with other speech-chilling steps taken under the new chairmanship of Brendan Car,” he added, pointing to the FCC’s investigation of CBS over news distortion (see 2502120041). “Vigilance is always in order when it comes to the FCC and speech rights, and perhaps more now than ever.”
General radio operators have asked the FCC to change its rules to allow internet linking of general mobile radio service repeaters. The FCC imposed a prohibition in 2017 but rarely enforced the rule until last year, said a petition posted Wednesday in docket 15-178. “This enforcement has significantly impacted the GMRS community, disrupting emergency communication networks, community nets, and disaster response efforts that had been successfully operating for nearly a decade,” it said.
The FCC provided guidance for intelligent transportation system licensees seeking to move from dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) operations to cellular-vehicle-to-everything-based technology in the upper 30 MHz of the 5.9 GHz band. New C-V2X-based rules went into effect Tuesday, said a notice that day in docket 19-138. The FCC fundamentally changed the rules for the band in October 2020, reallocating the 5.9 GHz band to sharing between Wi-Fi and C-V2X, with no set-aside for DSRC, the historical allocation for the spectrum. The Wireless and Public Safety bureaus said they have reinstated roadside unit (RSU) licenses that were terminated in 2022 due to a failure to notify the commission they had ceased intelligent transportation system (ITS) operations in the lower 45 MHz of the band. Licensees now have an additional 90 days to provide the required certification, the notice said. All Part 90 ITS licensees currently authorized to operate DSRC-based technology in the upper 30-MHz portion are eligible to modify their RSUs for C-V2X deployment in compliance with the new rules, the notice said: “Similarly, any entities that aspire to operate ITS systems may apply for ITS licenses … but only for the purpose of registering and operating C-V2X-based RSUs in their proposed geographic area of operation.”
The Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation filed a paper Wednesday at the FCC on positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) options other than NextNav’s proposal to use 900 MHz spectrum as an alternative to GPS (see 2404160043). The U.S. “must develop alternatives to GPS and strengthen its PNT capabilities,” the paper says. But “granting the NextNav petition is costly in terms of spectrum, not necessary to achieve this goal and likely would not even deliver a real-world improvement in the country’s PNT capabilities.” The paper, filed in docket 24-240, notes China and Russia have terrestrial PNT systems “that make them much more resilient to interference with their satellite navigation systems.” Other vendors and technologies -- including Locata, PhasorLab, the Broadcast Positioning System and enhanced long-range navigation (eLoran) -- also offer alternatives to GPS, the foundation said. “These companies have not asked the FCC for additional spectrum to implement their solutions.”
Former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said Wednesday that he expects the White House to focus on getting Americans broadband connections and that as chair, he would have handled the rural digital opportunity fund (RDOF) differently if he had known the BEAD program would follow it.
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., and Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., filed the No Propaganda Act (HR-1211/S-519) Tuesday night to block federal CPB funding over claims that NPR, one of the public broadcasting entities it supports, creates “chronically biased content.” The measure would rescind “unobligated balances” of CPB’s advance funding for fiscal years 2025, 2026 and 2027. Kennedy and Perry bowed the No Propaganda Act hours after Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., filed the Defund Government Sponsored Propaganda Act (HR-1216/S-518) to end federal funding for public broadcasting and claw back CPB’s advance funding for FY25, FY26 and FY27 (see 2502110072). House Appropriations Committee Republicans attempted to end CPB's advance funding in 2023 and 2024 (see 2407100060). The House Oversight Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) Subcommittee is eyeing a March hearing targeting claims of public broadcasting bias (see 2502030064). “It might have made sense many, many years ago for the federal government to subsidize public broadcasting,” but Congress should no longer “be picking winners and losers in the news media,” said Kennedy, a member of the Senate Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee, on the Senate floor. He cited claims of NPR's pro-Democratic Party bias that began to draw congressional Republicans’ scrutiny last year (see 2405080064). “If you are a news outlet, and you want to publish this kind of stuff, that is your right as an American,” but “I'm not for taking $500 million every single year and giving it to these stations, to the exclusion of all others, to do it,” he said. Kennedy also noted that FCC Chairman Brendan Carr last month ordered the Enforcement and Media bureaus to investigate PBS and NPR member stations over possible underwriting violations (see 2501300065). NPR didn’t comment.