House Oversight Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) Subcommittee Chairwoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., pressed NPR and PBS executives Monday to testify at a March hearing on “federally funded radio and television, including its systemically biased content.” Greene’s request followed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s call last week for the Enforcement and Media bureaus to investigate PBS and NPR member stations over possible underwriting violations (see 2501300065). President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency advisory group has eyed NPR and PBS funder CPB as a potential target (see 2411220042).
Law professor Adam Candeub, who was an attorney in the FCC's Media and Common Carrier bureaus as well as acting NTIA head, is returning to the commission as general counsel. Candeub brings with him strong criticisms of Big Tech. In response to a post on X about Candeub not being the GC that Big Tech executives would have preferred, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr replied that the agency "will work to dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights to everyday Americans." He added: "I look forward to Adam Candeub serving as the FCC's General Counsel. He is going to do great things!"
FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington promotes Adam Cassady from legal adviser to chief of staff ... NARUC President Tricia Pridemore taps for board Katie Anderson, Arkansas Public Service Commission, succeeding Lillian Mateo-Santos, Puerto Rico Energy Bureau; for subcommittee-education and research, Erik Helland, Iowa Utilities Commission, and Doyle Webb, Arkansas PSC, replacing Pridemore and succeeding John Betkoski, Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority; for Gas-Electric Alignment for Reliability (GEAR) Task Force, Josh Byrnes, Iowa Utilities Commission.
AST SpaceMobile received FCC signoff to test its supplemental coverage from space service. A pair of FCC Office of Engineering and Technology approvals received in January cover use of AT&T's lower 700 MHz and 850 MHz band spectrum, and of Verizon's 850 MHz spectrum with the satellite operator's BlueBird low earth orbit satellites. The approvals "represent a pivotal moment for AST SpaceMobile as we advance toward delivering seamless space-based cellular broadband connectivity,” Global Head-Regulatory Affairs Vikram Raval said Friday.
UScellular, in a heavily redacted filing at the FCC, told the agency that negotiations with T-Mobile before last year’s purchase agreement took place over seven months. The companies announced in May an agreement under which T-Mobile will buy “substantially all” of the smaller carrier’s wireless operations, including some of its spectrum, in a deal valued at about $4.4 billion, including $2 billion in assumed debt (see 2405280047). On Oct. 4, 2023, Citigroup Global Markets, lead financial adviser on the sale, “started conversations with potential interested parties,” and UScellular’s parent, TDS, entered into a nondisclosure agreement with T-Mobile, said a filing posted Friday in docket 24-286. “Over the next several months, a competitive bidding process was held to solicit proposals from multiple parties, including T-Mobile,” it said. The talks resulted in an agreement reached May 24, UScellular said. The filing was a partial response to a December letter from the Wireless Bureau asking a battery of questions on the deal (see 2412270031).
The FCC-certified frequency advisory committees that review and certify applications for industrial/business frequencies authorized under Part 90 of the FCC rules asked the regulator for tweaks to the rules. The groups noted that they sought changes in a 2020 petition, but the FCC took no action. The earlier petition sought “modification of an FCC rule that, in their opinion and based on extensive expertise in Part 90 spectrum management, is overly protective of systems proposing mobile-only operation without reference to any fixed location,” said an undocketed filing Thursday. The current rule “effectively precludes the use of the assigned frequencies as exclusive frequencies in spectrally efficient trunked systems anywhere within or adjacent to the area of operation self-defined by the mobile-only applicant.” Among those signing the filing were the AAA, the Association of American Railroads, Aviation Spectrum Resources, the Enterprise Wireless Alliance, the Utilities Technology Council and the Wireless Infrastructure Association.
T-Mobile cited widespread power issues in its annual report on the progress of its affiliate T-Mobile Puerto Rico in hardening its network through Uniendo program funding. Parts of the report, posted Friday in docket 18-143, were redacted. Other providers also updated the FCC.
In an FCC filing on its proposed buy of Frontier, Verizon committed to comply with all USF requirements and related rules if regulators approve the deal. Verizon agreed to buy Frontier in a $20 billion all-cash deal announced in September (see 2409050010). “Verizon will, consistent with the continuation of Authorized Parties’ USF-related obligations post-transaction, assume all risks and consequences of noncompliance with program requirements, regardless of whether such noncompliance pre-dates or post-dates the consummation of the transaction, including default recovery of support and potential forfeiture penalties, in all supported areas,” said the filing, posted Friday in docket 24-445. Verizon said it will comply "regardless of any preexisting or reasonably foreseeable conditions that could impact the relevant Authorized Parties’ ability to meet USF-related obligations, including technical, marketplace, and on-the-ground conditions." It filed the commitments at the request of FCC Wireline Bureau staff, Verizon added.
As previewed during a recent financial call, it appears AT&T in recent days has been moving more aggressively to shut additional parts of its legacy copper network (see 2501270047). In December, in what AT&T executives saw as a model for future retirements, the FCC took no action, allowing AT&T to initially halt sales and then discontinue residential local service in nine Oklahoma wire centers (see 2412230066). AT&T CEO John Stankey said on the call that the carrier plans to file applications at the FCC to stop selling legacy products in about 1,300 wire centers, or about a quarter of the AT&T footprint. On Friday alone, the FCC posted retirement proposals for AT&T wire centers in Alliance, Ohio; Murfreesboro, Tennessee; Easley, South Carolina; and Milwaukee.
Rep. Pat Ryan, D-N.Y., and Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., filed the Stop Sports Blackouts Act on Friday in a bid to force cable companies to make refunds to “customers who aren’t able to watch the channels they already pay for during television blackouts,” Ryan’s office said. The measure would direct the FCC to require cable distributors to provide rebates to subscribers for blackouts that occur as a result of carriage disputes. The lawmakers cited MSG Network's recent blackout, which left more than a million subscribers in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey unable to watch local sporting events. Altice USA and some Republican lawmakers previously proposed refunds from MSG (see 2501160072). “On behalf of fans across the country, we’re putting down a marker: everyone will get their money back when a blackout stops them from watching TV, no questions asked,” Ryan said. “That means dollars back in your pockets, and, equally importantly, it provides a hell of an incentive to these billion dollar corporations to make sure these blackouts don’t happen in the future.” It’s “ridiculous the rest of us get stuck in the crossfire of negotiations between cable and broadcast companies,” he said. “Our bill is simple: if cable companies can’t provide the service you’re paying for, they owe you a refund.” ACA Connects CEO Grant Spellmeyer criticized the Stop Sports Blackouts Act, saying Friday that it “gives billion-dollar broadcast corporations a complete free pass. If we don’t address the root of the problem [with] reforms to the retrans consent regime, insatiable broadcasters will continue to abuse market power to extract higher fees, jack up prices [and] force blackouts.”