The Coalition for Emergency Response and Critical Infrastructure (CERCI) took aim at what it said is a Public Safety Spectrum Alliance (PSSA) proposal asking the FCC to issue a “nationwide overlay license” in the 4.9 GHz band to a band manager to sign "a sharing agreement to hand over the spectrum to the First Responder Network Authority.” The two groups have a sharply divided vision on the best future for the band (see 2401190067). “PSSA would have the Commission turn the Band Manager role on its head," resulting in "the launch of a new lengthy, resource-intensive rulemaking,” said a filing posted Friday in docket 07-100. “PSSA would nullify the Band Manager’s two roles to coordinate public safety use and enable non-public safety access, instead proposing to make the Band Manager a licensee only to share the 4.9 GHz spectrum” with FirstNet, CERCI said.
The FCC Wireline Bureau approved the National Exchange Carrier Association's proposed average-schedule interstate settlement disbursements formulas for one-year beginning July 2. An order Friday in docket 23-415 noted that the formulas included "three consumer broadband-only loop" factors instead of one in NECA's filing from the previous year.
The FCC Wireline Bureau announced its annual tariff review plans for LECs, effective July 1, in an order Friday in docket 24-41. The bureau also adopted modifications for its rate-of-return tariff review plan and waived rules requiring that carriers file an access charge tariff for a two-year period.
Sometime in October 2025, expect the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to issue rules requiring that companies report cyber incidents and ransomware payments, Wiley's Sydney White said during the second part of an FCBA CLE on Thursday (see 2405090051). The rules are part of additional authority CISA received under the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act of 2022 (CIRCIA). Numerous cyber incident-reporting requirements exist, so new requirements will add to companies' reporting burden, experts said.
Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley signaled that his company is open to selling “assets” amid rumors that it's eyeing divesting 60 stations. Meanwhile, Nexstar CEO Perry Sook said broadcasters can’t have confidence about transactions in the current regulatory environment. The CEOs spoke during their respective Q1 earnings calls last week. Ripley, Sook and executives from Gray and E.W. Scripps also discussed progress on ATSC 3.0, a backloaded political advertising market, and streaming during earnings calls.
House Republicans pushed back during a Friday Communications Subcommittee field hearing in Bakersfield, California, against calls for Congress to allocate stopgap funding to the FCC’s ailing affordable connectivity program and the rollout of NTIA’s $42.5 billion broadband equity, access and deployment program. ACP supporters believe they made progress last week toward securing a path that keeps the program funded in FY 2024 despite proposals attaching funding to the FAA Reauthorization Act (HR-3935) failing in the Senate (see 2405100046).
Backers of stopgap funding for the FCC’s ailing affordable connectivity program and Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program believe they made progress last week toward their goal of firming up the initiatives even as a bid attaching funds to the FAA reauthorization legislation appeared all but dead. Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., emerged from the chamber Thursday night touting commitments from leaders to move forward on allocating the proposed money even as the body voted 88-4 to pass the FAA Reauthorization Act (HR-3935) without funding language he and others sought (see 2405070083).
The growing pace of space launches is prompting more conversations between the U.S. and other countries about space objects' state of register, Ryan Guglietta, lead foreign affairs officer at the State Department's Office of Space Affairs, said Thursday during an FCC Space Bureau-hosted workshop about U.S. interagency payload reviews. Establishing a payload's registering state is becoming increasingly complex, Guglietta said. For example, a payload could be built in one nation, assembled in another and have other multinational touchpoints. He said the U.S. is trying to create a shared understanding with other nations of what constitutes a payload's registering state. The FAA spearheads the Interagency payload review, and Stacey Zee, FAA operations support branch manager, said if one agency raises a concern during that review, then the agency aims to resolve it early in the process. Sabrina Jawed, FAA commercial space law team manager, said in a worst-case scenario -- there's no payload approval, even though the payload has been integrated into the launch vehicle and is ready to go -- "we have the authority to say 'hold up.' However, we do not want to do that." Space Bureau Special Counsel Karl Kensinger said integrating a payload into a launch vehicle marks a critical point, and it's tough to move backward from there. The satellite operator must have a license by then or face "significant risks," he said.
The FCC received no submissions from U.S.-based foreign media outlets for its latest semi-annual report to Congress, it said Thursday. The latest report covers Oct. 13 to April 11. The last several editions -- since May 2021 -- have listed no submissions (see 2211100055). The 2019 National Defense Authorization Act requires the reports.
The FCC Public Safety Bureau sought comment Thursday on an application and waiver request from Woodburn, Oregon, on a license for a new trunked private land mobile radio system using four VHF channels from the industrial/business pool in Marion County, Oregon. “Woodburn states that the four I/B channels [[it seeks]] to license are needed ‘for the development of a … Digital Trunking System’ which will be part of a ‘cooperative effort between’” Woodburn's Police, Public Works and Transit departments and Hubbard's Police and Public Works departments, the bureau said: “Woodburn proposes to license eight Public Safety Pool channels in addition to the four I/B channels for its trunked system but states that all additional VHF Public Safety Pool channels have been ‘exhausted in the area and no further usable channels can be located.’” Hubbard is in Marion County.