The FCC said i-wireless agreed to pay a $1 million fine for an inaccurate filing it made in 2011, as it sought eligible telecom carrier status in Florida. The agency approved the application in 2012. “AT&T’s study area in Florida, which includes portions of several major population centers such as Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Palm Beach, Orlando, and Jacksonville, was not included in the i-wireless submission or the appendix,” the Enforcement Bureau said in an order in Wednesday’s Daily Digest. In 2013, i-wireless “filed a request to amend its designated service area in Florida to include AT&T’s study area” saying it was “inadvertently omitted from the list of approved service areas in Florida,” the bureau said. The Wireline Bureau approved the amended request for ETC status, citing “the unique circumstances presented.”
Voice on the Net Coalition representatives met with FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau staff to discuss the group’s proposal on robotexting rules. VON proposes “that the Commission require and oversee a process whereby a neutral, third-party entity is selected to vet application-to-person traffic on a technology-neutral basis, with policies applied equally to all traffic regardless of whether the traffic in question is initiated via a Unified Communications as a Service platform or directly on a mobile network operator network,” said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 21-402. “By engaging in this common-sense level of oversight, the Commission would further the goal of protecting consumers, combating unlawful text messages, and promoting competition in the marketplace for communications services,” the group said.
Alaska Communications Systems settled a nearly $6.3 million fine with the FCC over a rural healthcare program's rules on competitive bidding and rural rate determinations. An Enforcement Bureau order Wednesday said that ACS will make a $5.3 million repayment to the Universal Service Fund and receive a credit of $1 million for "ACS's withdrawal of claims and appeals" for certain funding requests between FY 2015 through 2018.
The FCC’s digital discrimination broadband order “is illegal on at least three grounds,” the Pacific Legal Foundation and the Washington Legal Foundation said in an 8th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court amicus brief Tuesday (docket 24-1179). The brief supports the 20 industry petitioners that seek to vacate the order as unlawful (see 2404230032). When Congress grants lawmaking authority to a federal agency, it must lay down by legislative act an intelligible principle to which the agency can conform, according to the brief. Section 60506 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act directs the FCC to adopt rules that facilitate equal access to broadband, including by preventing digital discrimination of access based on income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion or national origin, it said. The industry petitioners “persuasively explain” that Section 60506's language doesn’t permit the FCC to implement disparate impact liability, it said. But if it did, then that language violates the nondelegation doctrine by failing to provide an intelligible principle governing such liability, it said. “Virtually any action that a regulated entity can take will have a disparate impact along one or more dimensions of income level, race, ethnicity, color, or religion,” said the brief. That’s especially true because of the inclusion of income level, “which means that any decision by a covered entity lowering or raising prices will have a disparate impact based on income and thus come within the FCC’s enforcement authority,” it said. The authority to promulgate disparate impact rules “is a major question to which Congress is required to speak clearly,” it said. Because Congress didn’t speak “clearly to this particular question” in the statute, the FCC’s order is “invalid,” it said. The order also requires covered entities to “treat people differently based on race, in violation of the constitutional guarantee of equal protection,” it said.
Industry representatives raised concerns about potential negative effects for consumers should the FCC adopt an NPRM Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel circulated among fellow commissioners last month that bans bulk billing arrangements between ISPs and multi-dwelling unit (MDU) owners (see 2403050069). "We built our business around" MDUs because "there was a gap in the marketplace" and a "demand to provide an alternative to the incumbent providers," said Pavlov Media President-MDU Bryan Rader.
A new bid by Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., and other senators to attach stopgap funding for the FCC’s affordable connectivity program and additional money for the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program to the FAA Reauthorization Act (see 2405070083) faces resistance from chamber leaders. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other leaders are skeptical about including nongermane language in the FAA package. A previous proposal to attach ACP money drew opposition during a Tuesday night “hotline” that Senate leaders ran to gauge lawmakers’ support for amendments in the package.
Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., said Thursday night he has secured commitments from chamber leaders to move forward on allocating $6 billion in stopgap funding for the FCC’s affordable connectivity program and $3.08 billion for the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program amid last-minute talks to pass an FAA reauthorization package. The Senate was still voting Thursday night on passing an amended version of the FAA Reauthorization Act (HR-3935) that doesn’t include the ACP/rip-and-replace language Lujan and others sought, as expected.
The FCC gave net neutrality supporters some of what they were looking for on 5G network slicing, one of the most contested issues before commissioners, providing further clarity (see 2404190038), a comparison of the order and a draft shows. The FCC posted the order late Tuesday. The commission approved it 3-2 at a contentious meeting last month.
EchoStar's supposed informal objection to SpaceX's request to do supplemental coverage from space (SCS) operations testing in Australia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand (see 2404230038) only suggests conditions for SpaceX's experimental special temporary authority application, rather than giving any reason to deny the request, according to SpaceX. SpaceX said in docket 23-65 Tuesday that it has already addressed almost all the proposed conditions by such commitments as conducting testing pursuant to a spectrum access arrangement between SpaceX and a mobile partner and taking steps to eliminate harmful interference if it occurs. SpaceX said the FCC "should reject [EchoStar's] demand to violate the national sovereignty of foreign administrations by imposing blanket operational limits."
The Wireless ISP Association agreed with out-of-band emissions concerns that NCTA raised about Samsung Electronics America’s request for a waiver for a 5G base station radio that works across citizens broadband radio service and C-band spectrum (see [Ref:2404090058). WISPA representatives spoke with an aide to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, a filing this week in docket 23-93 said. “We explained that WISPA does not oppose Samsung’s specific request for waiver insofar as it requests a higher OOBE from the CBRS band into a specific portion of C-Band,” WISPA said: “However, WISPA expressed concern that the waiver request could be misinterpreted to allow the CBRS side of the radio to use the less restrictive C-band OOBE limits.”