Requiring ByteDance to divest TikTok is constitutional and would help block Chinese efforts to control U.S. communications networks, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Monday on the Senate floor. Similarly, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., last week said the upper chamber has an opportunity to make progress on bipartisan TikTok-related legislation (see 2404050050). In his speech, McConnell rejected First Amendment arguments against the House-passed divestment proposal. McConnell quoted FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr: “You can use a pen to write salacious anti-American propaganda, and the government can’t censor that content. Nor can it stop Americans from seeking such messages out. But if you use the same pen to pick a lock to steal someone else’s property, the government could prosecute you for illegal conduct.” China “has spent years trying to pick the lock of America’s communications infrastructure,” said McConnell: “This is a matter that deserves Congress’ urgent attention. And I’ll support commonsense, bipartisan steps to take one of Beijing’s favorite tools of coercion and espionage off the table.”
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel circulated for a commissioner vote initial rules allowing drone use of the 5030-5091 MHz band (see 2303100028), the commission said Monday. If approved, the order would allow operators to obtain direct frequency assignments in a portion of the band for non-networked operations, the FCC said. The band is one of the five targeted for study in the national spectrum strategy (see 2403120056). “The FCC must ensure that our spectrum rules meet the current -- and future -- spectrum needs of evolving technologies such as uncrewed aircraft systems [UAS], which can be critical to disaster recovery, first responder rescue efforts, and wildfire management,” Rosenworcel said. The proposal relies on dynamic frequency management systems (DFMSs) “to manage and coordinate access to the spectrum and enable its safe and efficient use,” said a news release: “These DFMSs would provide requesting operators with temporary frequency assignments to support UAS control link communications with a level of reliability suitable for operations in controlled airspace and other safety-critical circumstances.” During an interim period, users could obtain early permission to use the spectrum, coordinating with the FAA and filing an online registration form with the commission. Under the spectrum strategy, the FCC, in coordination with NTIA and the FAA, is to “take near-term action to facilitate limited deployment of UAS in the 5030-5091 MHz band, in advance of future study of the band,” the FCC said. Under the strategy, work on future use of the band is supposed to start next March and be completed in March 2027.
President Joe Biden called out congressional Republicans Saturday for Capitol Hill's failure so far to allocate stopgap funding for the FCC's ailing affordable connectivity program. The funding would keep ACP running through the end of FY 2024. Congress approved the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act FY 2024 minibus spending package last month without ACP money (see 2403210067). Advocates are eyeing other vehicles for appropriating the funding ahead of ACP's existing allocation running out in May (see 2403280001). “For months, I've called on Congress to extend the program,” but “Republicans in Congress still haven't acted, putting millions of their own constituents in a position where their internet costs could go up -- or they could lose connection altogether,” Biden tweeted. He proposed an additional $6 billion for ACP in an October supplemental domestic Appropriations request (see 2310250075). Republicans "have called the program ‘wasteful,’ and now threaten to cut it,” Biden said: “We can't let that happen” given it has “helped over 23 million households save $30-$75 each per month on their monthly internet bills.” House Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., later echoed Biden, tweeting “House Republicans are playing political games and refusing to extend this vital program before it runs out of funding.”
ITU member states at the 2023 World Radiocommunication Conference were uninterested in studying the 12.7-13.25 GHz band for international mobile telecommunications, and instead adopted provisions to expand satellite operations there, Intelsat told FCC staffers, according to a docket 22-352 filing Friday. With the 12.7 GHz band intended to provide equitable access to geostationary orbit for ITU member states, any FCC action allowing terrestrial mobile use of the band "would not be aligned with international use and would lack the benefits of international harmonization," Intelsat told representatives of the Wireless and Space bureaus and Office of Engineering and Technology.
FCC Administrative Law Judge Jane Halprin won’t broaden the scope of a hearing involving Antonio Cesar Guel's apparently fake sale of broadcast stations to include other questionable transactions because she doesn’t want to interfere with possible FCC Media Bureau investigations, said an order in Friday’s Daily Digest (see2402060049). Granting the Enforcement Bureau’s request to enlarge the hearing proceeding against Guel would also not be “efficient,” she said. The initial proceeding concerned Guel's sale of low-power radio and TV stations to his niece Jennifer Juarez, and false statements Guel made to the FCC, including hiding his lack of U.S. citizenship. The EB wanted the proceeding to include other companies -- Mekaddesh Group, Hispanic Family Christian Network and JPX Global -- whose ownership was the focus of contradictory filings at the FCC and SEC from Guel, his daughter and their associates. “It seems that with each filing in this proceeding, the control and operation of the Guel family’s broadcast licenses becomes less clear,” Halprin wrote. She said that keeping the case narrow is consistent with the Media Bureau’s approach when it originally designated the Guel matter for hearing, though it was aware of other possible violations. “These ambiguities, when considered with the numerous FCC violations to which Mr. Guel has already admitted . . . suggest a pattern of obfuscation and noncompliance” that “warrants further exploration,” the order said.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals adopted the briefing schedule that the parties proposed in the four consolidated petitions for review challenging the FCC’s Dec. 26 quadrennial review order for allegedly violating Section 202(h) of the Telecommunications Act (see 2404030004), said the court’s tentative schedule Friday. The opening briefs of the four petitioners and their intervenor supporters are due July 15, it said. Sept. 13 is the deadline for the FCC’s response brief and that of NCTA, which is intervening on the FCC’s behalf to defend the order against the petitioners’ Section 202(h) challenges, said the schedule. Reply briefs are due Oct. 15 and final briefs Nov. 18, it said. The parties said they framed the schedule to allow for the briefing to be complete and the cases ready for submission on the merits before the end of calendar 2024. The dates “may be advanced or extended by court order or a party's early or late filing of a brief,” said the schedule. All briefs and appendices should be filed with the 8th Circuit’s St. Louis office, it said. The consolidated petitions pending in the 8th Circuit are from Zimmer Radio (docket 24-1380), Beasley Media Group (docket 24-1480), NAB (docket 24-1493) and Nexstar Media Group (docket 24-1516).
APCO supported comments from the Edison Electric Institute and other groups representing incumbent 6 GHz users that the FCC should revisit how interference is addressed as automated frequency coordination systems open (see 2403260046). “APCO agrees with other representatives of incumbent 6 GHz users that, absent input from incumbents and oversight from the Commission, this resource for mitigating interference will fail to provide what’s needed for critical communications,” said a filing Thursday in docket 21-352: “APCO urges the Commission to adopt clearer guidelines, enhance transparency, and facilitate a more inclusive approach to the development and modification of AFC systems and procedures that impact critical communications.”
The FCC gave Westchester County, New York, until Dec. 31, 2025, to build out four 700 MHz trunked public safety stations. In 2019, the county received an extension through Nov. 30, 2023. “The County contends that it undertook the conversion of its T-Band stations to relocate those stations to frequencies in the 700 MHz band in response” to T-band legislation from Congress, which was later repealed (see 2012290046), the Public Safety Bureau said Friday. “The County contends that, while the T-band relocation mandate is no longer required, the work it completed to convert and relocate its system should be recognized.”
Beeper CEO Eric Migicovsky met with an aide to FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington on the subject of the FCC investigating Apple for blocking messaging app Beeper Mini (see 2402280076). The meeting “was to inform the Commission about how Beeper Mini works, and to discuss the legal implications of Apple’s blocking it that are relevant to the Commission’s authority,” said a filing posted Friday in docket 08-7. Beeper cited “interconnection requirements under Title II of the Communications Act and possible implications with regard to the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act.” Public Knowledge and Reset.tech representatives also attended the meeting.
CTIA told the FCC that the Telephone Consumer Protection Act doesn’t apply to robocalls and robotexts from wireless service providers to their subscribers. Indeed, CTIA added that the FCC has affirmed this "multiple times." However, consumer groups said nothing in the TCPA “justifies special treatment for wireless providers.” Comments were posted Friday in docket 02-278. Commissioners approved an order and Further NPRM in February seeking comment on the wireless provider exemption (see 2402160048).