FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez received a waiver of her White House ethics pledge that will allow her to vote on agency enforcement items involving clients at her former employer, prominent telecom law firm Wiley.
Carriers need more spectrum and the 24 GHz band is important to deploying 5G, CTIA said in reply comments on a December NPRM examining changes to the rules. CTIA and other wireless industry commenters said the FCC should harmonize rules with decisions made during the World Radiocommunication Conference in 2019 but go no further.
Advocates of additional federal funding for the FCC’s affordable connectivity program and Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program were closely monitoring congressional negotiations Friday in hopes appropriators would reach a deal addressing both priorities as part of a second tranche of FY 2024 spending bills lawmakers want approved before midnight March 22. Rip-and-replace supporters voiced strong optimism that the next “minibus” package would include $3.08 billion to fully fund that program. ACP backers were, at least privately, growing less hopeful of a deal including their priority.
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announces additions to the Bureau of Media Relations: Raven Hill, from the Maryland Department of Education, as co-deputy director; Becky Lockhart, from the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau; Laura Nichols, ex-Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, as digital director; and Jason Schiavoni, ex-Smithsonian Institution, as website/digital experience director; and the retirements of David Wright from the Public Safety Bureau; Wayne Liang, from the Enforcement Bureau; Vanessa Lamb from the Office of Managing Director; and Hillary Burchuk from the Office of Inspector General.
The FCC approved an NPRM seeking comment on regulatory fees changes for space and earth stations due to the agency reorganization that replaced the International Bureau with the Space Bureau and the Office of International Affairs. The FCC “anticipated that the changes in the industry that resulted in the creation of the Space Bureau would likely also result in changes in the relative FTE [full-time equivalents] burdens between and among space and earth station fee payors,” the NPRM said. The item, released Wednesday, seeks comment on proposed changes to the allocation of fee burdens between geostationary orbit and non-geostationary orbit space stations, the creation of additional fee categories within the NGSO category, and on keeping the fee for small satellites at the same level as FY2023 going forward, with annual adjustments to reflect the percentage change in appropriation from the previous year. It also seeks comment on proposals assessing fees on all authorized space stations rather than just operational ones, increases to the fee for earth stations, and on an alternate method for assessing space regulatory fees. The alternative methodology “is a more comprehensive departure from the way that space station regulatory fees have been assessed since 1994” and would eliminate separate categories of regulatory fees for GSO and NGSO space stations, the NPRM said. Comments on the NPRM are due April 12, replies April 29.
A May 13 effectiveness date for the January FCC order requiring that carriers implement location-based routing for calls and real-time texts to 911 (see 2403130028) means the implementation deadline for nationwide carriers is Nov. 13, the Public Safety Bureau clarified Thursday. The deadline for non-nationwide carriers is May 13, 2026. By that second date, all providers must deploy a technology that supports location-based routing for real-time text to 911 originating on their IP-based networks, the bureau said.
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr again slammed NTIA’s implementation plan for the national spectrum strategy (see 2403120056). During a news conference Thursday following the commissioners' open meeting, Carr said the plan makes clear “they’re going to kick the can down the road on spectrum,” he said: “I think it’s a mistake. I think we need to start turning things around.”
CTIA representatives spoke with aides to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and Commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington on how new services, especially network slicing, would be treated under proposed net neutrality rules (see 2403130057). “Proposals to narrow or restrict” nonbroadband internet access “data services would deny the benefits of new technology such as network slicing to broadband users, unduly limit wireless innovation, and undermine American leadership in the mobile economy,” said a filing posted Thursday in docket 23-320. “Network slicing will allow wireless providers to offer over a single physical network a series of logically defined virtual networks configured to satisfy use cases currently under development that may include, for example, public safety communications, robotic surgery, smart grids, and communications at crowded events,” CTIA said.
The FCC’s recent Section 706 report “provides powerful new evidence of the pro-consumer impact fixed wireless access (FWA) is having in the broadband marketplace,” CTIA Chief Communications Officer Nick Ludlum said in a Thursday blog post. Commissioners approved the report 3-2 (see 2403140050). The report found that without FWA, 60% of U.S. households have zero or one home broadband offering available at 100/20 Mbps speeds, Ludlum said: “When FWA is taken into account, over 54% of U.S. households (over 19 million) now have multiple broadband options. And 18% of U.S. households now have three or more competitive options, thanks in part to FWA.”
The FCC wants comments by April 15, replies by April 29, on "whether and under what circumstances to provide compensation for other types of specialized services and on any rule changes needed to facilitate the provision of Video Text Service or other forms of specialized services," said a Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau public notice Thursday in docket 03-123. Commissioners adopted the item in September (see 2309280076).