California’s plan to launch a home broadband pilot under its LifeLine program received mixed reactions from industry and consumer advocates. Groups were split over legal authority, service standards and who should be required to participate in the program, which was proposed by California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Commissioner Alice Reynolds and is expected to be considered during the agency's August 28 meeting.
The FCC NPRM looking at potential changes to the commission’s enforcement of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) has numerous changes between it and the draft Chairman Brendan Carr circulated. Industry officials expect the FCC to move quickly since NEPA reform has been a top focus of the Donald Trump administration, they said Friday.
The FCC’s new direct final rule process doesn’t give enough time and information to the public, provides too much authority to the bureaus, and is of questionable legality, said local governments, public interest groups and civil rights groups in filings in docket 25-133 last week. All the comments objected to the DFR process, rather than specific rules the process is being used to eliminate in orders voted at the FCC’s July (see 2507240055) and August (see 2508070037) meetings.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the FCC’s $80 million data breach forfeiture in a unanimous opinion handed down Friday (see 2508150014). T-Mobile was also fined $12.2 million for violations by Sprint, which it later acquired. Judges appeared skeptical of T-Mobile's arguments when the case was heard in March (see 2503240048). T-Mobile is reviewing the decision, a spokesperson said Friday.
The FCC’s merger approval powers have become a weapon against the Trump administration’s political foes, said the Taxpayers Protection Alliance in a blog post Thursday. “This FCC’s antipathy for liberal media outlets, and their parent companies, stems from political disagreements,” said TPA. “News outlets hostile to a sitting president should not be subjected to harsher regulatory scrutiny than the president’s friends.” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has characterized the agency’s pressure on broadcast networks as merely enforcement of the public interest standard. “According to Carr, the adherence to the public interest consists of adherence to his particular notion of unbiased journalism,” TPA said. “Whether the First Amendment allows for such an interpretation is -- at the least -- quite dubious.” It “seems clear that the public interest is at violent odds with any extension of state control over a free media,” TPA said. Conservative leaders such as former President Ronald Reagan -- who oversaw the elimination of the fairness doctrine -- “once understood the First Amendment objections to the marriage of un-biasing the media and the public interest,” TPA said. “Conservatives would do well to recover their lost understanding.”
The FCC should promptly issue an NPRM on a mandatory transition to ATSC 3.0, said Gray Media in a meeting and presentation Tuesday with an aide to Commissioner Olivia Trusty, according to an ex parte filing posted Thursday in docket 16-142. “The 30-year-old ATSC 1.0 standard places broadcasters at a technological disadvantage compared to other content and video delivery platforms, hindering the viewer experience and the ability of broadcasters to grow advertising revenues,” Gray said. ATSC 3.0 datacasting “will supplement and support video broadcasting; it will not replace it,” Gray said. Opponents of the proposal for a mandatory 3.0 transition have argued that broadcasters will use the new standard to neglect their public interest and content obligations (see 2507090052). Datacasting revenue “can help underwrite the expensive costs of producing high quality local journalism and help Gray fulfill its public interest obligations,” the filing said. “New retrans revenue fueled broadcast in the 2010s. Datacasting can do that in the 2030s,” said a slide included in the presentation.
Whether or not Paramount canceled Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show to please President Donald Trump, “the industry -- and industry investors -- believe they did," wrote Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld in a blog post Thursday. “Major companies seeking regulatory approval or conducting other business with the Trump administration, and their investors, believe the action was, or at least could be, politically motivated,” Feld wrote. “They will therefore do what they can to obey in advance.” The FCC’s ongoing behavior of investigating entities targeted by Trump “reinforces that belief,” and “encourages these companies to self-censor, keep their heads down, and avoid either news coverage or entertainment that could anger President Trump,” Feld said. “This quiet subservience, where media companies and creators toe the administration’s line, comes with a cost,” Feld said. “It limits free expression, shuts down open political discourse, and prevents us from even knowing the educational and entertainment options we’re missing because they’re simply not developed for fear of reprisal from President Trump.”
The Arizona Senate’s Republican leader has asked the FCC to investigate Arizona PBS over its coverage of the state’s 2022 gubernatorial election. Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen sent a letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr Tuesday calling for the investigation. The letter points to a report in the Arizona Republic that said leaders at Arizona State University -- which operates Arizona PBS -- considered Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s view that the 2020 election was stolen before offering her Democratic opponent, Katie Hobbs, airtime.
The Telecommunication Terminal Industry Forum Association (TAF) on Thursday broadly questioned proposed rules in a May Further NPRM that was part of the FCC’s focus on “bad labs” (see 2505220056 and 2508120011). “The large-scale revocation of laboratory authorizations based on security concerns lacks both technical and practical justification, which will increase the burden on U.S. consumers and cause significant disruption to the global ICT industry,” TAF said in a filing in docket 24-136.
The GPS Innovation Alliance told the FCC it needs more information before weighing on a request by Geophysical Survey Systems Inc. (GSSI) for a waiver of commission rules for ultra-wideband ground-penetrating radar devices to allow the certification and marketing of a new device it's developing. The device would assist autonomous vehicles in staying in their lane. In May, GSSI asked for action on its 2019 waiver request (see 2505280052).