The subsea cable license order adopted at the FCC's August meeting (see 2508070037) differs materially from the draft order regarding presumptions that disqualify an applicant from receiving a license. The 214-page, finalized version of the order was released Wednesday.
Comments are due Sept. 12, replies Oct. 14, on an Intrepid petition asking the FCC to preempt a contract that Cottage Grove, Minnesota, has with another provider for deployment of fiber optic infrastructure there, an FCC Wireline Bureau public notice said in Thursday's Daily Digest. The docket is 25-248. In its petition earlier this month, Intrepid said the city had granted another provider exclusive access to the city's right of way (ROW) and was denying Intrepid's pending applications. It said the city had argued Intrepid is a broadband internet service provider and not entitled to use the public ROW under the Communications Act or state law.
The White House eliminated a Biden-era executive order that contained net neutrality and broadband billing provisions. The 2021 EO on promoting competition urged the FCC to consider adopting net neutrality rules and prohibiting "unjust or unreasonable early termination fees for end-user communications contracts" (see 2107090006). It also urged the agency to undertake a rulemaking to require broadband service providers to regularly report broadband price and subscription rates "for the purpose of disseminating that information to the public in a useful manner, to improve price transparency and market functioning." The EO urged DOJ and FTC to review existing horizontal and vertical merger guidelines "and consider whether to revise those guidelines." DOJ's Antitrust Division on Thursday said with the EO's revocation, it will "continue its work to recalibrate and modernize the Federal approach to competition policy to suit the needs of our dynamic and innovative economy."
FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty said in a speech Thursday that the agency will use its returned auction authority and other initiatives to make the U.S. an international leader in integrated sensing and communications (ISAC), the technology that combines tracking and data transmission. It lets mobile communications networks be used to sense and track non-connected objects, similar to radar. “ISAC is not just a technical evolution; it is a strategic leap,” Trusty said at the ISAC Strategy Summit in Arlington, Virginia, Thursday. “It gives us a chance to fuse our economic and national security goals into a common platform.” The international race for ISAC leadership “is already underway,” Trusty said. “Just as with 5G, those who move first will shape the technical rules, secure the supply chains, and capture the economic benefits. The question is not whether ISAC will be deployed; it is who will deploy it first, at scale, and on their own terms.”
A White House executive order on regulation of novel space activities by the Commerce Department leaves uncertain what role, if any, the FCC will have in overseeing in-space servicing, assembly and manufacturing, we're told. The EO, which President Donald Trump issued Wednesday, also looks to ease the regulatory hurdles for commercial space launches. The FCC commissioners unanimously approved an ISAM licensing framework NPRM 18 months ago (see 2402150053).
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected T-Mobile’s challenge of an $80 million data breach forfeiture in a unanimous opinion Friday. The court rejected the carriers’ arguments that the FCC forfeiture process violates the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial and that the customer real-time location data involved in the breach wasn’t covered by FCC rules. In the opinion, Judge Florence Pan said language in the Communications Act that allows entities to go before a jury if they don’t pay their FCC forfeitures satisfied the requirements of the Seventh Amendment. “The statutory procedure at issue allowed the Carriers to obtain a jury trial before suffering any legal consequences,” Pan wrote. “They chose not to wait for such a trial and therefore waived that right.” The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals took the opposite stance in a ruling on a similar data breach forfeiture against AT&T in April, vacating a $57 million fine because the FCC’s processes didn’t sufficiently guarantee a jury trial. The D.C. Circuit Friday also rejected carrier arguments that the data involved wasn’t covered under the rule or that the FCC erred by considering the breaches as ongoing violations. “The penalties assessed by the Commission were lawful and reasonably accounted for the Carriers’ ability to pay and the egregiousness of their conduct.”
Industry will likely turn to the FCC to address a 6th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court decision on Wednesday upholding the agency’s 2023 data breach notification rules (see 2508130068). When the rules were approved, now Chairman Brendan Carr and former Republican Commissioner Nathan Simington dissented (see 2312220054).
U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Moses on Tuesday recommended dismissal of claims brought by LiveVideo.AI against National Amusements and its president, Shari Redstone, related to Skydance Media's purchase of Paramount Global. In a report and recommendation (docket 24-CV-6290) to the U.S. District Court for Southern New York, Moses said LiveVideo.AI's complaint that National Amusements, Paramount's majority holder, ignored its rival bid for Paramount was frivolous. Moore said that following its complaint, LiveVideo.AI has "flooded the docket with meritless, repetitive, and frequently incoherent filings."
Broadcasters should pay the costs that a mandatory conversion to ATSC 3.0 will impose on MVPDs, said DirecTV in a letter to the FCC Media Bureau, posted Wednesday in docket 16-142. Purchasing enough ATSC 3.0 receivers to convert DirecTV’s 1,800 nationwide feeds would cost close to $15 million, which “would be onerous” and “a dead-weight loss,” the company said. “Spreading the cost among the nation’s nearly 1,500 broadcast stations would not only yield a much more manageable financial responsibility for each entity but also place the costs on the parties who stand to reap the benefits of the ATSC 3.0 transition.” DirecTV said it currently can’t transmit ATSC 3.0 signals because its customers’ millions of set-top boxes can’t receive the signal, and it doesn’t have the capacity to carry both ATSC 3.0 and 1.0 signals simultaneously. It also noted that an Advanced Television Systems Committee working group on creating a standard for converting 3.0 signals for MVPD transmission doesn’t include any MVPD representatives. “Because of what MVPDs view as the domineering and uncollaborative behavior of the broadcast representatives in the Working Group, there is no longer any MVPD representation” in the group.
The FCC Media Bureau has approved Connoisseur Media’s purchase of Alpha Media and its 200-plus radio stations, said a letter in Wednesday’s Daily Digest. Connoisseur owns 11 stations in New York and Connecticut, but the deal will bring it up to 218 radio stations in 47 markets, Alpha said in a May release announcing the agreement. The terms of the transaction weren't disclosed. The two companies don’t have market overlaps but required a Media Bureau waiver because Alpha owns five FM stations in a single market in Texas as part of a grandfathered arrangement. Granting a waiver to allow Connoisseur to own the stations under a similar arrangement “will simply maintain the status quo,” said the Media Bureau. “Based on the structure of the market,” approving the transfer won't be “anticompetitive nor otherwise frustrate the goals of the Local Radio Ownership Rule,” the letter said.