The Free State Foundation opposed various petitions seeking denial of T-Mobile’s proposed purchase of "substantially all” of UScellular’s wireless operations, including some spectrum. The Rural Wireless Association, EchoStar and Communications Workers of America filed petitions to deny last month (see 2412100044). “The weight of evidence indicates that the proposed T-Mobile/UScellular merger, if approved, would produce pro-competitive benefits” and “benefit UScellular subscribers by giving them access to 5G services with faster speeds and higher data capacity,” FSF said in a filing posted Wednesday in docket 24-286. The U.S. wireless market is “characterized by strong competition among three nationwide mobile wireless providers -- T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon, an emergent fourth nationwide provider in EchoStar, local wireless providers, and regional hybrid cellular-cable mobile virtual network operators Xfinity Mobile and Spectrum Mobile,” the group said. Jeffrey Westling, American Action Forum director-technology and innovation, said that even if the FCC “narrowly” defines the wireless market as “just facilities-based, 5G mobile service, the proposed transaction will promote competition and benefit consumers.” Carriers “must carefully consider where to invest resources to provide the best coverage at the most cost-effective point,” Westling said: “In many cases, a merger … can provide an ideal outcome that limits duplication of efforts.” The American Consumer Institute also called on the FCC to approve the deal. “The proposed transaction is motivated by T-Mobile and UScellular’s desire to improve network capabilities and provide better services for consumers, both in the public’s interest,” ACI said.
The FCC Public Safety Bureau on Wednesday released rules for new multilingual templates for wireless emergency alerts. It sought comment in a public notice last year (see 2405130047). The order adopts templates for the 18 “most commonly issued and most time-sensitive types of alerts, which will be available in English and the next 13 most commonly spoken languages” in the U.S. “We promote the flexibility and effectiveness of these templates by requiring Participating … Providers to support the ability for alert originators to customize the alerts using event-specific information,” the order said. The order also adopts non-fillable American Sign Language (ASL) templates -- video files of the alert messages in ASL that don’t include the same elements required in other templates. “Together, these steps further the Commission’s goal of ensuring that WEA remains an essential and effective public safety tool that allows alert originators to warn their communities of danger and advise them to take protective action,” the bureau said. The alerts cover tornado emergency, tornado warning, flash flood emergency, flash flood warning, severe thunderstorm, snow squall, dust storm, hurricane, storm surge, extreme wind, test alert, fire, tsunami, earthquake, boil water, avalanche, hazardous materials and 911 outage. “We decline to adopt evacuation and shelter-in-place templates and defer consideration of other templates at this time,” the order said. The issue of whether participating providers “should be required to support additional templates, including an ‘all-clear’ template and other templates suggested by commenters in the record, is still under consideration by the Bureau at this time,” the order said in a footnote. The bureau addressed concerns CTIA and others raised about problems with preinstalled alerts (see 2406140051). “We agree that there are certain key technical issues to work through during the standards development process, but disagree insofar as commenters suggest these are barriers to adopting fillable templates that cannot be overcome,” the order said. The bureau agreed with CTIA that “dynamically translating the fillable fields would be technically infeasible at this time.” The order imposes a deadline of compliance within 30 months following publication in the Federal Register. CTIA and ATIS had questioned whether that timeline was workable. The bureau agreed with CTIA “that requiring the English message to appear alongside the multilingual template serves as an important public safety redundancy.” It agreed with ATIS “that displaying the English and multilingual versions together” is “technically feasible.” The bureau also agreed with CTIA that “fillable ASL templates are not technically feasible at this time.”
The FCC revised the reporting templates and certification forms for annual reports from incarcerated people’s communications services providers, said an order Wednesday from the Wireline and the Consumer and Public Affairs bureaus. The changes include expanding the reporting to video IPCS providers, moving detailed facility and contract information to a single worksheet and revising the reporting instructions, the order said. The updates are intended to “both enhance the value and usefulness of the Annual Reports and reduce existing or proposed reporting burdens, while continuing to enable the Commission to monitor the IPCS marketplace,” the order said. The changes “will bring increased transparency to IPCS providers’ rates, charges, and practices, help ensure compliance with the Commission’s IPCS rules,” and allow the FCC to “monitor pricing practices and trends in the IPCS marketplace generally.”
A proposal by Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, to relocate 30% of the workforce of every executive agency to outside the Washington, D.C., area wouldn’t affect the FCC or FTC. Both are classified as independent agencies and therefore fall outside the bill’s scope. Ernst filed the Decentralizing and Reorganizing Agency Infrastructure Nationwide To Harness Efficient Services, Workforce Administration, and Management Practices Act earlier this week. It could affect NTIA, part of the Commerce Department, if enacted.
The FCC increased application fees to reflect a 17.41% increase in the Consumer Price Index, said an order in Wednesday’s Daily Digest. The order was unanimous, with FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, President-elect Donald's Trump pick for chairman, reluctantly concurring, according to a statement. The increase “means some applications now cost hundreds, or in some cases, thousands of dollars more than they did just a few years ago,” Carr said. “It is difficult to support what is ultimately a direct tax increase on startups and other job creators at a time when they are already battling rising costs from inflationary policies,” but “the law does not provide the FCC with much discretion in terms of how these fees are assessed.” The agency is required to adjust the fees to reflect the CPI in every even-numbered year. The 2022 increase reflected a rise in the CPI of 11.6%. The higher fees mean a major change for full-power TV stations has risen from a $4,755 application fee to $5,000, according to the 2022 and 2025 orders. The application fee for a petition for declaratory ruling for a non-geostationary orbit foreign-licensed space station to access the U.S. market rose from $16,795 to $17,670, the orders said.
Communications Daily is tracking the lawsuits below involving appeals of FCC actions.
New Street’s Blair Levin on Wednesday slammed the $20 billion rural digital opportunity fund, calling it a huge failure, during a Broadband Breakfast webinar. Approved under former President Donald Trump, RDOF has its defenders, including FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, who has called it a bigger success than the BEAD program, which President Joe Biden approved (see 2409270032).
Gov. Kelly Armstrong (R) appoints North Dakota Public Service Commission Business Operations Manager Jill Kringstad as commissioner, succeeding Julie Fedorchak (R), elected to Congress ... Elizabeth Cuttner, ex-legal adviser to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, named FCC detailee to Senate Commerce Committee minority staff ... Futurum Group names Dan O’Brien, ex-IBM, as president-COO ... Telesat names Charles Cynamon, ex-LinQuest, president-Telesat Government Solutions.
Chilean authorities have granted the authorizations needed for SpaceX and mobile service partner Entel PCS Telecomunicaciones to commence supplemental coverage from space service in the South American country, SpaceX told the FCC in a filing posted Monday in docket 23-135. It was the latest in a series of SpaceX notifications to the commission regarding SCS service being ready to launch in foreign markets (see 2412200045).
A federal court's dismissal last week of the FCC's net neutrality rules (see 2501020028) raises the question of why traditional phone service still faces strict Title II regulation when modern phone networks are increasingly integrated with the internet, International Center for Law & Economics Senior Scholar Eric Fruits wrote Monday. A minority of U.S. households have a landline phone, and platforms like Microsoft Teams and Zoom have largely replaced traditional phone calls, he added. Meanwhile, traditional carriers' networks handle integrated voice, video and data services. As such, modern communications is stuck in an antiquated regulatory framework, prompting the need for Congress to move telecom services into the Title I rules regime governing information services, Fruits argued. This "would level the regulatory playing field, enabling traditional carriers to compete more effectively with internet-based platforms," and encourage infrastructure investment by reducing compliance costs and regulatory uncertainty, he added. A universal service goal could be maintained under Title I, and the FCC could still implement targeted consumer protections through its Title I powers.