Small and mid-sized cable operators are largely bullish about President-elect Donald Trump's incoming administration and his choice of FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr to head the agency, expecting aggressive deregulation, ACA Connects President Grant Spellmeyer said during an interview with Communications Daily. Spellmeyer discussed the industry group's 2025 priorities, growing questions surrounding BEAD, and what one does during the lame-duck weeks before inauguration and a new administration. The following transcript was edited for length and clarity.
FCBA adds Stephanie Budaker, ex-NAB Leadership Foundation, as senior manager-programs ... Glen Echo Group promotes Anne Keeney and Davey McKissick to senior vice presidents, Andrea O'Neal and Christopher Shannon to vice presidents, and Kieran Henstenburg and Isabela Kent to senior associates ... FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel appoints to Universal Service Administrative Company board: Anisa Green, AT&T; Dan Kettwich, ADS Advanced Data Services; Sarah Freeman, Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission; Kenneth Mason, industry consultant; David Schuler, the School Superintendents Association; Julie Tritt Schell, E-Rate Coordinator-Pennsylvania; Olivia Wein, National Consumer Law Center; and Brian Dalhover, Zayo Group ... NATE elects Tommy Lewis, Hayden Tower Service, to board.
The FCC is considering reallocating the 2360-2395 MHz band on a secondary basis for space launch operations, the agency said Thursday. Letting companies conduct launch activities without requesting special temporary authority for each launch "will provide certainty and predictability for commercial space launches," it said. The draft order circulated Tuesday, and the commission said Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel was trying to get a vote on it before the Dec. 25 statutory deadline set in the Launch Communications Act, which was signed into law in September (see 2409270060). The 2360-2395 MHz swath would come atop the 2025-2110 MHz and 2200-2290 MHz allocations for space launch activities the commissioners approved this fall (see 2309210055).
SpaceX is asking for the FCC to authorize spectrum access that could support a variety of U.S. space program missions involving its Starship rocket, including lunar landings. In an FCC Space Bureau filing posted Thursday, SpaceX said the Starship missions will include a long-duration orbital flight test, a propellant transfer flight test in orbit, an uncrewed lunar landing test and refueling operations in orbit, and a pair of lunar landings that include refueling operations in Earth orbit. As part of its application, SpaceX asked for FCC OK to operate in some spectrum bands on a nonconforming basis, such as space-to-space communications in the Ku band between Starship and SpaceX’s Starlink satellite system, and lunar surface communications in the 5.8 GHz band for close-range communications during extravehicular activities.
Oral argument in the legal challenge against the FCC’s collection of workforce diversity data is scheduled for Feb. 4 in New Orleans, said a notice Thursday from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in docket No. 24-60219. The National Religious Broadcasters, American Family Association and Texas Association of Broadcasters want the court to roll back the FCC’s February equal employment opportunity order for exceeding the agency’s authority and being unconstitutional. The FCC has said collecting the data and making it publicly available will improve diversity in the broadcast workforce (see 2410210044).
Federal court oral argument this week regarding the FCC's one-to-one lead generation consent requirement (see 2412180008) seems to indicate that at least some of the rule will go away, Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) lawyer Eric Troutman blogged Thursday. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel seemed focused on a consumer's "right of consent" -- an idea "the panel seems to have made up ... out of whole cloth," he wrote. Neither the FCC nor petitioner Insurance Marketing Coalition "seemed totally prepared for the curveball that may ultimately determine the outcome here," he added. The panel seemed to agree the FCC can set standards for implementing the express consent terms of the TCPA, said Troutman, and that limiting consumers to expressly defining in a clear and conspicuous way the entities they want to hear from is fine. He also said the panel also seemed to feel that the FCC's one-to-one consent rule wrongly restricts consumers from blanket consenting to receive calls from affiliates of a brand and wrongly restricts them from being able to consent to receive calls from different products that are not topically and logically related to a website. It seems likely the "logically and topically" standard will fall.
The FCC will close Dec. 24 as part of the President Joe Biden executive order issued Thursday giving the day off to most federal employees, in addition to the Dec. 25 federal holiday.
Groups challenging a 2023 update of the FCC's electronic equipment authorization and testing rules -- Public.Resource.Org, iFixit and Make Community (see 2403280002) -- lack standing to do so, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. In an order filed Thursday (docket 23-1311), a three-judge D.C. Circuit panel dismissed their petition for review, saying their standing isn't readily apparent, and they made no attempt to argue standing in their opening brief. The petitioners argued that the update, which adopted four privately developed standards, didn't include the standards themselves in the Federal Register notice but instead incorporated them by reference. As such, they argued the FCC should redo the rules update because the standards weren't readily and freely available to the public. Deciding were Judges Patricia Millett, Robert Wilkins and Florence Pan.
Incarcerated people's communications service (IPCS) providers pushed back against FCC proposals for setting uniform service quality standards. While they also argued for redoing the reimbursement process adopted earlier this year, that argument is seeing opposition. Reply comments were filed this week in docket 12-375. The FCC's IPCS order, adopted in July, included a Further NPRM seeking comment on establishing video IPCS rates, updating the definition of jails and prisons, and addressing other service quality issues (see 2407180039).
The FCC Technology Advisory Council’s working groups will likely propose that the council issue recommendations about AI, spectrum sharing and propagation modeling, according to presentations at Thursday’s TAC meeting. During the meeting, TAC Chairman Dean Brenner said he will follow FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel’s lead and leave his post Jan. 20. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, the incoming chair, should “pick the person that he wants to lead the TAC,” said Aira Technologies' Brenner, who has chaired TAC for three years. The TAC's charter expires in September.