UL Solutions, which the FCC picked in December to serve as lead administrator in the agency’s voluntary cyber trust mark program (see 2412040038), asked for an additional 60 days to complete its initial work. UL's deadline was Monday. “The stakeholder process is well underway,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 23-239. “As Lead, we have selected stakeholders to participate in three committees overseeing the workstreams needed to develop and provide the recommendations” required in an order the commissioners approved a year ago (see 2403140034). The committees oversee technical requirements, labeling and market surveillance/renewal. The technical requirements committee faces the heaviest workload, and its initial recommendations are only about one-third complete, the filing said. The committee “will require additional work ... to reach a document that provides a complete and thorough set of technical requirements for an initial class of IOT products and reflects the views, experience, and expertise of the stakeholders who have joined the process.”
NTCA told the FCC that initial comments agree on the need for “a flexible approach to implementation” of the Alaska Connect Fund (ACF), which “accommodates the individualized circumstances faced by operators in a state that the Commission itself has long recognized as presenting unique challenges” for ISPs. Commissioners approved the ACF in November (see 2411050002), along with a Further NPRM on mobile and fixed wireless issues. “The record also supports deferring consideration of several questions raised by the FNPRM until related mapping and other issues are resolved, and avoiding as well Tribal consent rules that may disturb existing, successful engagement practices,” NTCA said in a filing posted Tuesday in docket 23-328.
The FCC Wireline Bureau on Tuesday approved the proposed transfer of New York-based local exchange carrier Crown Point Telco and its subsidiary Bridge Point to Atlas Connectivity. The bureau noted that it sought comment (see 2501290045) but received no comments or petitions in opposition, said a notice in docket 24-354.
Conexon Connect said it was incorrect when it told the FCC that it had met its three-year 40% rural development opportunity fund (RDOF) buildout milestone in Kentucky. In a docket 19-126 filing posted Tuesday, Conexon said it based its claim (see 2501160056) on the best data available at the time. Further analysis determined that the number of locations it serves in Kentucky is "slightly below" the required 40% milestone. But the company "still intends to fully satisfy its RDOF obligations in each of the ten states in which it receives RDOF support."
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett are likely the key votes as the U.S. Supreme Court considers Humphrey’s Executor, the 1935 decision that allows Congress to limit a president’s ability to remove senior officials, TechFreedom Internet Policy Counsel Corbin Barthold wrote Tuesday in The Bulwark. “For as long as modern conservative legal thought has existed, there has been a campaign to overturn Humphrey’s Executor,” Barthold wrote. “The decision, which sustained a provision that insulated the five leaders of the [FTC] from being removed without cause, became the foundation for so-called independent agencies,” but it’s not “a strong decision,” he said. President Franklin Roosevelt saw it as “an effort to rebuke him” by a then-conservative SCOTUS, and “modern legal scholars tend to agree.”
Some BEAD critics claim deployment is moving too slowly due to bureaucracy and inflation, but there are also "entrenched and deliberate obstacles" from incumbent broadband providers, COS Systems Vice President-North America Sales Adam Puckett wrote Tuesday. He said that while FCC broadband maps are a big improvement over Form 477 data, they still undercount broadband serviceable locations. Moreover, state preemption laws that restrict or ban municipal broadband -- often the result of lobbying efforts by incumbent ISPs -- are "a potential legal and political minefield for the BEAD program." BEAD rollout also faces capacity challenges at state broadband offices, he said. As such, he called for the FCC to prioritize fixing broadband maps and states to give municipalities additional leeway in providing broadband.
Ligado and Inmarsat contractually agree to use different parts of the L band for mobile satellite service (MSS) operations, but they were at loggerheads during oral argument Tuesday in federal bankruptcy court over whether that contract constitutes a lease. Inmarsat is asking the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware overseeing Ligado's Chapter 11 reorganization to rule that federal bankruptcy law requires Ligado to make its quarterly lease payment to Inmarsat (see 2502070026).
ACA Connects CEO Grant Spellmeyer and two other communications industry executives set to appear at a House Communications Subcommittee hearing Wednesday urge lawmakers in written testimony to revamp the NTIA-administered, $42.5 billion BEAD program. Some also say they want quick congressional action on a potential U.S. Supreme Court overturn of USF’s funding mechanism. Sarah Morris, acting deputy NTIA administrator during the Biden administration, is also set to testify. Her written statement wasn’t available Tuesday afternoon. The panel will begin at 2 p.m. in 2123 Rayburn.
The FCC shouldn't act as a “Ministry of Truth,” and there isn't a constitutional basis for the agency to go after local broadcasters, said Commissioner Nathan Simington during an interview Tuesday that seemed aimed at soothing broadcasters' concerns about the FCC's new direction. “I’m not in the business of deciding who’s telling the truth and who’s not,” Simington said onstage at the NAB State Leadership Conference. “And what’s more, [FCC Chairman Brendan] Carr thinks the same way." Carr said last week that FCC precedent set by the previous administration supports proceedings he has opened against broadcast networks over their programming and news content.
NextNav filed at the FCC a new engineering report on interference issues raised by the company’s proposal that the FCC reconfigure the 902-928 MHz band “to enable a high-quality, terrestrial complement” to GPS for positioning, navigation and timing services (see 2404160043). “NextNav undertook this analysis in response to claims in the record that allowing 5G deployment in the 902-928 MHz band could cause unacceptable levels of interference to unlicensed Part 15 devices,” said the report, filed last week in docket 24-240.