NTIA remains “on track” to deliver on initial commitments under the national spectrum strategy that the Biden administration released in November (see 2311130048), NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson said at the Mobile World Congress in Las Vegas. Davidson also defended the administration’s progress under the $42.5 billion broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program, a recurring target of Republican criticism (see 2409270032).
Satellite imaging company Pixxel Space Technologies hopes to launch its Honeybee-00 demonstration satellite, which is to be part of its planned hyperspectral imaging constellation, in June, it told the FCC Space Bureau in an application posted Tuesday. Pixxel asked for a waiver of the requirement that the probability of human casualty from portions of the satellite surviving reentry be zero. It said simulations show its propulsion tanks could survive reentry and cause "a 1:19,100 chance of human casualty," but the tanks can't be readily replaced this far along in the manufacturing process. It said in the future Pixxel will use propulsion tanks that fully burn up on reentry.
The FCC should cement Paramount Global's and Skydance Media's "general labor-friendly statements with specific, binding merger conditions" that maintain minimum levels of union-created content and station-level employment, labor unions said Tuesday in docket 24-275. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters Hollywood Local 399, Writers Guild of America West and Writers Guild of America East said Paramount and Skydance have maintained that New Paramount will have strong demand for union-created programming and good partnerships with organized labor. But they also have indicated that the $8 billion Skydance/Paramount deal, announced in July (see 2407080025), could prompt significant job cuts, the unions said. Worker-related merger conditions, the union filing said, would be in line with the FCC Media Bureau's hearing designation order in Tegna/Standard General (see 2302240068), which emphasized that jobs and journalists relate directly to localism and the public interest.
Congress should remove the FCC's authority to impose content-based restrictions such as the broadcast indecency rules on broadcasters in the wake of Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump's repeated calls for action against ABC's license (see [Ref:2409120056), said American Action Forum Director-Technology and Innovation Policy Jeffrey Westling in a post Tuesday. “While many were quick to dismiss Trump's call, it is indeed possible for the federal government to revoke a broadcast license, even in response to what is essentially a political offense,” Westling said. He said Congress should do away with the news distortion rules and indecency rules, which remain on the books but are used infrequently. The news distortion rules bar broadcasters from deliberately distorting a factual news report, while the indecency rules bar egregious nudity or profanity. The FCC hypothetically could use the news distortion rules to block a license renewal for a station that aired a story the president disapproved of, Westling said. Elimination of the rules would give broadcasters more freedom and allow them to better compete with other media that aren't bound by such rules, he said. “The freedom to succeed would also entail the freedom to fail: If a station airs content that consumers do not want to see, it will simply go out of business,” he said.
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel Tuesday condemned a letter from the Florida Department of Health threatening a TV station over an advertisement. Sent to Nexstar's WFLA-TV Tampa and other Gray Television stations, the letter claimed a political ad running on the station critical of Florida's abortion policies constituted an illegal “sanitary nuisance” and threatened the station with criminal prosecution. The station's First Amendment right “does not include free rein to disseminate false advertisements which, if believed, would likely have a detrimental effect on the lives and health of pregnant women in Florida,” the DOH letter said. Rosenworcel, in a release, responded, “The right of broadcasters to speak freely is rooted in the First Amendment.” She continued, “Threats against broadcast stations for airing content that conflicts with the government's views are dangerous and undermine the fundamental principle of free speech.” The ad, the DOH letter said, characterized a Florida law that strictly limits abortions as banning them and leading to the deaths of pregnant women. The ad is “not only false, it is dangerous.” Women faced with pregnancy complications posing a serious risk of death “may and should seek medical treatment in Florida,” the letter said. Nexstar, Gray and NAB didn't comment.
Critics of aspects of SpaceX's direct-to-device service continue pressing the FCC. In a docket 23-135 filing Tuesday, AT&T said it supports prompt approval of SpaceX secondary supplemental coverage from space (SCS) service that meets FCC power limits, but opposes the elective power boost that would increase its throughput at the expense of AT&T's primary incumbent terrestrial PCS C-block network. "Secondary service cannot degrade primary service, especially a primary service with the myriad established public interest benefits of terrestrial mobile," AT&T said. An AT&T analysis of how the elective power boost would affect its Tucson, Arizona, PCS C-block network predicts "a devastating" 18% degradation in average downlink throughput due to SpaceX's elective power increase, and in some areas on the network's edge coverage might be out altogether. Verizon challenged T-Mobile's throughput calculations that back granting a waiver of FCC out-of-bound emissions (OOBE) limits (see 2408230013), saying they weren't applicable to SCS service. Omnispace said the 1990-1995 MHz block is allocated for mobile satellite service uplink use both in the U.S. and internationally, and SpaceX has yet to meaningfully address concerns about it using that band for downlinks. It said SpaceX's rebuttal "is more ad hominem than rigorous." The FCC's aggregate OOBE limits in its Part 25 rules don't need relaxing for SCS service, AST SpaceMobile CEO Abel Avellan told Commissioners Geoffrey Starks, Anna Gomez and Nathan Simington, said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 20-32. Avellan said AST and numerous mobile network operators (MNO) believe that OOBE levels need to be maintained to protect incumbents' use of spectrum. He said AST will meet aggregate OOBE limits in low- and mid-band spectrum. AST said it has agreements and understandings with more than 45 MNOs with roughly 2.8 billion subscribers. It said its SCS service has a 120 Mbps peak data rate.
The American Petroleum Institute supports rule changes for the citizens broadband radio service band to make it more usable by API members, the group said in comments on an August FCC NPRM (see 2408160031). “In many cases without the ability to build reliable wireless infrastructure, these company operations would lack the communications necessary to operate effectively,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 17-258: “In general, API members have seen benefits from the existing availability of CBRS spectrum and support the Commission’s endeavor to make the use more friendly to enterprise and small business usage.” The deadline for initial comments on the NPRM had been Monday, but the Wireless Bureau recently extended it to Nov. 6 (see 2409270026).
A representative of Apple, Broadcom and Meta Platforms spoke with aides to all the FCC commissioners except Anna Gomez on a proposal that the FCC extend rules for very-low power operations in the 6 GHz band across the U-NII-6 and U-NII-8 bands, said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 18-295. The calls occurred before Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel proposed that step last week (see 2410040055).
The American Radio Relay League requested a waiver of the commission’s Part 97 rules to communicate with military stations as part of Pearl Harbor Day commemorations Dec. 7 and 8. ARRL said it made the request on behalf of the Battleship Iowa Amateur Radio Association. “The frequencies and time periods selected will not impact any public or private communications, government or non-government,” said an undocketed filing posted Tuesday. The FCC Wireless Bureau approved a similar waiver last year (see 2311270044).
As Hurricane Milton approaches Florida, the FCC Wireless Bureau on Tuesday approved waivers for Federated Wireless and Google of rules that require environmental sensing capability systems to protect federal incumbents in Florida in the citizens broadband radio service band from harmful interference. The waivers are similar to those the companies received during other recent storms (see 2409260035).