The FCC Wireline Bureau Tuesday posted updated responses to questions on the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program as well as a new user guide. “We encourage Reimbursement Program recipients to regularly consult the Reimbursement Program webpage for updates,” the bureau said. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has urged Congress to close the more than $3 billion shortfall in the rip and replace program, which pays for replacing Huawei and ZTE communications gear and services from mostly wireless networks (see 2405020071).
Viaero Wireless told the FCC on Tuesday that absent further funding from Congress it will suspend a program for removing Huawei gear from its network. Viaero said it installed Huawei radio access network gear at nearly 900 cellsites “over the course of many years.” It must replace “all this RAN equipment, as well as other Huawei gear used for backhaul (microwave) and core switching.” Viaero is “exhausting its own financial resources to fund parts of the project, including payments to third-party vendors, well in advance of receiving reimbursement from the FCC,” a filing in docket 18-89 said. Based on recent assessments of the scope of work ahead and the company’s financial resources, “by the end of 2024, Viaero will be required to suspend work on this project if additional funding from Congress is not provided,” the filing said. Congress is considering, but has not yet approved, legislation providing an additional $3.08 billion for the FCC’s Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program (see 2408090041).
Representatives of EchoStar, Public Knowledge and the Open Technology Institute at New America met with an aide to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in support of a 60-day mandatory unlocking requirement on handsets. They also urged the FCC to clear use of the lower 12 GHz band for fixed wireless and address a revised spectrum screen, a filing Tuesday in docket 24-186 and other dockets said. “Nothing stands in the Commission’s way to unleashing 500 MHz of spectrum in the 12.2-12.7 GHz band for fixed 5G broadband services,” they said: “The Commission’s current spectrum policies have not imposed or enforced effective limits on spectrum aggregation.” Representatives of the three groups have been making the rounds at the FCC (see 2408090037).
Any incoming presidential administration must “be ready to implement a reindustrialization plan" and change financial rules to resurrect American manufacturing and compete with China, FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington wrote in China is Winning, Now What?, an essay in the fall issue of the journal American Affairs. The essay doesn’t mention the FCC, and it only touches on tech policy. Instead, it focuses on China’s superior manufacturing capacity and on the global dependency on Chinese products. “It would have been unthinkable for Cold War America to source key components in logistics and telecommunications from the Warsaw Pact,” Simington wrote. “And yet, our long history of peaceful relations with the PRC [People’s Republic of China] has led us to sleepwalk into exactly this unacceptable state of dependency.” Simington noted that the rise of electric vehicles has positioned China as a global competitor to the U.S. auto industry and said a collapse of American carmakers would deeply injure America. Should China become the dominant international automaker, it could “normalize the presence of hundreds of millions of vehicles packed with sensors, radios, and firmware on every road in the world,” Simington added. “The intelligence benefits alone are incalculable, but control of such markets will in addition weaken countries that the PRC routinely calls its geopolitical adversaries.” To address the matter, the U.S. should “use tariffs and waivers as precision tools for strategic products and industries” but it must also “address larger questions of tax, accounting, and finance rules that have contributed to an anti-industry investment environment,” Simington wrote. Federal spending should be reallocated “to promote world peace through American strength.” He added, “The social costs of failure, here and abroad, will blight the lives of generations yet unborn.”
Industry urged the FCC to proceed cautiously when crafting rules for the cybersecurity labeling administrators (CLAs) and for the lead administrator, who will oversee an IoT product registry under the cyber trust mark program. Commenters disagreed about how much data consumers will need to ensure their IoT products are safe.
ISP and banking groups urged that the FCC update letter of credit (LOC) rules for its high-cost universal service programs. In reply comments posted Tuesday in docket 24-144, the groups said the record reflected overwhelming support for changes to the rules. Weiss Ratings founder Martin Weiss defended the "independence, objectivity, and accuracy" of the company's ratings in a letter to the FCC.
ASPEN -- Funding the Universal Service Fund (USF) through general appropriations might make sense on paper, but speaking practically it might not be a feasible goal for Congress, Democratic and Republican staffers said Tuesday.
House Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz of Texas and six other top GOP lawmakers urged the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Monday to strike down the FCC’s April net neutrality rules and reclassification of broadband as a Communications Act Title II service (see 2408140043). FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel separately told Rodgers, Cruz and other Republican lawmakers she remains “confident that the Commission’s rules and decisions will withstand judicial review under the [U.S.] Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and other applicable precedent.”
SpaceX subsidiary Swarm Technologies wants FCC Space Bureau approval for SpaceX to integrate VHF-band mobile satellite service Swarm antennas as payloads on SpaceX's first-generation non-geostationary orbit satellite system. In an application posted Monday, Swarm said SpaceX's second-gen Starlink satellites have used similar payloads for more than 16 months with no interference complaints. It said the payloads would let SpaceX better track and maintain contact with first-gen satellites during space weather events and orbit raising.
An Israeli company is seeking U.S. market access for its BeetleSat non-geostationary orbit constellation. In an FCC Space Bureau petition posted Monday, NSLComm said BeetleSat will deliver point-to-point secure communications, mobility, cellular backhaul and other services. It said the expandable antennas on the 9 kg nanonsatellites will let it offer Gbps bandwidth communications 100 times more efficient than other systems in operation. NSLComm said it launched its second demonstration satellite, NSLSAT-2, in January 2023. The company plans to deploy two more demonstration satellites by the end of 2025, and commence full-scale commercial BeetleSat services in 2027, with a goal of deploying a 344-satellite constellation in two phases.