CTIA, wireless carriers and representatives of the airline industry briefed aides to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and other agency staff about their work on opening the upper C band to licensed use while protecting air safety systems, said a filing posted Friday by CTIA. They updated the commission “on the efforts of the wireless and aviation industries to work together to define a consensus analytical framework for evaluating potential coexistence parameters between wireless operations above 3.98 GHz and altimeters operating in the 4.2-4.4 GHz band.”
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said Friday that he will seek a vote at the Oct. 28 open meeting on revisions to incarcerated people’s communications services (IPCS) rules, which were approved with his vote during the Biden administration. Last month, the FCC said commissioners would vote at the meeting in a filing at the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is reviewing challenges to the 2024 order (see 2509080034).
The government shutdown that has largely suspended FCC activity (see 2510010065) continues at least through Monday, after the Senate gaveled out for the weekend without reaching the 60-vote cloture threshold on dueling GOP and Democratic continuing resolutions to temporarily restore appropriations. The chamber voted 54-44 on Republicans’ House-passed measure (HR-5371) to reopen the government through Nov. 21, with only three Democrats in support. It voted 46-52 on Democrats’ version (S-2882), which would restore federal appropriations through Oct. 31 and bring back CPB’s rescinded $535 million funding for FY 2026. The Senate will vote on both resolutions again Monday night.
The Senate Commerce Committee isn’t looking to bring in FCC Chairman Brendan Carr as a potential additional witness at Wednesday's planned hearing to examine what Republicans call government agencies’ actions to pressure major social media platforms to engage in “jawboning” (see 2510020041), a spokesperson told us Thursday night. Panel Democrats had been pushing for the hearing to include Carr because they want him to answer questions about his mid-September comments against ABC and parent Disney, which were widely perceived as influencing the network’s since-reversed decision to pull Jimmy Kimmel Live! from the air (see 2509220059). A Senate Commerce aide confirmed that Carr “will be coming to testify,” but the panel hasn’t set a date yet, and it won’t happen “before November.”
The FCC "has become a convenient political tool [that] too often abandons its independence," and Chairman Brendan Carr should front efforts to dismantle it, wrote Mark Jamison, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. The reasons it was created in 1934 "have disappeared," he said Friday, including regulation of the old Bell telephone monopoly and oversight of public airwaves. The agency's increased politicization is hurting investment, Jamison argued. Meanwhile, the Bell monopoly no longer exists, and many of the commission's consumer protection and equipment authorization functions could be done by other agencies, he said, adding that many of its jobs already overlap with other federal departments.
The FCC added a section to its Further NPRM seeking comment on whether correctional facilities should be allowed to jam cell signals, with an eye to preventing the use of contraband phones. Commissioners approved the NPRM Tuesday 3-0, with questions on a potential pilot program added at the request of Commissioner Anna Gomez (see 2509300063).
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez signaled that she's open to relaxing some broadcast-ownership rules, called for a clearly defined public interest standard, and again condemned FCC “censorship and control” efforts in her latest “First Amendment Tour” speech Thursday evening. “While one set of outlets is defunded, stripped of licenses or publicly admonished, others are quietly promoted and cleared of regulatory obstacles,” Gomez told a modest crowd at the University of Mississippi. The Trump administration’s goal “is not to reduce bias or to ensure balance, but to engineer a media environment that echoes the government's worldview.”
The American Library Association is disappointed that the FCC’s order canceling the Biden-era internet hot spots program cuts grants for FY 2025 applicants, said Megan Janicki, the group’s deputy director for strategic initiatives. FCC items eliminating that program, as well as one that provided Wi-Fi connections for students on school buses, passed Tuesday in a pair of 2-1 votes (see 2509300051), with dissents by Commissioner Anna Gomez.
The regulatory structure that governs broadcasting “is an anachronism” and wouldn’t exist if it were a new technology introduced today, wrote Eric Fruits, a senior scholar for the International Center for Law & Economics, in a post Thursday for Truth on the Market. An emerging technology today wouldn't be subject to rules like retransmission consent, ownership caps and the public interest standard, he said. “The idea that a panel of three to five presidentially appointed FCC commissioners in Washington can better determine the ‘public interest’ than the public itself -- through its viewing choices in a competitive market -- is a relic of progressive-era central planning,” Fruits said. “In reality, the vague standard invites regulatory capture and rent seeking, where politically connected groups lobby the FCC to define the public interest in ways that benefit them, rather than the public at-large.”
The Senate Commerce Committee said Wednesday night that it plans to vote Oct. 8 on the Foreign Robocall Elimination Act (S-2666). The measure would direct the FCC to create a public-private task force to recommend new methods “to combat unlawful robocalls made into” the U.S. from outside the country, as well as determine whether the agency’s Stir/Shaken rules “adequately provide call authentication for unlawful robocalls from foreign originating providers or foreign intermediate providers through gateway providers” in the U.S. The task force would also examine whether creating a robocall-focused office within DOJ would improve the department’s ability to conduct enforcement against unlawful robocalls. The Senate Commerce meeting will begin at 10 a.m. in 253 Russell.