The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has lifted the stay in Consumers’ Research’s latest challenge to the USF, according to an order Wednesday in docket 25-60535. The FCC previously requested the stay during the government shutdown and earlier this week asked for it to be lifted (see 2512020011).
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr cracked self-deprecating jokes about his relationship with President Donald Trump, the uproar over his conflict with Jimmy Kimmel, and his colleagues on the commission during his first address as chairman at the annual FCBA dinner Wednesday night. Directly across Massachusetts Avenue from the event at Washington’s Marriott Marquis hotel, Free Press, Public Knowledge and Tech Freedom projected criticisms of the Carr administration onto the front of the Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church.
Chairman Charlie Ergen and others from EchoStar met with FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and his aides to emphasize that the company didn’t want to sell its spectrum licenses to AT&T and SpaceX (see 2509090036) but was left with little choice, according to an ex parte filing posted Thursday. Meanwhile, EchoStar and AT&T jointly defended the deal in a separate filing posted Thursday in docket 25-303.
The FCC Enforcement Bureau sent a letter to SK Teleco demanding that the voice service provider, which is allegedly transmitting scam robocalls impersonating Walmart employees, “immediately cease-and-desist processing these calls.” The calls discuss a “preauthorized purchase of PlayStation 5 special edition with pulse 3D headset” ordered from the recipient’s Walmart account for $919.45, the bureau said this week. Call recipients who press 1 to cancel the order, as instructed, or who call back “are connected to live operators who request personally identifiable information, including social security numbers,” the bureau said. It’s “unlawful to place calls to cellphones containing artificial or prerecorded voice messages absent an emergency purpose or prior express consent,” said an FCC news release.
Connect America Fund Phase II auction carriers that fall short of a Dec. 31 milestone to serve 100% of required locations must notify the FCC within 10 days of that deadline, the Wireline Bureau said Tuesday. Providers then have a one-year “cure period” to serve remaining locations, the bureau said. They must report and certify in the high-cost universal broadband by March 1, 2027, “any further locations it has served during the cure period.”
The FCC Wireline Bureau, “on its own motion,” has extended the comment deadlines for the IP interconnection NPRM approved by commissioners in October (see 2510280024). Comments are now due Jan. 5, replies Feb. 4, in docket 25-304, said a notice this week. The NPRM proposes to sunset incumbent local exchange carriers' interconnection obligations on Dec. 31, 2028, and seeks comment on ways that the FCC can help a transition to all-IP interconnection for voice services.
Multiple state attorneys general said Wednesday that their Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force was warning Lumen, Peerless, Inteliquent and Bandwidth about ongoing illegal robocall traffic on their networks.
A U.S. Chamber of Commerce representative urged the FCC to move quickly to streamline siting in a meeting with aides to FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty, according to a filing posted Wednesday in docket 25-133. Chamber members “have expressed concerns with obtaining federal decisions in a variety of contexts in the communications sector including siting” and “spectrum licensing decisions for space activities,” the filing said.
The FCC on Wednesday rejected a request by Assist Wireless, Boomerang Wireless, Easy Wireless and i-wireless asking the agency to grant the companies' applications for review on upward revisions for reimbursement of services provided in the last month of the Lifeline COVID-19 waiver period (see 2504030027). In June, Chairman Brendan Carr circulated an order denying the carriers’ requests (see 2506270060). The order was approved 3-0 by commissioners.
The FCC Wireless Bureau on Wednesday approved AT&T’s proposed purchase of 700 MHz and 3.45 GHz licenses from the former UScellular for $1 billion. The approval came after AT&T agreed to end any trace of diversity, equity and inclusion in its hiring and other practices and made concessions to NATE (see 2512020061). The FCC has also quickly moved on proposed transactions from Verizon and T-Mobile after they offered similar concessions. In each case, approval has been through staff orders rather than commissioner action.