Dish Wireless objected at the FCC to a Universal Service Administrative Co. finding that some households it served under the affordable connectivity program and emergency broadband benefit program were ineligible and didn’t comply with USAC’s one-per-household rule.
Appalachian Power Co. is denying Comcast access to its poles that have preexisting safety violations unless Comcast pays for replacing the pole, Comcast told the FCC in a pole attachment complaint posted Wednesday. Comcast said it needs access to thousands of Appalachian power poles for its network expansion work in Virginia, including bringing connectivity to 13,000 BEAD-funded locations in the state. It said Appalachian has adopted a policy where Comcast must pay the total cost of replacing the preexisting violation pole, "with, at best, the potential for a 50% reimbursement at the whim of the preexisting violator." That's despite FCC rules saying pole owners can't charge new attachers the cost of addressing preexisting violations of safety or construction standards or delay new attachers while the pole owner tries to fix the preexisting violation or seek reimbursement from the preexisting violator. Appalachian didn't comment.
"Trusted" U.S.-based submarine line terminal equipment owners and operators that don't pose a big national security risk should be exempt from all SLTE-related licensing and reporting requirements, NCTA said last week (docket 24-523). An example would be NCTA members that use completely domestic SLTE and lease fiber capacity to provide connectivity from a U.S. location to another U.S. location, it said. With those systems being wholly domestic and owned and operated by trusted U.S.-based entities, they don't pose a notable national security risk and should be excluded from any FCC subsea cable system licensing rules, NCTA said.
The FCC should take action against statewide exclusivity contracts between MVPDs, state athletic associations and networks that prevent local broadcasters from airing high school sports championships, said Mid-State Multimedia President Robert Meisse in a filing in docket 25-322 Tuesday.
Industry groups are concerned about FCC proposals to relax restrictions on sharing disaster reporting information with public safety authorities and the public but are broadly supportive of agency plans to streamline the disaster information reporting system (DIRS), according to comments filed in docket 21-346. Public disclosure of outage reporting data “could compromise public safety and network security, particularly at a time when vandalism of communications network infrastructure is on the rise,” said ACA Connects. The FCC should focus on more education and engagement with state public safety officials, “not a lowering of standards for protecting sensitive information from public disclosure.” But Public Knowledge said wider dissemination of outage data could improve public safety and enhance competition by giving the public another category in which to compare providers.
The FCC seems likely to move toward looser spectrum-sharing rules between non-geostationary and geostationary orbit satellites, allowing for NGSOs to operate at higher equivalent power flux density (EPFD) levels, satellite and spectrum experts tell us. That could mean big momentum for NGSO efforts to get similar changes made at the 2027 World Radiocommunication Conference, we're told. The FCC chairman's office didn't comment.
Congress hasn’t given the FCC any authority over the national TV ownership cap, said the American Television Alliance in a letter filed in docket 17-318 Monday. Congress set the cap at 39% and explicitly removed the new cap from the Commission’s quadrennial review process, ATVA said. “When Congress directs agency action -- whether through codification in a statute or through a direction to change a rule --the agency cannot undo that action unless Congress has authorized it to do so.” The U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down Chevron deference made it clear that “congressional silence is no longer an invitation for regulatory discretion,” the filing said. ATVA said broadcaster arguments that the FCC has authority over the cap are undercut by its filings from 2013, when the FCC was examining doing away with the UHF discount. “Broadcasters say it is obvious that the FCC has broad authority to raise the national cap because Congress failed to ‘enshrine’ it in the statute” but also said it was “obvious that the Commission did not have any authority to change the cap when broadcasters thought the FCC might lower it,” ATVA said.
The FCC Public Safety Bureau has issued a public notice reminding broadcasters that they're responsible for securing their networks against cyberattacks after a series of hacking incidents led to “obscene materials” and EAS tones being broadcast by stations in Texas and Virginia. WVTF Roanoke said its feed was hacked Nov. 19, broadcasting music with obscene, racist phrases to listeners in Richmond. “We had some dead-air that triggered the switch to back-up audio where an unauthorized audio loop was placed by the hacker,” said the station. In Mont Belvieu, Texas, KFNC's feed was reportedly hacked to play a loop of EAS tones during an NFL broadcast.
The full FCC has rejected a broadcaster’s appeal of a Media Bureau decision denying reconsideration of a New Jersey AM radio station’s license cancellation, said an order Tuesday. The Media Bureau ruled in 2024 that Forsythe Broadcasting’s license for WNJC Washington Township was automatically canceled because the station had been off the air for more than a year without seeking FCC permission to temporarily go silent. Forsythe had argued that its silence was due to economic complications from the COVID-19 pandemic and the expiration of the lease to its transmitter site. In its application for review asking the commissioners to overturn the bureau's decision, Forsythe repeated the same previously rejected arguments, said Tuesday’s order. “We deny the AFR because Forsythe has failed again to demonstrate the Station’s silence is the result of circumstances beyond its control. Therefore, we decline to exercise our discretion in this situation to reinstate the Station’s license.”
Comments are due Dec.10 on AT&T’s applications to discontinue domestic non-dominant carrier telecommunications and interconnected VOIP services for its Easy Reach 800 Service nationwide and for AT&T Phone for Business in Richardson, Texas, according to a public notice Tuesday. The applications will be granted automatically on Dec. 26 unless the FCC notifies AT&T that they won’t be.