With 90 Starlinks in orbit that have direct-to-device capability, SpaceX is talking with the FCC about ensuring that testing in international markets doesn't run afoul of agency rules. The commission can facilitate testing by ensuring experimental authority defers to local authorities in those international markets, SpaceX said in a docket 23-135 filing posted Wednesday recapping meetings with FCC Space Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology staff. It said applying the FCC's "one-size-fits-all out-of-band emissions limit" to supplemental coverage from space testing in international markets would undermine foreign regulators' development of their SCS frameworks and rules.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit should overturn the FCC’s implementation of the 2023 Low Power Protection Act because it favors full-power stations, unlawfully uses data from Nielsen, and limits the number of Class A stations, according to a final brief and final reply brief from Radio Communication Corp. Tuesday. The FCC’s Class A license allocation system is “designed to protect NAB’s Clients” -- the brief defines NAB’s Clients as full-power stations -- and turns “the LPPA’s LPTV protection purpose on its head.” The FCC has said that its LPPA order followed the plain direction of the LPPA's text: The agency “correctly interpreted the statutory requirement that an eligible station ‘operate in a Designated Market Area with not more than 95,000 television households’ to mean that an eligible station must be located within a Designated Market Area that has no more than 95,000 television households,” the FCC has said. RCC has argued that the term “operates” refers to a station’s community of license rather than its Nielsen-designated market area. “There is no way for the general public, or this Court, to know how Nielsen created and maintains DMAs or even ascertain what the boundaries of Class A licensing markets are without first subscribing to Nielsen’s service in exchange for payment,” RCC said. “We do not know, and cannot verify, whether parties paid money to Nielsen to have the DMAs drawn after Congress began working on the LPPA legislation, nor whether Nielsen has altered DMAs since the LPPA was adopted, or might alter the DMAs in the future based upon its own decision-making or because a broadcaster pays for the change.” The case isn't scheduled for oral argument. Instead, a D.C. Circuit merits panel will decide it on briefs alone.
The FCC Wireless Bureau on Wednesday granted a single license in the 900 MHz broadband segment to PDV Spectrum. The license covers Marshall County, Alabama. The FCC approved an order in 2020 reallocating a 6 MHz swath in the band for broadband, while maintaining 4 MHz for narrowband operations (see 2005130057).
The Coalition for Emergency Response and Critical Infrastructure (CERCI) this week launched another attack against giving FirstNet effective control of the 4.9 GHz band. AT&T disputed CERCI’s arguments. At the FCC, CERCI filed a recent Commerce Department Office of Inspector General report, which it said found “FirstNet failed in its oversight of AT&T’s compliance with device connection targets for public safety users.” The report said the FirstNet Authority “does not have reasonable assurance that the data AT&T is reporting is accurate and reliable to support the primary program objectives of public safety adoption and use of the network.” That claim points to “a serious failure of FirstNet to meet one of its fundamental responsibilities,” a Tuesday filing in docket 07-100 said. Jim Bugel, AT&T president-FirstNet, said in a statement, “Audits and reviews like these are a routine part of government oversight designed to provide independent perspective on federal entities’ operations.” He added, “No other wireless network is subject to this robust level of scrutiny and accountability, and no other wireless network has delivered more for public safety.” AT&T welcomes the oversight, Bugel said.
Consumer advocates urged the FCC to act on a petition filed last month about using communication assistants (CA) in IP captioned telephone services (see 2406030062). The Hearing Loss Association of America, National Association for the Deaf and TDIforAccess noted in a letter Tuesday (docket 03-123) that automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology doesn't always correctly process speech with "accents, dialects, or patterns that deviate from standard American English." Without performance or accuracy standards for ASR systems used by IP CTS providers, there is "no way of knowing if the ASR systems that are being used to transcribe calls" are "more or less accurate" than calls a CA transcribes, the groups warned.
It appears House Republican leadership isn’t willing to bring the House Commerce Committee’s bipartisan privacy bill to the floor because it lacks the necessary votes to pass, members and sources close to discussions told us Wednesday.
Smart city applications are joining the list of factors driving the need for more licensed and unlicensed spectrum, spectrum and smart city experts said Wednesday during a Broadband Breakfast panel discussion. Beyond more spectrum, smart cities will require a lot of spectrum sharing and maximized use of existing allocations, they said. There isn't one route to smart cities, and the spectrum isn't needed for a single purpose, said Richard Bernhardt, Wireless ISP Association vice president-spectrum and industry. Cities rely particularly heavily on unlicensed spectrum for smart city applications, said Ryan Johnston, Next Century Cities senior policy counsel. He said municipal governments are often left out of spectrum strategy and policy discussions, even though they are becoming big consumers of spectrum. He said they should be at the table for spectrum sharing and allocation discussions.
The FCC, intervenors and amici who benefit from E-rate funding contend that authorizing Wi-Fi on school buses will advance students’ education, but there’s “powerful and growing evidence to doubt that claim,” petitioners Maurine and Matthew Molak said in their 5th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court reply brief Monday (docket 23-60641).
The FCC moved quickly and effectively to clamp down on a January robocall that created a deepfake of the voice of President Joe Biden urging recipients to skip the New Hampshire primary (see 2402060087). However, preventing similar fakes may prove more difficult, Greg Bohl, chief data officer at Transaction Network Services, warned the FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee Wednesday. CAC is focused on AI this term (see 2404040040).
To fulfill its “broad mandate” under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the FCC in the digital discrimination order on review “adopted rules that prohibit practices with unjustified discriminatory effects on access to broadband service,” plus intentional discrimination, the commission’s brief said Tuesday (docket 24-1179) in the 8th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court.