Public interest, consumer groups and two providers called on the FCC Tuesday to launch a proceeding that examines “uniform, industrywide” handset unlocking requirements. Industry officials said they expect Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel to circulate a notice this week examining the issue for a vote at the July 18 commission meeting. The Open Technology Institute at New America, Consumer Reports, Public Knowledge and the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, as well as Verizon and EchoStar, parent of Dish Wireless, signed the joint letter.
The FCC Media Bureau is seeking comment on channel substitutions for King Broadcasting Company and Gray Television Licensee, NPRMs in Monday's Federal Register said. Comments are due July 24 in docket No. 24–152 for King’s request to switch the channel for KTVB Boise from 7 to 23, and in docket No. 24–153 for WRDW–TV Augusta, Georgia, to change from 27 to 12, the NPRMs said.
Congress should renew the affordable connectivity program (ACP) and protect local authority in the right of way (ROW), mayors attending the U.S. Conference of Mayors conference said Sunday. City leaders adopted resolutions on ACP, ROW compensation and opposing the American Broadband Act (HR-3557), which is a package of GOP-led connectivity permitting revamp measures (see 2311060069). The conference adopted the resolutions as part of a unanimous consent agenda Sunday after the Technology and Innovation Committee approved them unanimously Friday. ACP “has been one of the most effective broadband benefit programs to date with its direct-to-consumer model to enroll low-income households and help ensure they can afford the internet connections they need for work, school [and] healthcare,” the first resolution said: The conference urges Congress to renew and extend ACP this year “to ensure eligible households have access to affordable high-speed internet.” The second resolution on local compensation noted that some members of the FCC, Congress and state legislatures “have wrongly characterized this balancing act among competing interests for the public rights-of-way and maintenance of local authority as a barrier to broadband deployment, putting the interests of national corporations ahead of the needs of communities by effectively granting those corporations subsidized access to local public rights-of-way that do not belong to the federal or state government.” Congress should pass a bill amending the Cable Act’s franchise fee section to correct the FCC and the 6th U.S. Circuit of Appeals misreading of the act “and make clear that no other provision of the Cable Act limits or preempts state or local fees or taxes on cable operators or on the non-cable services they provide,” it said. Also, Congress should approve the Protecting Community Television Act (HR-907 and S-340) “to make clear that the cost of non-monetary franchise obligations do not constitute a ‘franchise fee’ under the Cable Act,” the resolution said. And the FCC should act soon on a related remand from the 6th Circuit that has been waiting for action for more than two years, it said. The third resolution urged that Congress drop HR-3557, which “would bestow on broadband providers an unprecedented federal grant of access to state and local public property but impose no obligations on those providers to serve ‘unserved’ and ‘underserved’ Americans.”
The Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials opposed an ATIS petition for reconsideration or clarification of the agency’s January outage reporting order (see 2406120043). Oppositions were due Monday. The ATIS petition is confusing, APCO said in a filing posted Monday in docket 21-346. ATIS asked the FCC to clarify the application of its waiver of network outage reporting system filings during disaster information reporting system activations. “If ATIS’s request is to excuse service providers from their obligation to provide timely notifications” to 911 call centers “of network outages and disruptions affecting 9-1-1 calls, APCO opposes the request,” the filing said.
Hikvision representatives met with FCC Office of Engineering and Technology staff seeking guidance on the commission’s information disclosure rules, said a filing last week in docket 21-232. Representatives explained that ownership of the China-based company is complicated. “OET acknowledged the challenges of gathering the information and Hikvision advised that it would update its disclosure as it obtains additional information,” the filing said.
The FCC Wireless Bureau Monday approved utility company Evergy's request for a waiver of the agency’s 2018 900 MHz licensing freeze, thus providing it with access to additional spectrum (see 1809130064). The bureau noted that when it sought comment on the request last year, there were no filings in support or opposition (see 2309120047). “Grant of a waiver is in the public interest, as Evergy has demonstrated a long-standing need to upgrade and expand a complex multi-state communications system that is critical to its extensive utility operations and the safety of its personnel, and thereby replace significantly older, no longer supported network equipment,” the bureau said. Evergy has headquarters in Topeka, Kansas, and in Kansas City, Missouri.
A representative of the Open Technology Institute (OTI) at New America discussed the future of the 12 and 42 GHz bands in a meeting with an aide to FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, a filing posted Monday in docket 20-443 said. In the 12 GHz band, OTI supports a tribal set-aside and a “use it or share it” condition, the filing said. OTI noted that the FCC sought comment on the 42 GHz band last year (see 2310020041): Comments “demonstrate a general consensus that a sharing framework premised on open access, non-exclusive licensing by rule, and automated database coordination will best serve the public interest.”
Dover became the latest city to urge the FCC not to grant the FirstNet Authority effective control of the 4.9 GHz band (see 2406210045). The FCC’s current 4.9 GHz rules “allow effective communications by public-safety agencies and their partners in Dover, and throughout Delaware,” a filing last week in docket 07-100 said.
The FCC’s motion that would transfer the consolidated challenges of the commission’s net neutrality order to the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit (see 2406100044) is part of a trend of federal agencies that attempt to use venue-transfer motions “to steer major regulatory challenges out of the regional circuits,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a 6th Circuit amicus brief Friday in opposition (dockets 24-7000, 24-3449, 24-3450, 24-3497, 24-3504, 24-3507, 24-3508, 24-3510, 24-3511, 24-3517, 24-3519, 24-3538). This trend harms litigants and courts as it saddles them with “burdensome threshold litigation” in cases that often already involve “fast-paced litigation over stays and other interim relief,” the chamber said. In addition, the trend harms the regulated public, “impairing its right to hold agencies accountable for unlawful conduct in the jurisdictions where that conduct harms the public.” The FCC’s transfer motion is “especially inappropriate” because it would “undermine” the judicial lottery system, “reintroducing through the back door of transfer motions the forum shopping that Congress sought to eliminate when it established the current system of random selection in 1988,” it said. But the FCC stands firm in its support of the transfer, its reply said Friday. This latest round of “follow-on litigation” involves essentially the same parties, legal landscape, and issues that the D.C. Circuit “has been grappling with” through each successive net neutrality case and order, the FCC said. Should the litigation proceed in the 6th Circuit instead of the D.C. Circuit, the 6th Circuit and the parties “would need to expend considerable resources to walk the same ground already traveled during the previous years of litigation in the D.C. Circuit,” it said.
Vodafone and other wireless carriers have a ways to go to deploy 5G and are in no hurry to get to 6G, David Lister, Vodafone 6G research lead, said Monday during a 6G workshop streamed at the Technology & Innovation Centre at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland.