The increasing adoption of AI and U.S. leadership in the technology require massive investments in wireless infrastructure, a focus on making more spectrum available, and attention from Congress and regulators on making those things happen, said speakers at the Wireless Infrastructure Association's Building the AI Future event Wednesday in Washington, D.C. “The bricklaying for AI that telecom provides is really, really important,” said Deputy NTIA Administrator Adam Cassady, while Crown Castle COO Cathy Piche told the panel that “wireless infrastructure is really AI infrastructure.”
More consolidation among local broadcast stations is a must for survival, but beyond a change in ownership, it will also bring a change in how stations operate, station group owners said Wednesday at NAB’s annual New York City show. They also said the ATSC 3.0 transition needs a deadline for exiting 1.0 that the FCC will support.
The FCC should ensure that any changes to space technology licensing, as proposed in an NPRM on the agency's October meeting agenda (see 2510070038), maintain "a transparent and predictable sharing environment," CTIA told Commissioner Anna Gomez, Space Bureau Chief Jay Schwarz and aides to Chairman Brendan Carr and Commissioner Olivia Trusty. In an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 25-306, the group said updates must not "inadvertently undermine the rights of terrestrial license holders in shared bands ... where a mutual operational understanding is critical to enable network deployments, prevent confusion, and ultimately speed implementation" of modernization efforts. The FCC should also clarify its meaning of "blanket licensing" and keep existing limits for out-of-band emissions, CTIA said.
Warner Bros. Discovery said Tuesday that while it continues to pursue its split of Warner Bros. and Discovery Global, it also has started looking at alternatives in light of unsolicited offers from multiple parties either for WB or the entire company. Options under consideration include a transaction for the whole company, separate transactions for its WB or Discovery businesses, or a merger of WB plus a spinoff of Discovery to shareholders, WBD said. There's no deadline or timetable for completing the alternatives review process, it added. The company's split, announced in June (see 2506090024), is expected to be completed by mid-2026.
Congress should eliminate the FCC’s public interest authority because it's unconstitutional and based on an outdated view of the media marketplace, wrote Free State Foundation CEO Randolph May in a post Tuesday. “FCC commissioners from both political parties have invoked the public interest standard to threaten free speech rights.” Congress should overhaul the Communications Act to reflect modern changes to the media marketplace and remove the public interest authority in the process, he said. “I will concede that I am not optimistic that Congress will act anytime soon to do what I suggest here and have long recommended. But it could, and it should.”
Amazon Web Services inexplicably gets a pass on the regulatory standards that far smaller enterprises such as telecom providers work under, Strand Consult's John Strand wrote Tuesday. AWS consistently lobbies against requirements for it to financially support more accessible and resilient access networks, including investments in broadband infrastructure and connectivity vouchers for low-income users, he said. There's a discussion to be had about whether AWS operates "a parallel internet" of fiber-optic backbones, routers and interconnection points and "whether these elements constitute 'telecommunications' under U.S. law." AWS likely is already eligible to contribute to USF but doesn't due to FCC forbearance, which lets AWS claim a self-provider exemption, he noted.
The FCC should “reverse course” on superseding and suspending its 2024 incarcerated people’s communications services (IPCS) order (see 2506300068), said the United Church of Christ, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, the Pennsylvania Prison Society and other justice reform groups in a letter posted Tuesday in docket 23-62. Evidence in the record shows that jails that providers said would lose service because of the 2024 order haven’t, the letter said. Continued reliance on claims that jails have lost service due to the 2024 order would be “arbitrary and capricious.” It's also arbitrary and capricious for the FCC to vote on the draft IPCS order slated for the Oct. 28 meeting without first taking up the pending application for review challenging the bureau-level suspension of the 2024 order, the groups said, because they address similar issues. “Given that the Commission has considered substantively a number of issues in its order, it is the height of arbitrary and capricious behavior for the Commission to fail to grant or deny the Application, at least as to the issues it will address if the Draft Order is adopted.”
Advocacy group Americans for Responsible Technology is urging municipal officials and local school board members to lobby against the wireless infrastructure NPRM on the FCC's October agenda (see 2510070038). The group, which fights wireless radiation, said in an email Tuesday that the NPRM is "an incredible act of hubris" that proposes "to do away with virtually all local control over the deployment of wireless towers and antennas." It launched a website, 25-276.org -- using the docket number for the proceeding -- "to help local officials understand the issue and submit their comments directly to the FCC."
The Senate Commerce Committee cleared the Global Investment in American Jobs Act (S-2563) on Tuesday, but only after a sometimes-contentious debate in which Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., attempted to attach an amendment aimed at criticizing actions by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and the Trump administration that were perceived as damaging the First Amendment. The panel also unanimously advanced an amended version of the Foreign Robocall Elimination Act (S-2666).
Financial and electric utility trade groups are urging the FCC to extend the compliance deadline for its revoke-all robocall rule, given that the caller ID further NPRM on the agency's October agenda proposes rolling back that rule. In separate comments posted Tuesday in docket 17-59, both industry coalitions said meeting the currently proposed April 11, 2026, deadline would mean businesses would have to start allocating resources now. The electric utility associations noted that any subsequent revisions would represent wasted investments.