The elimination of the broadcast TV national ownership cap would lead to higher prices for MVPD consumers and lower broadcasting viewership, said DirecTV in an ex parte filing posted Monday in docket 17-318. NAB's arguments that eliminating the cap won’t raise retransmission consent fees “is a curious position from an organization whose two biggest members seek to merge with the explicit goal of achieving ‘contractual revenue synergies,’” said DirecTV, referencing Nexstar’s proposed $6.2 billion purchase of Tegna.
T-Mobile wants to work with the FCC on revised rules for wireless and wireline deployments, carrier representatives said in meetings with aides to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and Commissioner Olivia Trusty. The agency will take up items on wireless and wireline rule changes at the Sept. 30 meeting (see 2509090060).
WISPA urged the FCC this week to release the data specifications that providers should follow when seeking to restore locations in the broadband data collection (BDC) and to post a public notice with detailed guidance. The FCC Office of Economics and Analytics was instructed to provide direction, in consultation with other bureaus and offices, in an order last year, WISPA noted.
T-Mobile and Grain submitted to the FCC various documents on their pending low-band spectrum transaction. Filed Monday in docket 25-178, the documents were fully redacted. Grain Management agreed to buy T-Mobile's 800 MHz spectrum in exchange for cash and Grain's 600 MHz spectrum portfolio (see 2503210033). Grain plans to work with utilities and others to deploy services using the 800 MHz spectrum.
New Jersey State Police supports a petition from the Safer Buildings Coalition urging the FCC to launch a rulemaking on guidelines for getting consent from licensees to install signal boosters (see 2507210025), said a filing Tuesday in RM-12009. Implementing the proposal “to involve proven frequency coordination precedents would help to standardize and streamline the approval process, leading to a single, known, published standard for all authorities having jurisdiction, licensees, signal booster system designers and installers,” it said. The police division was the first to weigh in on the petition.
The courts have spoken, upholding the FCC’s stance that cellphone location data is customer proprietary network information regulated by the agency, the Electronic Privacy Information Center said Tuesday. “It feels like a rare treat these days to be able to share positive updates related to our privacy and cybersecurity work,” EPIC said. “The journey to get to this point has been quite a saga, spanning well over five years.”
Nationwide commercial mobile radio service providers must enable georouting of texts sent to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by April 16, 2027, the FCC Wireline Bureau said Tuesday (docket 18-336). The compliance deadline for non-nationwide providers is Oct. 16, 2028. FCC commissioners adopted a 988 text georouting requirement during the agency's July meeting (see 2507240055).
The FCC Wireline Bureau on Tuesday reminded incarcerated people’s communications service providers that they must file annual reports by Nov. 3. The FCC has delayed the reporting deadline three times. It was originally April 1.
The FCC is demanding that Boomerang Wireless and Assist Wireless repay $1.18 million in what the agency says were overpayments for connected devices as part of the affordable connectivity program (ACP) and emergency broadband benefit (EBB) program. In a statement Tuesday, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr called the companies "unscrupulous providers." Some companies saw the pandemic-era programs "as a target for overfilling and padded their reimbursement requests."
Nexstar said Tuesday it would join Sinclair in continuing to preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live!, despite the show's return to ABC's lineup starting Tuesday night, while FCC Chairman Brendan Carr continued to insist on social media that he didn't cause Kimmel’s suspension.