Don't give SpaceX waivers of the equivalent power flux density rules until interference, economic and anticompetitive concerns have been addressed in the pending EPFD rulemaking, SES affiliates told the FCC in a filing posted Wednesday (docket 25-340). SpaceX is seeking a waiver of EPFD and processing round requirements for its proposed direct-to-device and mobile satellite service system, but numerous parties have challenged its application (see 2601050028). The SES affiliates also said any non-geostationary orbit processing round rules waiver should be conditioned on SpaceX operating such that it doesn't interfere with other NGSO systems authorized in a processing round.
The FCC has the authority to lift or eliminate the national ownership cap, wrote Digital Progress Institute President Joel Thayer in a blog post Wednesday for the Yale Journal on Regulation. The Phoenix Center’s Lawrence Spiwak made the opposite argument in a post on the same site Sunday (see 2601060049).
There were 258.5 million telephone numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry as of Sept. 30, up roughly 4.8 million from the same time a year earlier, the FTC said this week in its biennial DNC Registry report to Congress. The agency said consumer complaints about illegal calls, particularly illegal robocalls, jumped in FY 2025 after steady declines from FY 2017-24. The number of robocall complaints averaged about 133,000 monthly in FY 2025, compared with about 92,000 a month in FY 2024, it said. Despite the uptick, the complaints remain "substantially down" from their FY 2017 peak.
The FCC Wireline Bureau reminded Priority 1 recipients of grants from the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program about the May 8 deadline “to complete the permanent removal, replacement, and disposal of covered communications equipment and services in their networks,” said a notice in Wednesday’s Daily Digest. The bureau said it’s encouraged by the progress that recipients have made since additional funding was made available last year to replace Chinese gear in their networks. More than three years have passed since July 2022, when the bureau approved the applications of Priority 1 recipients, “and they should be fully prepared to meet the … deadline.”
CTIA agreed with other commenters that urged the FCC to move with caution in response to a further NPRM approved in October as part of a broader order that further tightens the agency's equipment authorization rules (see 2601060037). Comments were posted this week in docket 21-232.
The FCC Wireless Bureau said Wednesday that it won’t extend the Jan. 15 deadline to file reply comments on an NPRM proposing changes to wireless infrastructure rules. Cities, including Boston, Dallas and Washington, sought the extension last month. Local and state governments raised concerns about the FCC proposals in initial comments (see 2601020017). “We find that the request does not provide adequate reasons to extend the time for commenters to file reply comments in this proceeding,” the bureau said in docket 25-276. Initial comments were due Dec. 31.
The FCC Public Safety Bureau asked for applications starting Wednesday for lead administrator of the commission’s voluntary cybersecurity labeling program. The application window closes Jan. 28. UL Solutions, selected as lead cybersecurity label administrator (CLA) during the Biden administration, withdrew last month, said a bureau notice Tuesday.
DOJ and the FCC asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit not to rehear an August decision upholding the FCC’s $80 million data breach penalty against T-Mobile (see 2508150014). T-Mobile was also fined $12.2 million for violations committed by Sprint, which it later acquired.
The FCC should recognize that customers don’t think of VoIP as an information service, said Vantage Point in an ex parte meeting Tuesday with Wireline Bureau staff. “Under current statutory status, a major policy benefit of classifying VoIP as a telecommunications service is the opportunity to have a uniform national policy” instead of the “patchwork quilt of variations across the country differing state to state” that would result from classifying it as an information service, said a filing in docket 25-304. Vantage Point also said collapsing the number of interconnection points to create fewer than one per state would be “inequitable” and isn’t supported in the record.
Communications Daily is tracking the lawsuits below involving appeals of FCC actions.