The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected T-Mobile’s challenge of an $80 million data breach forfeiture in a unanimous opinion Friday. The court rejected the carriers’ arguments that the FCC forfeiture process violates the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial and that the customer real-time location data involved in the breach wasn’t covered by FCC rules. In the opinion, Judge Florence Pan said language in the Communications Act that allows entities to go before a jury if they don’t pay their FCC forfeitures satisfied the requirements of the Seventh Amendment. “The statutory procedure at issue allowed the Carriers to obtain a jury trial before suffering any legal consequences,” Pan wrote. “They chose not to wait for such a trial and therefore waived that right.” The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals took the opposite stance in a ruling on a similar data breach forfeiture against AT&T in April, vacating a $57 million fine because the FCC’s processes didn’t sufficiently guarantee a jury trial. The D.C. Circuit Friday also rejected carrier arguments that the data involved wasn’t covered under the rule or that the FCC erred by considering the breaches as ongoing violations. “The penalties assessed by the Commission were lawful and reasonably accounted for the Carriers’ ability to pay and the egregiousness of their conduct.”
U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Moses on Tuesday recommended dismissal of claims brought by LiveVideo.AI against National Amusements and its president, Shari Redstone, related to Skydance Media's purchase of Paramount Global. In a report and recommendation (docket 24-CV-6290) to the U.S. District Court for Southern New York, Moses said LiveVideo.AI's complaint that National Amusements, Paramount's majority holder, ignored its rival bid for Paramount was frivolous. Moore said that following its complaint, LiveVideo.AI has "flooded the docket with meritless, repetitive, and frequently incoherent filings."
Broadcasters should pay the costs that a mandatory conversion to ATSC 3.0 will impose on MVPDs, said DirecTV in a letter to the FCC Media Bureau, posted Wednesday in docket 16-142. Purchasing enough ATSC 3.0 receivers to convert DirecTV’s 1,800 nationwide feeds would cost close to $15 million, which “would be onerous” and “a dead-weight loss,” the company said. “Spreading the cost among the nation’s nearly 1,500 broadcast stations would not only yield a much more manageable financial responsibility for each entity but also place the costs on the parties who stand to reap the benefits of the ATSC 3.0 transition.” DirecTV said it currently can’t transmit ATSC 3.0 signals because its customers’ millions of set-top boxes can’t receive the signal, and it doesn’t have the capacity to carry both ATSC 3.0 and 1.0 signals simultaneously. It also noted that an Advanced Television Systems Committee working group on creating a standard for converting 3.0 signals for MVPD transmission doesn’t include any MVPD representatives. “Because of what MVPDs view as the domineering and uncollaborative behavior of the broadcast representatives in the Working Group, there is no longer any MVPD representation” in the group.
The FCC Media Bureau has approved Connoisseur Media’s purchase of Alpha Media and its 200-plus radio stations, said a letter in Wednesday’s Daily Digest. Connoisseur owns 11 stations in New York and Connecticut, but the deal will bring it up to 218 radio stations in 47 markets, Alpha said in a May release announcing the agreement. The terms of the transaction weren't disclosed. The two companies don’t have market overlaps but required a Media Bureau waiver because Alpha owns five FM stations in a single market in Texas as part of a grandfathered arrangement. Granting a waiver to allow Connoisseur to own the stations under a similar arrangement “will simply maintain the status quo,” said the Media Bureau. “Based on the structure of the market,” approving the transfer won't be “anticompetitive nor otherwise frustrate the goals of the Local Radio Ownership Rule,” the letter said.
The FCC should focus on both affordability and availability in its Telecom Act Section 706 reports, the Broadband Council said in comments posted Wednesday in docket 25-223. Commissioners approved a notice of inquiry 3-0 last week, with initial comments due Sept. 8 (see 2508080046). “Availability can only be realized by adoption,” the council said. "Serving a banquet to a family with no teeth has not fed the hungry. If the household does not have the ability, for whatever reason, to adopt the broadband service, the fact that it is available is immaterial.”
The FCC should require trade associations to provide “actual evidence” when they accuse local governments of obstructing broadband development, said the Minnesota Association of Community Telecommunications Administrators in an ex parte letter posted Wednesday in docket 17-84. The agency should require filers to include the names of all jurisdictions cited and provide notice to all named jurisdictions to allow them to respond, the group said. Filings that don’t include such information shouldn’t be considered, it added. “Relying on such unfounded claims results in poor public policy.” FCC rules “must be based on reality, not fallacy. This requires the opportunity for parties to respond to allegations asserted in the record.”
Somos representatives met with FCC staff on “the next steps” that the telecom industry can take to combat unwanted robocalls, said a filing this week in docket 17-59. Somos discussed how standards can be advanced “to ensure end-to-end verification of calls which would allow enterprises, and possibly later individuals, to exercise the Right to Use (RTU) their name, phone number, logo, and other identifying information, while making sure that those not authorized to use that information are prevented from doing so.”
T-Mobile defended its hiring practices in response to the Center for Accessible Technology's (CforAT) petition for the California Public Utilities Commission to reopen its docket on T-Mobile's 2020 acquisition of Sprint (see 2003110043). The company said in a filing posted Wednesday (docket A1807011) that the group's petition is "procedurally improper," and any compliance issues should be resolved through the CPUC's existing enforcement mechanisms. CforAT petitioned the CPUC in May, saying it "appears" that T-Mobile isn't complying with several "mandatory merger conditions" based on a March letter from the company to the FCC.
Certification engineer W. Zhang urged the FCC to adopt “a binding requirement” that testing labs and certification bodies under the agency's equipment authorization program must “be managed by separate, independent leadership.” Zhang filed early comments Tuesday in response to a May Further NPRM that was part of the agency’s focus on “bad labs” (see 2505220056 and 2508120011).
The FCC's new submarine cable rules, adopted earlier this month (see 2508070037), ostensibly are about national security but really carry a "distinct scent of economic opportunism," Satmarin Exoflux's Michael de Coninck wrote Tuesday. "The official pitch is simple: stop China, Russia, and other uninvited guests from sneaking into U.S.-connected infrastructure," the maritime connectivity expert said. But "the unofficial pitch" is giving U.S. firms an easier route to contracts "without having to suffer the indignity of competing with cheaper foreign bids."