Alaska Broadband Advocates met with FCC commissioners and staff and discussed “the current disparity between the Lower 48 and Alaska in terms of speed availability, residential package pricing and cost per household,” according to a filing posted Thursday in docket 16-271. For example, a school district’s cost per Mbps of service in Alaska is “200 times more than the median cost in the United States,” they told the FCC. The Alaskans met with Commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington and aides to Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and Commissioner Geoffrey Starks.
Nex-Tech Wireless met with an aide to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel about the company’s failed attempts to submit data to the FCC through the broadband data collection portal (see 2404090051). To the best of Nex-Tech’s knowledge, no one has successfully submitted a bulk mobile availability challenge to the BDC portal and only 18 corrections to the mobile availability map were made using the FCC’s Speed Test app, according to a filing posted Thursday in docket 20-32. “One can conclude that the challenge process for mobile broadband availability is not functioning and cannot be characterized to be user-friendly,” Nex-Tech said: “The fact that no other party has succeeded in submitting a bulk challenge is evidence that the challenge process is broken.”
The FCC will take a series of steps aimed at addressing cybersecurity challenges during the commissioners' June 6 open meeting (see 2405150042). A draft NPRM released Thursday would seek comment on a proposal to impose specific reporting requirements on nine service providers as part of the agency's effort to increase border gateway protocol and resource public key infrastructure security, which assist routing traffic across the internet.
Informal complaints filed at the FCC about communications accessibility issues have risen for the past five years, and the nature of the complaints has shifted since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic four years ago, an FCC official told a virtual meeting of the commission’s Disability Advisory Committee on Thursday. The top accessibility complaint is about captioning.
The Senate Commerce Committee will try again next week to approve funding for the FCC’s affordable connectivity program (see 2405100046), Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., told us Thursday after the scheduled markup was pulled amid tensions with Republicans over amendments.
House Appropriations Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee members questioned FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel Thursday on the commission's funding request for increased staffing across the agency and the affordable connectivity program. During the hearing on the FCC's FY 2025 budget proposal (see 2403110056), some legislators raised concerns about the FCC's work on combating illegal robocalls and its spectrum authority.
Ethan Lucarelli, 42, first chief of the FCC Office of International Affairs, died Monday of undisclosed causes. An Alexandria, Virginia, resident, Lucarelli joined the FCC in 2020, holding positions in the Wireless Bureau and chairwoman’s office before assuming his most recent position in 2023. Prior to the FCC, Lucarelli was director-regulatory and public policy at Inmarsat and an associate at Wiley. Since 2012, he was an adjunct lecturer at George Washington University Law School. Lucarelli was a key FCC official at the World Radiocommunication Conference last year in Dubai (see 2310270047). Lucarelli's death leaves the International Affairs Office even more shorthanded. Recently, Nese Guendelsberger, one of its deputy chiefs, was tapped in an acting capacity as an aide to Commissioner Geoffrey Starks (see 2404250030). “The FCC family is deeply saddened by the loss of our colleague and friend, Ethan Lucarelli,” an FCC spokesperson wrote in an email: “Over his years in private practice and public service, Ethan earned a reputation for his intelligence, honesty, dependability, and sensitivity. … He was open-minded, sincere, and valued the opinions of those who worked with him.” The loss “will be felt by all of us at the Commission and around the world who had the pleasure of working with him.” Survivors include his wife, Victoria Correa; mother, Diane Eubanks; father, Joseph; and siblings, Matthew and Melissa. Visitation is scheduled for May 25, 2-5 p.m., at Elmwood Chapel, 11300 W. 97th Lane, St. John, Indiana. Donations are being accepted for a scholarship in his name benefiting George Washington University Law School students participating in moot court competitions.
Qualcomm representatives discussed the company’s support of proposed FCC rules allowing unmanned aircraft use of the 5030-5091 MHz band, meeting with aides to Commissioners Geoffrey Starks, Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington. Qualcomm previously met with an aide to Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel on an order before commissioners (see 2405080032). Qualcomm discussed “the anticipated explosive growth of low-flying UA operations” and “ensuring that aircraft (particularly small UAs and, in the future, air taxis) can avoid in-flight collisions with other aircraft, infrastructure, and other objects.” The filing was made Tuesday in docket 22-323.
The National Sheriffs’ Association met with aides to all the FCC commissioners, except Anna Gomez, on the group’s opposition to giving FirstNet use of the 4.9 GHz band through a sharing agreement (see 2401190067). “Sheriffs are the primary law enforcement users of the 4.9 GHz band,” said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 07-100. Allowing FirstNet onto 4.9 GHz spectrum "would turn over the band to FirstNet’s partner, AT&T, to serve both its public safety and commercial wireless consumers,” the NSA said.
A petition challenging FCC equipment testing rules should be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction and standing, the agency said in its respondent brief Monday (docket 23-1311) in the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit. Petitioners iFixit, Public Resource and Make Community allege the FCC violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it amended rules incorporating four new equipment testing standards, and did so without the proper notice and comment protocol (see 2403280002). Their petition asks the D.C. Circuit to remand the rules to the FCC for what they contend should be a proper rulemaking (see 2311090002). But in seeking review, the petitioners don’t address the suitability of updating the standards, the FCC’s brief said. Instead, they contend that by incorporating the standards in the rules by reference to their availability elsewhere, the commission violated the notice-and-comment requirements of the APA, and undermined the public interest in making law available to the public, it said. In its brief, the FCC argued that incorporation by reference “is a longstanding practice that allows an agency to refer, in the text of a published rule, to material available elsewhere instead of republishing that material in the rule itself.” In addition, the FCC said the petitioners aren’t labs engaged in testing RF-emitting equipment. Moreover, they haven’t identified any interest that the rules proposed and adopted by the commission would affect. The petitioners’ challenge fails even if the D.C. Circuit “were to reach the merits of their arguments,” the brief said, arguing the FCC provided the public sufficient notice and an opportunity to comment in the rulemaking. The agency also complied with the law governing incorporation by reference by ensuring that the standards were reasonably available to the class of persons affected, said the brief. That’s “all that the law requires,” it added. Accordingly, the petition for review should be dismissed, it said.