Leaders of the House and Senate Appropriations committees released a compromise FY 2026 minibus spending package (HR-7006) on Sunday night that would mirror President Donald Trump’s request to increase the FCC’s annual funding but decrease the FTC’s allocation (see 2506020056). Meanwhile, the Senate planned to vote Monday night on the motion to invoke cloture on the House-passed minibus FY26 package (HR-6938), which would increase NTIA’s annual funding to $50 million (see 2601080070).
Consumers’ Research and its allies outlined the legal reasoning behind their latest attack on the legality of the USF contribution factor, filing a brief Monday with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals explaining why the conservative circuit should once again declare the factor unconstitutional.
ACN Communication Services asked the FCC Wireline Bureau for a waiver of agency rules so the company can revise the data it filed to determine the size of its payments to the USF. ACN said it’s a reseller of telecommunications and broadband services to residential and business customers and has paid into the fund since 1993. “Upon review of the most recent annual USF report,” ACN determined that its reports from 2023-25 were in error and that it had “significantly overreported its USF end user revenue,” said a filing Monday in docket 06-122.
Strand Consult said in its year-end predictions that pressure is likely to continue on big tech companies to pay into the USF. “The largest internet companies Alphabet, Meta, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, and TikTok derived an estimated $200 billion in revenue in 2024 from the 135 million users connecting to the internet through the USF,” Strand said last week. The companies earned on average $2,600 in 2024 through every household connected, it added. An “explosion of data centers is poised to exacerbate this free ride if left unaddressed.”
The FCC clarified Monday that the USF contribution factor for Q1 will be 37.6%, down from 38.1% in Q4. But it's higher than the earlier projection of 30.9% (see 2511100035), analyst Billy Jack Gregg noted in an email Tuesday. That increase came after the Universal Service Administrative Co. revised its estimates for the high-cost and low-income fund by a total of $219.2 million, Gregg said. Neither USAC nor the FCC has explained the reasons for the higher demand projections, he added.
The FCC barred Q Link Wireless from participating in the agency's Lifeline or any other USF program, according to a letter posted in Friday’s Daily Digest. In July, Q Link Wireless CEO Issa Asad was sentenced to 60 months in prison after pleading guilty to fraud tied to the Lifeline program (see 2507280019). Asad and the company also pleaded guilty to money laundering through the COVID-19-era Paycheck Protection Program.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has lifted the stay in Consumers’ Research’s latest challenge to the USF, according to an order Wednesday in docket 25-60535. The FCC previously requested the stay during the government shutdown and earlier this week asked for it to be lifted (see 2512020011).
California’s continuing interest in VoIP regulation is a concern, and the lack of FCC preemption of state VoIP oversight is proving to be a problem, speakers said Wednesday at a vCon conference about AI and telecom issues. Also at the event, Ecommerce Innovation Alliance (EIA) President David Carter said the e-commerce industry, faced with rocketing amounts of “shakedown litigation" about texts sent during quiet hours, is anxiously hoping that the FCC will act soon on the group's 9-month-old petition for a declaratory ruling (see 2503030036). An agency affirmation that prior consumer consent means those texts don’t violate the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) “should have been a no-brainer,” Carter said.
The FCC asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to lift the stay in Consumers’ Research’s latest challenge to the USF, according to a filing Monday in docket 25-60535. Petitioners agreed to the motion, said the agency, which previously sought the delay until the government reopened (see 2511040071).
AT&T became the latest carrier to reassure FCC Chairman Brendan Carr that it's moving away from any trace of diversity, equity and inclusion in its hiring and other practices. Verizon and T-Mobile previously made similar promises to win favor with the FCC and approval of transactions before the agency. Commissioner Anna Gomez warned AT&T that appeasing President Donald Trump's administration carries reputational risks.