Expect big changes to BEAD, with the Donald Trump administration and congressional Republicans rewriting the rules and putting more emphasis on efficient use of funding, tech policy experts said Tuesday at the annual State of the Net conference. Consultant Mike O'Rielly, a former FCC commissioner, said NTIA isn't likely to process any state's final proposals in the near term as it awaits where the administration and Congress take BEAD. States must be flexible and ready to pivot once that new direction becomes clear, he added.
CBS’ editing of an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris last November “looks like editorial judgment, not an instance of splicing footage to create a misleading response that never happened,” and the FCC probe into CBS isn’t justified by the previous administration’s action against Fox, the Wall Street Journal editorial board said in a column Sunday. News Corp. owns the WSJ and Fox. In a recent interview, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr pointed to the previous FCC’s proceeding on WTXF Philadelphia as setting the precedent for the agency’s current news distortion investigation against CBS (see 2502060059).
Foundation for American Innovation Senior Fellow Evan Swarztrauber, a former FCC policy adviser to Chairman Ajit Pai, urged the Senate on Thursday night to “quickly confirm” Republican FTC nominee Mark Meador. President Donald Trump announced plans in December, before taking office, to nominate Meador, a former antitrust staffer for Senate Antitrust Subcommittee ranking member Mike Lee, R-Utah, to the FTC seat of then-Chairwoman Lina Khan (see 2412100073). For Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress “to succeed in their goals of supercharging the economy and unleashing technological innovation, America needs a strong [FTC, and] Meador’s confirmation would deliver a Republican majority at the agency,” Swarztrauber said in an opinion piece for the Washington Reporter. “Meador’s impressive resume makes him the perfect candidate for the moment,” including his role as a Lee aide in writing legislation “to break Google’s monopoly over the advertising technology market.” Meador “understands well the challenges posed by Big Tech, where consumer harms are often shrouded in opaque terms of service and ‘freemium’ business models that hide monopoly rents behind sleek user interfaces,” Swarztrauber said.
SpaceX's temporary loss of a $100 million contract with Ontario over a U.S./Canada tariff fight could be a harbinger of satellite communications services increasingly enmeshed in U.S. trade disputes. Some see non-U.S. satellite operators potentially benefiting from the Starlink contract episode.
Like staff at nearly every agency in Washington, FCC employees seem nervously waiting for the next moves of the Donald Trump administration and Elon Musk, even as they hunker down and continue doing their jobs, industry sources tell us. The FCC also appears to have taken further steps to comply with the White House’s executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts after an initial wave of announcements immediately after Chairman Brendan Carr took office.
The FCC’s investigation of CBS and demand for interview transcripts (see 2502050063) aren’t unprecedented because of the previous administration’s treatment of Fox’s WTXF Philadelphia, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said Thursday in an interview with Fox and Friends. “When the government's been weaponized in your favor, it feels like discrimination when all of a sudden there's even-handed treatment,” Carr said, calling critics of the CBS investigation “the radical left.” Under former Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, the FCC opened a proceeding on WTXF’s license renewal in response to a petition from the Media and Democracy Project. MAD’s petition argued that a court finding that Fox had aired false news about the 2020 election was sufficient basis for the FCC to hold a hearing on its license. The open proceeding held up WTXF’s license renewal for a year and a half, but the FCC didn’t hold a hearing, act against WTXF or act on repeated requests from MAD to include documents and court filings from defamation cases against Fox in the record. Rosenworcel rejected the MAD petition as one of her last acts as chairwoman (see 2501160081). Though Carr’s FCC resurrected the news distortion complaint against CBS and other complaints against ABC and NBC, he let the dismissal of the petition against WTXF stand (see 2501220059). “A lot of people that have been on a sort of upper road of a two-tiered system of government, and what I'm here to do is apply the law evenly,” Carr said. Former Fox and Disney lobbyist Preston Padden, who supported the MAD petition, clapped back. “Carr’s comment is pure BS,” he told us. “I believe he is pursuing the CBS complaint for one reason -- Trump wants him to.” Fox didn't comment.
The FCC’s draft notice of inquiry on opening the upper C band for commercial use acknowledges numerous incumbents using the spectrum and seeks “detailed and evidence-based comments” from all affected parties. Also on Thursday, the FCC released a draft NPRM on rules for the AWS-3 auction and other items, teeing them up for the FCC’s Feb. 27 open meeting, including new rules for wireless emergency alerts (see 2502050057).
The first Donald Trump administration made some headway on existential issues threatening GPS, but there's been little progress toward improved positioning, navigation and timing capabilities, according to the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation. The foundation said this week that it was circulating a position paper to the new presidential administration and members of Congress, urging evaluation of the current leadership and decision-making process and a way of ensuring enough funding for the protection, toughening and augmentation of civil and military capabilities. It also advised use of commercial services as much as possible.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, acknowledged Wednesday that newly announced NTIA administrator nominee Arielle Roth may draw panel Democrats’ ire during her confirmation process over potential changes from the Trump administration and Congress to the $42.5 billion NTIA-administered BEAD program. Senate Commerce advanced commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick to the floor 16-12 Wednesday, as expected (see 2502040056), against near-uniform Democratic opposition aimed in part at his positions on BEAD. The panel also cleared a revised version of the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act (S-315) and three other tech and telecom bills: the Rural Broadband Protection Act (S-98), Insure Cybersecurity Act (S-245) and Kids Off Social Media Act (S-278).
The FCC opened a docket on the news distortion complaint against CBS, and both the FCC and CBS have released the unedited transcript of the 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. Editing of the interview is also the subject of a suit that President Donald Trump brought against the network.