States face a challenge getting their BEAD final proposals to NTIA by the Sept. 4, but most will meet the deadline, Colorado Broadband Office Executive Director Brandy Reitter said Tuesday at the Technology Policy Institute's Aspen Forum. Large states like Texas and California will probably need extensions, she told us. Reitter said she was fairly confident NTIA in turn would meet its deadline for reviewing the final proposals within 90 days of receiving them.
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."
An FCC order couched as being about deleting outdated rules but outlining a new agency process that does away with notice-and-comment drew Anna Gomez’s first dissent as a commissioner. The direct final rule (DFR) order was approved at the agency’s open meeting Thursday over her objections, 2-1. The commissioners also approved items on auctioning AWS-3 spectrum, georouting 988 texts, and slamming rules. “The way we do things matters,” Gomez said. “The fact that the process adopted today effectively evades review by an informed public is a feature not a bug.”
The FCC posted on Thursday the drafts for all the items teed up for votes at the commission’s Aug. 7 open meeting. Most have a deregulatory bent.
Senate Commerce Committee members John Curtis, R-Utah, and Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., filed the Taiwan Undersea Cable Resilience Initiative Act on Wednesday to protect that country’s communications infrastructure against Chinese sabotage. The bill would mandate that DOD, the departments of State and Homeland Security, and the U.S. Coast Guard jointly deploy real-time monitoring systems and other measures to defend Taiwan’s undersea cables. It would also direct State to “encourage and support the hardening” of undersea cables near Taiwan and direct the U.S. to work with “like-minded international partners” to counter Chinese government sabotage of that infrastructure, including by imposing sanctions.
Now with a Republican majority, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr on Wednesday laid out policy priorities that range from accelerating and easing broadband infrastructure deployment to tackling blue-collar workforce issues.
The Media Bureau has approved Sinclair’s sale of five stations to Rincon Broadcasting and waived a limit on common ownership of top-four stations in the same market, said an order Tuesday. The bureau also rejected a petition to deny the deal from recently formed public interest group Frequency Forward (see 2504150056). The group’s “allegations concerning Sinclair’s character qualifications have repeatedly been considered and rejected,” the order said.
The Consumer Technology Association, CTIA and other groups opposed an FCC proposal to update its “covered list” of unsecure companies to reflect a January finding by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security on connected vehicles (see 2505270059). Commenters said the FCC should let BIS complete its work before considering revising regulations. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has long raised concerns about Chinese involvement in U.S. networks and in March launched a Council for National Security at the agency (see 2503130012).
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the FCC’s USF contribution scheme in a 6-3 opinion Friday in Consumers’ Research v. FCC, but dissenting and concurring opinions from several conservative justices appeared to invite future challenges, attorneys told us.
Republican Olivia Trusty’s confirmation Wednesday to a full five-year FCC term cements an incoming GOP majority at the commission, but there's still substantial uncertainty about whether President Donald Trump will pick nominees to succeed ex-Commissioners Nathan Simington and Geoffrey Starks, former officials and other observers told us. The Senate voted 53-45 Wednesday to confirm Trusty, as expected (see 2506170072). Senators also cleared her Tuesday to finish former Democratic Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel's term, which ends June 30.