Howard Buskirk

FCC commissioners appear likely to approve, with few changes, a draft order that would expand parts of the 6 GHz band where new very-low-power (VLP) devices are permitted to operate without coordination. One wrinkle, industry officials said, is that Commissioner Nathan Simington appears sympathetic to concerns NAB raised earlier. Commissioners are scheduled to vote on the order at their open meeting Wednesday.

Insurance Marketing Coalition Limited v. FCC, which the 11th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court will hear Dec. 18 (see 2312130019), may prove significant, TroutmanAmin’s John Henson blogged Friday. “Part of the decision making will be how much deference does the FCC get in its rulemaking authority,” Henson said, noting the case (24-10277) examines agency authority under the Hobbs Act. “The Hobbs Act is having a moment and especially in the Eleventh Circuit,” he said. Approved 3-1 a year ago, the order adopted a one-to-one robotext consent policy (see 2312130019). Commissioner Nathan Simington dissented, citing the FCC's “factually thin record.” Henson noted the three judges hearing the case were appointed by President-elect Donald Trump during his first term -- Elizabeth Branch, Britt Grant and Robert Luck. They seem aligned with 11th Circuit precedent on limiting the reach of regulatory agencies, Henson said. “It would not stretch the limits of reason to think that the FCC’s 1:1 consent order was not properly enacted,” he said: “If that’s the case, then the Eleventh Circuit, might once again have an opportunity to strike a blow against Hobbs deference.” This term the U.S. Supreme Court will hear McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates v. McKesson, a Telephone Consumer Protection Act case from the 9th Circuit, examining the extent to which lower courts must defer to FCC decisions, which also has Hobbs Act implications (see 2410170015). The Hobbs Act gives the appeals courts exclusive jurisdiction to enjoin, set aside, suspend or determine the validity of some agency orders, including most FCC orders.

AT&T and CTIA urged that the FCC rethink citizens broadband radio service rules and questioned the band's success, filing reply comments to an August NPRM (see 2411070032). But most commenters said the FCC should only tweak the band. CBRS advocates largely defended the model as a sharing success story. Interest in the proceeding was strong, with more than two dozen reply comments posted as of Friday.

The FCC’s Precision Ag Connectivity Task Force held its final meeting Thursday, approving the group's comprehensive final report. Summarizing the task force's working groups' findings, the report wasn’t released Thursday. Task force Chair Michael Adelaine said during a virtual meeting that the work must continue even as the group’s charter expires.

ISPs are hopeful that the new Trump administration will focus on streamlining federal permitting once President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January, experts said Wednesday during a Broadband Breakfast webinar.

Two groups are challenging the FCC’s October order giving the FirstNet Authority, and indirectly AT&T, use of the 4.9 GHz band (see 2410220027). The Coalition for Emergency Response and Critical Infrastructure (CERCI) is challenging the order, while the Public Safety Spectrum Alliance (PSSA) is protesting aspects of it. Both recently filed petitions for review in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

T-Mobile remains upbeat about its proposed buy of wireless assets from UScellular but still won't predict precisely when a regulatory review will be completed, Jon Freier, president of the T-Mobile Consumer Group, said at a Wells Fargo financial conference on Tuesday. The companies announced the deal in May (see 2405280047). “This is one of those rare transactions that's so great for customers,” Freier said. “UScellular customers will have access to lower prices and more value as a result of this transaction.” He noted that 40%-50% of UScellular's assets are in rural markets that T-Mobile now is targeting. “We're confident in the approval of the overall transaction,” probably next year, he said. T-Mobile was pleased with the activity at its stores during Black Friday weekend, Freier said. But he said it’s too early to tell whether customers are more willing to upgrade handsets. “It's hard to know where upgrades are going,” he said. Low upgrade rates aren’t “a phenomenon that's exclusive to us; you're seeing that across the entire industry.” That's a “testament … to Apple and Samsung and Google making such great devices that are lasting longer and customers are keeping them longer.” Freier noted that 80% of T-Mobile postpaid customers already have a 5G phone, which could work against upgrades. He was also asked about customer perceptions that T-Mobile works well in dense urban areas and less well elsewhere. “We were a laggard in the 4G LTE era, way behind in terms of the network and the capability,” he acknowledged. Since closing the Sprint buy in 2020, T-Mobile has built an “incredibly powerful network” with 500,000 square miles of coverage in rural America, he said. Historically, T-Mobile was third in customer satisfaction, behind Verizon and AT&T, “and now we're nipping at the heels of being No. 1." Freier also said he has been reluctant to use AI as a “buzzword … just to hopefully impress people,” but T-Mobile is starting to use the technology for improvements in customer service. “We have billions of data points across tens of millions of customers that can help us improve their experience, that can help us improve their overall billing experience” and that means better human-assisted interactions, he said: That data hasn’t been put to its “best use just yet,” but “we have dreams about what we can … do in a much bigger way.”

Public interest and consumer groups replying to an FCC notice of inquiry (see 2411150025) encouraged the agency to launch a more targeted inquiry on data caps and said ISPs haven’t built a case for caps to continue. Industry groups opposed FCC intervention. Reply comments were due Monday in docket 23-199.

NTIA on Tuesday released the first of the band-specific reports called for in the national spectrum strategy (see 2403120056) on the 37 GHz band. Due last month, the report was developed with DOD and recommends a federal and nonfederal co-primary sharing framework for the lower 37 GHz band.

The 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals tentatively scheduled for the week of Feb. 3 oral argument on AT&T’s challenge of a $57 million fine the FCC levied in April (see 2404290044) for allegedly not safeguarding data on customers' real-time locations. AT&T called the penalty arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion within the meaning of the Administrative Procedure Act (see 2405130030). Verizon challenged the FCC’s fine against it in the 2nd Circuit (see [Ref:2411060008) and T-Mobile in the D.C. Circuit (see 2411260048). “If you have a serious, irresolvable conflict, contact us IMMEDIATELY via e-mail,” said a Monday notice from the 5th Circuit : “Do not ask to reschedule argument unless you can find no other solution.” The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, meanwhile, filed an amicus brief in support of T-Mobile in the D.C. Circuit. T-Mobile was fined $91 million for its violations, plus $12 million for Sprint's, which it subsequently acquired. The FCC “abused its investigative and enforcement authority to violate the companies’ Seventh Amendment right to a jury,” the Chamber said: “It announced and applied novel legal interpretations of the Communications Act to calculate and impose staggering forfeitures for activities that were not at the time of conduct a violation of any agency rule or law.” The brief said the FCC’s role in overseeing data privacy and security “is limited to specific regulatory activities directed by Congress, such as the regulation of ‘customer propriety network information’ -- statutorily defined term.”