NTIA faces questions about its request for comments released last week about a national spectrum strategy, which experts said appears to show work on the strategy at an earlier stage than expected. Several groups issued comments thanking the administration for moving forward, but former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said the RFC was more like an FCC notice of inquiry than an NPRM (see 2303150066). O’Rielly said the document released offered less direction than expected, based on earlier comments by Scott Harris, tapped to lead work on the strategy.
An FCC robotexting order approved Thursday (see 2303160061) and posted Friday interjects a changed focus from “unwanted” text messages to “potentially harmful” and “unlawful” texts. Officials said Thursday the order included “minor” tweaks addressing changes sought by Commissioner Brendan Carr and industry. CTIA was able to get several changes it sought, based on a side-by-side comparison. Commissioners made few changes to a Stir/Shaken order, also released Friday.
The FCC clamped down, for the first time, on robotexts and closed what it called a loophole in Stir/Shaken rules. Both items were approved, as expected (see 2303130049 and 2303140062), by unanimous votes Thursday with minor tweaks. Neither item has been posted.
An order on the FCC’s equipment authorization program is mostly the same as the draft proposed by Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel (see 2302230059), based on a side-by-side comparison. None of the commissioners released statements. The order, approved earlier this week (see 2303130049), updates FCC rules to incorporate “four new and updated standards that are integral to equipment testing,” all from ANSI or the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). The FCC added new text in the section on the implications for smaller companies. “The Commission cannot, at present, definitively quantify the cost of compliance and cannot determine whether small entities will have to hire attorneys, engineers, consultants, or other professionals when using the standards adopted in the Report and Order to comply with the Commission’s rules,” the order says. It notes some commenters, including Public Resource Org. and iFixit, “have requested free and unrestricted access” to relevant materials used in evaluations: “Such an approach, if implemented, would pose a burden to test laboratories, manufacturers and other businesses that could possibly qualify as small entities because the inability to continue to use the incorporation by reference process could jeopardize our ability to recognize state-of-the-art technical standards that have been adopted and are frequently updated through the consensus-driven standards development process.”
T-Mobile announced plans to buy Ka’ena, best known for Mint Mobile, a low-cost prepaid wireless brand partly owned by actor Ryan Reynolds, for $1.35 billion in cash and stock. T-Mobile also gets Ultra Mobile, which offers international calling options and wholesaler Plum. Clearance by the FCC and DOJ likely won’t be a problem, New Street’s Jonathan Chaplin told investors. Mint runs on T-Mobile’s network. “T-Mobile is acquiring the brands' sales, marketing, digital, and service operations, and plans to use its supplier relationships and distribution scale to help the brands to grow and offer competitive pricing and greater device inventory to more U.S. consumers seeking value offerings,” the carrier said Wednesday: “The Un-carrier will also be able to leverage Mint’s industry-leading digital [direct-to-customer] marketing expertise as part of its broader portfolio to reach new customer segments and geographies.” Mint founders David Glickman and Rizwan Kassim are expected to manage the brands, “which will generally operate as a separate business unit,” T-Mobile said. Reynolds “will continue on in his creative role on behalf of Mint.” Reynolds and T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert appeared together in an announcement on Twitter. “T-Mobile has assured me that our incredibly improvised and borderline reckless messaging strategy will also remain untouched,” Reynolds says in the posting. “I don’t remember the word reckless, Ryan,” Sievert deadpans. Reynolds assured the CEO he had added the word to the contract in crayon.
The administrative law judge process at the FCC is “completely broken” and “something you would find in a banana republic,” not the U.S., former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said during a Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy webinar Wednesday. O’Rielly noted review by an ALJ was recently “activated” as part of the review of the Standard/Tegna deal (see 2303100082.)
NTIA is moving forward on its long-awaited national spectrum strategy, releasing a request for comments Wednesday that poses more than 60 questions on what that strategy should include. NTIA also scheduled two “listening sessions.” Comment deadlines are to come in a Federal Register notice, to be filed in NTIA-2023-0003.
An order and Further NPRM on improving how Stir/Shaken works as a tool against unwanted and illegal robocalls is expected to be approved by FCC commissioners Thursday, potentially with a few tweaks addressing the handful of concerns raised by industry, industry officials said.
FCC commissioners are expected to approve a robotexting order and Further NPRM, scheduled for a vote Thursday, though with a few tweaks addressing issues raised by CTIA and others, FCC and industry officials said. Commissioners OK'd a second wireless item, incorporating into agency rules four new and updated standards for equipment testing. That item, which was deleted from the agenda for the meeting, hasn’t been controversial.
The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology faces a growing workload and increasingly complex issues to work through, acting Chief Ron Repasi said during an FCBA webinar Friday. “I would say, overall, we manage,” Repasi said, laughing. “It’s becoming difficult because we’ve got a lot of competing demands” and not just on spectrum, he said. The number of OET staff has remained constant for the past decade, Repasi said, with about 25 at the FCC lab in Columbia, Maryland, and the remaining 50 at FCC headquarters. They’re not all engineers and OET also has lawyers and telecom specialists on staff, he said. OET strives to be “fact-based in its work,” Repasi said. “I won’t say that we’re not involved in policymaking; we certainly are,” though maybe not as visibly as other parts of the FCC, he said. “We’re really good at spotting issues, but we have to be even better at coming up with solutions,” he said. “When we get new proposals the first thing we look at is what is the potential for harmful interference,” Repasi said. Spectrum is “already very congested” and OET has to consider “what’s already authorized,” he said. Transparency is critical in any application for a new use of spectrum, he said: “We have to be in a position, from a technical and engineering perspective, to be able to know what the model or the simulation is that’s being used to show what the potential is for harmful interference. We have to know what the input parameters are.” OET is having ongoing discussions with NTIA officials “to minimize the number of surprises” and collaboration is improving, Repasi said. He noted coordination has long been seen as important for government spectrum and the Interdepartment Radio Advisory Committee is the longest-standing federal advisory committee, predating the FCC. IRAC is “still a valid and relevant advisory committee that we participate in,” he said. The challenge is there’s not any clear spectrum so “everything has to be shared,” said Michael Ha, chief of the OET Policy and Rules Division. “Every time we deploy a new sharing system we learn something new,” said Martin Doczkat, chief of the Electromagnetic and Compatibility Division. “We’re learning and applying lessons as new models are introduced,” he said.