Jonathan Make

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai circulated a plan to deregulate what he calls telephone access charges, among items tentatively up for a vote at commissioners' March 31 meeting. It would detariff "the last handful of interstate end-user charges that remain subject to FCC regulation," he blogged Monday afternoon.

FCBA postponed its March events.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai will propose his colleagues vote at their March 31 meeting to require phone service providers to cut down on spoofed robocalls through caller ID authentication using secure telephone identity revisited standards and signature-based handling of asserted information using tokens. That would deliver on Pai's previous comments on Stir/Shaken and a newer law.

The FCC suspended "non-critical" staff travel, among other coronavirus precautions, it announced Wednesday afternoon. Also on hiatus "until further notice" is the agency's "involvement in non-critical large gatherings that involve participants" from "across the country and/or around the world."

The FCC has a plan for dealing with a pandemic if necessary, said Chairman Ajit Pai and others answering our queries during news conferences Friday. So far, the main coronavirus effect on the regulator has been cancelation of an annual wireless conference, members told us. Commissioner Geoffrey Starks worries about impacts on 911 systems and about getting more people connected to residential broadband.

The livestream of monthly commissioners' meetings have had technical problems making it difficult for people to watch, several users said in interviews Friday. The problems seemed to have increased for Friday's gathering versus others this year and in late 2019, some said. We experienced problems streaming this gathering, both at the commissioners' meeting itself and offsite. Users told us the live video on the regulator's website would unexpectedly pause or entirely stop working. Several of those we spoke with had tweeted about the issues, including here and here.

The FCC proposed fining the four national wireless carriers a total of more than $200 million over privacy concerns, the agency's chairman, Ajit Pai, announced to reporters this afternoon. He said that the proposed penalties had recently been adopted.

FCC members OK'd rules for a C-band auction, at their ongoing meeting Friday morning. The vote was along party lines, 3-2.

Disney's board picked a successor for Bob Iger. Bob Chapek was elevated to CEO, effective immediately. He was chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products.

CEO Borje Ekholm and other Ericsson executives told FCC members of both parties that "more mid-band spectrum is necessary," and backed some of the FCC's C-band moves. The draft C-band order "acknowledges the importance of large bandwidths to support 5G," the company said, posted Thursday in docket 18-122, on meetings a week earlier with Chairman Ajit Pai (here) and Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel (here) and their aides: "100 MHz channels are essential to deliver a high-performance experience." Licensed mid-band spectrum in the upper 6 GHz band "is a priority for Ericsson," which doesn't "see a shift to unlicensed spectrum as 5G is rolled out given the performance demands seen for industrial use cases." The company would like 100 MHz-wide channels, including in the C band, emailed the filing's author, Vice President-Government Affairs and Public Policy Jared Carlson. On why the disclosure was late, he said that "the filing just took a little longer than expected." Commissioners vote Feb. 28 on the C-band order (see 2002110041). Regulatory action on 6 GHz is expected later this year (see 2002120055).