Jonathan Make

Fox got some but not all of what it sought from FCC staff Friday afternoon. The company can keep WWOR-TV Secaucus, New Jersey, and the New York Post under a continued newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule waiver.

Thirty-plus states sued Google Thursday. Colorado, Nebraska, Arizona, Iowa, New York, North Carolina, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, the Dakotas, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Virginia were among them and the District of Columbia also signed on. They allege the company violated Sherman Antitrust Act Section 2.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai plans to leave the commission Jan. 20, Inauguration Day, the Republican announced Monday. Democrat Joe Biden will be sworn in as president that day.

The Joe Biden-Kamala Harris presidential transition team named members of transition teams through the government. They included volunteers at some agencies, such as the FTC, and departments including Commerce and Justice. An FCC team wasn't listed but one may be forthcoming (see here).

Emergency dispatchers in the nation's capital appear to be struggling with properly sending ambulances to scenes where help is needed, radio traffic we observed via OpenMHZ showed Tuesday. In routing ambulances to a motor vehicle accident and to a separate report of an apartment building fire, there appeared to have been delays of about five minutes each. This all occurred around 2 p.m. EST. A 911 dispatcher was told by ambulance staff, five minutes after the apparent dispatch of rescue personnel, that "we have not been dispatched. It doesn’t say anything." The ambulance employee suggested to the 911 center operator that "you can resend it, and then we can be on our way." That then occurred. In the response to the fire report, an ambulance sent there said it was instead on a different call and couldn't go to the new scene. There have been technological problems at the city's 911 center after a possible tech or equipment upgrade or update (see our Oct. 30 report here). "8 days after the disastrous upgrade & 1 week after the great meltdown DC 911 still can't keep track of what ambulances are available," tweeted local emergency communications expert Dave Statter. "This is delaying 911 help. Many @dcfireems units are still having tablet issues." We observed similar as well. Washington, D.C.'s Office of Unified Communications, which runs the 911 center, didn't comment last week or Tuesday. For more information on any technical or equipment issues occurring in recent days at OUC, we filed a Freedom of Information Act request Tuesday. Local police continue to say they are unaffected by any issues. Representatives for D.C. Fire and EMS, city council Judiciary and Public Safety Committee Chair Charles Allen (D), and interim Deputy Mayor-Public Safety and Justice Roger Mitchell didn't comment Tuesday.

T-Mobile agreed to pay $200 million to the U.S. Treasury to end a probe of Sprint’s compliance with Lifeline rules, the FCC announced Wednesday: It's "the largest fixed-amount settlement the Commission has ever secured to resolve an investigation."

Firefighters and paramedics continue to be sent to incorrect addresses in potentially life-and-death emergencies in the nation's capital city, even with increased scrutiny on 911 errors there. Our review of recent radio communications and interviews this week with stakeholders found continuing problems. Some also spoke of increased difficulties in recent days amid a potential technology upgrade at the 911 center. The city's auditor plans an audit, and House Commerce Committee members express concern.

Tension in relations between the U.S. and China on technology issues such as data security, privacy and telecom gear are making life complicated for some U.S. companies, experts told the Technology Policy Institute. They generally agreed aspects of the current U.S. approach may be unique to this administration and may have shortcomings. Neither the White House nor China's Embassy in Washington commented Wednesday, when the TPI video was released as part of its ongoing conference.

The concept of the attention economy, where people's attention can help measure aspects of technology, may have merit for government and industry, stakeholders told the Technology Policy Institute. The FTC could "look at how someone" is giving attention as the agency uses various alternative metrics, said Competition Bureau Director Ian Conner in Q&A with TPI President Scott Wallsten. Connor, noting he was speaking only for himself, said he "would never typically define books" as in direct "competition with social media" and with movies, which could compete for a person's attention at "any given moment." The attention economy could be a way to measure markets that lack prices for consumers in the typical sense, he said in a video released Tuesday. "We’re trying to look for different metrics when we don’t have our normal price or revenue measures." Attention can be "kind of like a price" for a product or service, and "it has a price that is very subjective" to each person, said Brown University associate professor of economics Kareen Rozen. "There’s more complementarity between the services than we’re giving them credit for" sometimes, she said of technology. Because consumers can use multiple tech services at once, spending attention may not be a zero-sum game, said participants including Comscore Senior Director-Product Management James Muldrow.

Exactly a week after the presidential and congressional elections, the government official who would replace outgoing FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly would get a nominations hearing. The announcement came about three hours after the agency said it would push forward on an NPRM on clarifying the meaning of Communications Decency Act Section 230, as we reported in an earlier news bulletin. O'Rielly's renomination was withdrawn after he voiced some concern about any FCC ability to reinterpret the section.