Jonathan Make

The Washington, D.C., auditor is issuing a request for proposals to audit the city's 911 dispatching agency after it came under fire from local stakeholders for what appears to some to be a pattern of mistakes affecting fire-rescue response. The Office of the D.C. Auditor had said it was considering such a move.

E.W. Scripps agreed to buy Ion Media in a $2.65 billion deal expected to close in Q1, with Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway taking a $600 million investment in the buyer to help pay for the takeover. Scripps will divest 23 Ion stations, saying it has a buyer that will maintain the outlets' Ion affiliations.

First responder concerns about accuracy of emergency dispatching in the nation's capital took another turn in the early hours of Wednesday. Fire-rescue personnel lectured 911 staff during questioning about where on Southern Avenue in the Southeast quadrant Washington's Fire and EMS Department should respond for someone with chest pains. Later in the day, the firefighter's union weighed in on overall 911 dispatching accuracy concerns.

Verizon agreed to buy Tracfone from America Movil, in a deal worth as much as about $7 billion that's expected to close in the second half of 2021, the companies said (see here and here). Tracfone is the largest U.S. reseller of prepaid wireless with about 21 million subscribers, 13 million of them using Verizon’s wireless network.

Washington, D.C., officials reviewed a 911 dispatching incident. Monday, D.C.’s Office of Unified Communications sent the city's Fire and EMS Department to an incorrect address, according to walkie-talkie radio traffic we monitored using OpenMHz. At about 5:25 p.m., the OUC 911 center dispatched FEMS for a cardiac arrest to 22 M St. NE. Three minutes later, FEMS replied to OUC that the written information associated with the incident was changed to 22 M St. SW. But dispatchers didn't appear to have told first responders about the change in address. FEMS also asked that the call be dispatched to the properly located units. About one minute later, OUC dispatched it to the apparently correct units. The distance between the addresses according to MapQuest is about 3 miles. FEMS "transported [a] patient in critical condition to a 'near-by' hospital," the fire department's spokesperson emailed us. Officials with OUC "are currently looking into this call," and representatives from his department "are assisting," said the spokesperson. He couldn't say if the patient died as 911 expert Dave Statter reported. The address in the wrong quadrant came from a caller to 911 and wasn't caused by OUC, said the agency's spokesperson in an interview. She said details weren't immediately available to show whether the other potential dispatching problems associated with the heart attack were caused by staff, caller error or other issues. It's the fifth heart attack call in which OUC has dispatched help to the wrong address this year, Statter wrote. A candidate for an at-large seat on the D.C. Council, Eric Rogers, tweeted, "This is an area of interest I’d like to pick up during OUC’s performance hearing this winter. I’ve been following response times and address mistakes issues" for many years. The 911 center has come under scrutiny for other apparent errors, though it's not known how many of those incidents are the fault of its staff versus people calling for help but reporting incorrect details. For our past news stories on this, see here and here.

Washington, D.C., apparently incorrectly dispatched emergency medical services several times in as many days, according to our analysis of walkie-talkie radio traffic. We listened to three such incidents from this and last week. For more, see here, here and here, including the radio transmissions marked with a star. That's on top of many other such shortcomings observed in recent months.

A key federal appeals court vacated some FCC conditions on Charter Communications' buys of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. Then-FCC Commissioner and now-Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Mike O’Rielly originally voted against the deal curbs. Appellants are several consumers and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

There's another shift atop NTIA, as officials there take some new roles with the elections coming. Adam Candeub, who joined the agency a few months ago, is taking over on an acting basis. He's taking a role similar to that of Doug Kinkoph as acting administrator. Kinkoph remains at the agency, where his permanent role has been associate administrator of the Office of Telecommunications and Information Applications.

U.S. export controls on Chinese technology will increasingly affect post-secondary schools, the Hinrich Foundation reported. It said higher education, which struggles with insufficient government export control guidance, should prepare for increased controls on software and networks. “New measures will fundamentally change how universities enter into collaborative research partnerships, hire faculty and admit foreign students,” the foundation said Wednesday. Recommendations included “risk-management measures” to address the U.S.-China technology race. U.S. post-secondary institutions want clarity and education from their government on following existing intellectual property, export control, licensing and related technology rules and laws, said Association of American Colleges and Universities President Lynn Pasquerella in an interview Thursday. She said schools don't want more regulations, since they follow best practices and the export control regime affecting IP has been around for many years. Her stakeholders need to collaborate with counterparts from elsewhere, including China, so U.S. curbs on such activities are harmful, the association head said: "The impact of the current policies on higher education will have a negative effect in terms of research, in terms of equity and diversity. And I would hope this would be different with a different administration." Immigration and Customs Enforcement guidance under the Trump administration, though partly rolled back, would still prevent some collaboration online with international students, Pasquerella noted. She estimated some 1.1 million post-secondary students in the U.S. are from other countries, or 5.5% of the entire student population, generating $47 billion in tuition revenue. China's embassy in Washington and the White House didn't comment Thursday.

FCC staff extended by a month an opportunity for tribes to file 2.5 GHz applications, until Sept. 2. That's less than the three additional months some sought.