FCC-proposed Media Bureau reorganization (see 2003300052) will likely be approved on circulation before the May meeting, an agency official said in an interview this week. That and other officials said the reorganization is an administrative formality, combining the Engineering Division with the Industry Analysis Division, after last year's creation of the Office of Economics and Analytics resulted in IAD economists and analysts moving to OEA. Employees' roles won't change, but the two MB divisions have some natural symmetry in who they report to, we were told. The agency emailed us that the changes would "integrat[e] MB’s technical expertise with its adjudicatory matters and policy making proceedings. The consolidation would serve the public interest and improve the Commission’s operations to streamline the organization of the Media Bureau." Fewer MB personnel post-OEA creation is emblematic of longer-term staffing trends. The agency's FY 2020 budget request estimated 133 full-time equivalents for the bureau. Two years before, it was 153, and in 2013, it was 181.
While the Commerce Department had suggested the FCC pause its orbital debris rules update (see 1904080033), there's no time to wait, according to the 119-page draft order the commission released Thursday in advance of the April 23 meeting. The April agenda also has media items on increasing video description requirements and relaxing interference restrictions for low-power FM.
Updated orbital debris rules for satellite operators and possibly expanding video description requirements to other markets will be among the topics on April 23's FCC agenda, Chairman Ajit Pai blogged Wednesday. The items are expected to be released Thursday. Pai will also seek a vote on Wi-Fi in the 6 GHz band and on a 5G Fund for Rural America (see 2004010065).
5G and weather stakeholders should talk so there's better understanding of issues like fifth-generation installation density, how quickly those terrestrial transmission signals fall off outside their main channels and how those will affect passive weather monitoring via satellite, Aerospace Corp. Senior Project Leader David Lubar said on a webinar Tuesday. Of millimeter wave bands used for weather observation, 23.6-24 GHz and 36-37 GHz are adjacent to bands to be used for 5G, he said. Passive earth and atmospheric sensing can't be done using alternate bands, he said. Passive measurements wouldn't know the signal levels being detected aren't correct, corrupting the weather data, he said. It's not clear how out-of-band emissions (OOBE), especially unidentified contamination, might affect meteorological products, he said. A radio receiver and satellite-based radiometer work differently, so receiver protection techniques aren't applicable to satellites, he said. The 2019 World Radiocommunication Conference limits on 5G base stations in the 24 GHz band will be adopted by most nations, though Europe didn't consider them stringent enough and moved forward by several years the phase-in of those limits, he said. Rather than OOBE limits, a possible solution could be time-sharing of the spectrum, Lubar said.
OneWeb's Chapter 11 filing could result in fundraising challenges for other broadband non-geostationary orbit constellation plans, NGSO experts told us. Some said it could stoke doubts about the mega-constellation-delivered broadband business model. The company said it's using bankruptcy as a way to buy time until global markets rebound from the COVID-19 slowdown so it can then sell itself.
FCC interaction with constituents is changing in the face of the pandemic, with ex parte meetings down in recent weeks, according to our analysis of more than 400 electronic comment filing system filings. Agency officials said stakeholders presumably are reluctant to set up meetings on non-pressing matters, and commissioners' Tuesday meeting agenda lacks major items. That could change in April with the 6 GHz order expected (see 2003270032), one agency official said. The regulator said aides in Chairman Ajit Pai's office don't seem less busy.
Backers of extra filing time to comment on public safety aspects of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit’s Mozilla v. FCC net neutrality decision applauded the agency's 21-day extension announcement Wednesday (see 2003250031). Some left the door open to seeking more time. About a dozen groups had sought a month longer, citing COVID-19.
The FCC has been pleased to see industry take-up of its "keep Americans connected" pledge and its push to expand low-income offerings, and doesn't anticipate asking edge providers to throttle their streaming video quality to ensure adequate data network capacity, said Evan Swarztrauber, an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai, in a Recon Analytics web conference Tuesday. The European Union asked streaming services like Netflix and YouTube to reduce their data traffic. Deploying 5G could face some COVID-19 headwinds due to the workforce issues getting antennas installed, Techsponential President Avi Greengart said.
Comcast's victory Monday in a Supreme Court decision on what legal standard must be met in a complaint that the cable operator was racially discriminatory in what programming it doesn't carry (see 2003230006) may not signal a quick end to the legal fight. University of Connecticut employment law professor Sachin Pandya, who was part of an amicus brief on behalf of Entertainment Studios Network (ESN) suing Comcast, said the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals conceivably could still decide that the case being remanded from SCOTUS plausibly survives the MVPD's motion to dismiss even under the standard SCOTUS requires. Oral argument was in November (see 1911130024).
The massive shift of workers and students to their homes due to COVID-19 is gobbling up data transmission availability and challenging employers with their networks optimized for an in-office workforce, network and data experts said in interviews last week. Employers are rapidly ramping up the number of VPN licenses. The issue isn’t expected to reach the point where carriers have to plow additional investments into their networks.