Matt Daneman

Expect a Donald Trump White House and FCC to focus on deregulation and undoing the agency's net neutrality and digital discrimination rules, telecom policy experts and FCC watchers tell us. Brendan Carr, one of the two GOP minority commissioners, remains the seeming front-runner to head the agency if Trump wins the White House in November (see 2407120002). Despite repeated comments from Trump as a candidate and president calling for FCC action against companies such as CNN and MSNBC over their news content, many FCC watchers on both sides of the aisle told us they don’t expect the agency to actually act against cable networks or broadcast licenses under a second Trump administration.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr is widely seen as the favorite to become FCC chair in a second Donald Trump presidency, and former FCC staffers and communications industry officials told us they expect a Carr-led FCC would prioritize policies he wrote about in the telecom chapter of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. For example, the chapter lays out plans for rolling back Section 230 protections for tech companies, deregulating broadband infrastructure and restricting Chinese companies.

Multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) and independent video programming interests remain miles apart over the FCC's proposed restrictions on carriage agreement terms. In reply comments (docket 24-115) posted Tuesday, MVPDs reiterated their assertions (see 2406100005) that most-favored-nation (MFN) and alternative distribution method (ADM) contract terms ultimately benefit programmers and viewers, while programmers said such terms are smothering their ability to compete.

Paramount Global's pending deal with studio Skydance Media shouldn't face notable objections from the FCC or DOJ, we are told. The $8 billion agreement sees Skydance founder-CEO David Ellison and his family, along with private equity firm RedBird Capital, buying National Amusements Inc., which has a controlling stake in Paramount. The Skydance investor group would then combine Skydance with Paramount. The transaction includes a $1.5 billion infusion into Paramount to reduce debt and for strategic initiatives. Paramount said it expects to close the deal by Sept. 30, 2025.

The commercial space industry widely objects to the FCC's proposed "object-years" approach for space safety, with numerous operators in comments last week calling it ineffective and more than one deriding it as "simplistic" (docket 18-313). Those comments were part of a record refresh in the FCC's orbital debris mitigation docket (see 2405020048). The FCC's object-years proposal would cap at 100 the number of years failed satellites in a constellation could remain in orbit. It has placed 100 object-years conditions on several non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) constellations in the past year (see 2406120006).

Smart city applications are joining the list of factors driving the need for more licensed and unlicensed spectrum, spectrum and smart city experts said Wednesday during a Broadband Breakfast panel discussion. Beyond more spectrum, smart cities will require a lot of spectrum sharing and maximized use of existing allocations, they said. There isn't one route to smart cities, and the spectrum isn't needed for a single purpose, said Richard Bernhardt, Wireless ISP Association vice president-spectrum and industry. Cities rely particularly heavily on unlicensed spectrum for smart city applications, said Ryan Johnston, Next Century Cities senior policy counsel. He said municipal governments are often left out of spectrum strategy and policy discussions, even though they are becoming big consumers of spectrum. He said they should be at the table for spectrum sharing and allocation discussions.

The commercial space launch industry should not be sanguine about SpaceX's forthcoming Starship heavy launch rocket's impact on competition, though changes won't be immediate, Arianespace Chief Commercial Officer Steven Rutgers said Tuesday at the Washington Space Business Roundtable. Meanwhile, a notable shakeout in the ranks of new and emerging launch providers is coming, launch executives predicted.

While the cable industry invests heavily in the groundwork for DOCSIS 4.0 and the greater speeds it will bring, existing DOCSIS 3.1 broadband delivery specifications and technology will be in use for years to come, cablers said Thursday. During an SCTE webinar, some said DOCSIS 4.0 could open the door to cable operators shifting from "best efforts" service standards to service level agreements (SLA), letting them guarantee specific speed tiers and latency.

Expanding the reach of the citizens broadband radio service band via reworking the aggregate interference model (see 2406120027) opens the door to further significant CBRS operational changes, wireless and spectrum experts said Tuesday. They spoke during a CBRS seminar that the New America's Open Technology Institute sponsored. Preston Marshall, chairman of the OnGo Alliance, which promotes spectrum sharing, said that while the "CBRS 2.0" operational changes announced this month were uniformly beneficial to users, future "CBRS 3.0" discussions could start edging into areas, such as power levels, where there would be winners and losers. He said industry needs to come to a coherent, cohesive position to present to regulators rather than the government having to "arbitrate a food fight."

The FCC is increasingly leaning toward an "object-years" regulatory approach to space safety, experts say. But some warn of flaws in the approach. The agency is seeking input, due June 27, on its orbital debris open proceeding about using a 100 object-years benchmark -- a cap on the total cumulative time to deorbit failed satellites -- for assessing the risk of a constellation's derelict satellites (see 2405240005).