Utility and broadband interests are pushing the FCC for changes to the agency's pole attachment item on its July 24 meeting agenda. In a speech earlier this month laying out his "Build America" agenda, Chairman Brendan Carr highlighted the pole attachment draft order and a copper line retirement draft NPRM, also on July's agenda, as prime examples of an intertwined focus on infrastructure deployment and deregulation (see 2507020036). Communications infrastructure deployment experts have mixed feelings about whether the pole attachment item notably eases pole attachment gripes. Commissioners' unanimous approval is expected, as pole attachment issues are generally nonpartisan.
Charter Communications' proposed $34.5 billion purchase of Cox Communications, announced in May (see 2505160060), isn't expected to raise anticompetitive concerns at the FCC. If it faces headwinds from the agency, they are more likely to come from the companies' diversity, equity and inclusion policies, cable executives, agency watchers and others tell us. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has repeatedly said the agency won't approve acquisitions involving companies practicing "invidious forms of DEI discrimination" (see 2503210049), which Carr has defined as cases "where people are discriminating based on race and gender."
With NTIA removing fiber priority and deleting various requirements from its June 6 revised BEAD program requirements, the effects on ISPs' participation in the program are unclear. BEAD and broadband experts told us that a major focus of states is trying to ensure that previously active providers continue their participation under the program's new rules, which were announced a month ago (see 2506060052).
The FCC's plan to delete dormant dockets saw support from many commenters, though with scattered calls to keep several alive. Comments regarding the dormant dockets were due Wednesday in docket 25-165. The agency is looking to shutter more than 2,000 dormant dockets, the largest number it has sought to eliminate at one time (see 2505020063). Comments also included suggestions for other dockets to add to the chopping block.
As humans head to the moon and Mars, they're on the verge of being able to launch an interplanetary internet, raising policy questions about that network's architecture and governance, space and internet experts said Tuesday at the Internet Society's Interplanetary Networking Special Interest Group seminar. The group's founder, internet pioneer Vint Cerf, said there needs to be thought and planning now about those policy issues and the agreements and institutions to tackle them.
Commercial aviation priorities frequently push aside commercial space launch operation issues at the FAA, said George Nield, chairman of the Global Spaceport Alliance (GSA). Tackling some challenges that the space launch industry faces starts with elevating the Office of Commercial Space Transportation so that instead of being under FAA, it has equal standing as the FAA, Nield said in an interview with Communications Daily. The following transcript was edited for length and clarity.
Now with a Republican majority, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr on Wednesday laid out policy priorities that range from accelerating and easing broadband infrastructure deployment to tackling blue-collar workforce issues.
As the FCC commissioners voted up a trio of regulatory items Thursday, Chairman Brendan Carr was predicting "a very, very busy" July and August, with a greater focus on accelerating infrastructure buildouts and freeing up spectrum. Approved at the agency's June meeting were orders streamlining cable TV rate regulation and axing the professional engineer certification requirement for the biannual broadband data collection filings, as well as an NPRM proposing to end the requirement that telecommunications relay services providers support the now-obsolete ASCII transmission format. Thursday's meeting was the first for Republican Commissioner Olivia Trusty, who was sworn in Monday (see 2506230057). With Carr now having a two-person Republican majority, agency watchers anticipate that it will ramp up more substantive work aligned with his agenda (see 2506200052).
With the cost of space travel decreasing, regulatory hang-ups are starting to eclipse launch costs as the biggest barrier to commercial space, SpaceX Vice President of Satellite Policy David Goldman said Wednesday. Regulatory challenges are "where the bottleneck is," he said at a space and spectrum conference at the University of Colorado Law School in Boulder.
A U.S. offer this week to host the 2027 World Radiocommunication Conference is probably a long shot, WRC experts and watchers told us. In a letter dated Monday to ITU Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's offer doesn't specify a U.S. location for WRC-27, saying it could be "any number of cities," including Washington.