The FCC has made “significant progress” in its handling of the affordable connectivity program during 2022, but “improvements were needed” in measuring and providing public transparency on grant recipients’ spending of program money, the Office of Inspector General said in a Jan. 22 memo to Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and other commissioners that publicly circulated Tuesday. Some congressional Republican leaders have raised concerns about the FCC’s handling of ACP amid a push to provide the program stopgap funding to keep it running through the end of this year. The Wireline Bureau said earlier this month it would freeze new enrollments Feb. 8 as part of the program's wind-down process.

The FCC is adopting, 3-2 along party lines today, an NPRM on circulation seeking comment on a requirement MVPDs refund subscribers affected by programming blackouts due to retransmission consent negotiations, a 10th-floor official tells us. Commissioners in December adopted, 4-0, a companion NPRM requiring MVPDs to notify the agency of blackouts due to failed retrans talks. Commissioner Nathan Simington expressed skepticism at the legal basis cited for the reporting requirement.

A draft order on collecting broadcaster and cable workforce diversity data using form 395-B has been circulated to the 10th floor, according to FCC officials and the agency’s circulation webpage, just a week after a call for action from 27 Democratic lawmakers and Commissioner Geoffrey Starks. The EEO item was teed up by a 2021 NPRM and has long been a pet project for Starks. Public interest groups and NAB have disagreed about how the data should be handled after the FCC collects it. Groups such as Common Cause want the data to be publicly available in an online portal searchable by station, while broadcasters have said the information should be anonymized. It's not yet clear what position the draft takes. The circulated item includes a report and order and a Further NPRM, according to the circulation listing.

The FCC approved the 2018 quadrennial review order 3-2, according to an FCC official. The agency didn’t comment, and the order hasn’t yet been released. An FCC official confirmed that both FCC Republicans opposed the item. The order extends the agency’s prohibition on commonly owned top-four full-power network stations in a single market to include top-four programming streams, broadcast over multicast streams and low-power TV stations, according to FCC officials. Language has been added to the order since its circulation to make it clear that broadcasters can receive waivers of the ownership rules, an FCC official told us. Broadcasters are widely expected to challenge the order in court.

President Joe Biden signed off Tuesday on the 5G Spectrum Authority Licensing Enforcement Act (S-2787), as expected, the White House said. The measure, which the House passed last week, gives the FCC authority for 90 days to issue T-Mobile and other winning bidders the licenses they bought in the 2.5 GHz band auction last year. Lawmakers viewed the measure as a stopgap measure, required after months of stalled Capitol Hill talks on a broader legislative package that would renew the FCC’s lapsed general auction authority.

NTIA approved volume 2 of Louisiana’s initial proposal for the broadband, equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program, making it the first state to receive full approval, the federal agency said. On a video conference with reporters Thursday, outgoing Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) said he has no concerns that Gov.-elect Jeff Landry (R) “will depart from the commitment that we have made in our submission.”

The FCC's reaffirming that SpaceX doesn't qualify for the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund program is in direct contravention to the agency's supposed prioritization of closing the digital divide, SpaceX told the agency Tuesday night after the FCC announced that the commissioners had voted 3-2 to uphold a Wireline Bureau decision that SpaceX couldn't participate in RDOF. That order "fails to explain how the Commission will bridge the connectivity gap that the Order leaves open by excluding the one provider that can rapidly accomplish this goal, while approving RDOF 'winners' that have already acknowledged they will not be able to do so," SpaceX said. Voting against the order were the two minority commissioners. Commissioner Brendan Carr posted on X that the decision was "regulatory harassment of Elon Musk." In his dissent, Commissioner Nathan Simington said he "was disappointed by this wrongheaded decision when it was first announced, but the majority today lays bare just how thoroughly and lawlessly arbitrary it was. If this is what passes for due process and the rule of law at the FCC, then this agency ought not to be trusted with the adjudicatory powers Congress has granted it and the deference that the courts have given it."

The House will vote as soon as Monday on the Senate-passed version of the 5G Spectrum Authority Licensing Enforcement Act (S-2787), as expected, the office of Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said Friday night. The House Commerce Committee advanced identical companion HR-5677 Tuesday. HR-5677/S-2787 would give the FCC authority for 90 days to issue T-Mobile and other winning bidders the licenses they bought in the 2.5 GHz band auction last year. Spectrum policy observers view the measure as a stopgap to temporarily bring back a small part of the FCC’s lapsed auction authority after nearly nine months of stalled legislative talks on Capitol Hill related to a broader legislative package. The House will consider S-2787 under suspension of the rules, which speeds floor consideration of noncontroversial bills but requires a two-thirds majority for passage.

The Joe Biden administration released its national spectrum strategy Monday and a presidential memorandum on modernizing U.S.policy is coming. Administration officials provided some of the details Monday morning on a call with reporters. The plan identifies 2,786 MHz of spectrum for potential repurposing,

The FCC has 90 days to either complete the 2018 quadrennial review or show cause why the NAB’s petition for mandamus shouldn’t be granted, said an order from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Thursday evening. The order doesn’t grant NAB’s petition for mandamus but defers it until the 90-day period. Broadcast industry officials told us the court’s urging the agency to soon complete the 2018 QR is the result they wanted. The FCC didn’t immediately comment, but the agency had argued that its delay in completing the QR was justified.