Companies face a complicated landscape in dealing with FCC outage reporting rules, speakers said during an FCBA webinar Monday. Last year, FCC commissioners approved rules to improve the delivery of outage information to public safety answering points, but speakers said that’s just part of what the FCC is doing on outage reporting (see 2211170051). More recently, the FCC has looked at 988 outage reporting obligations, the subject of a January NPRM (see 2301040056).
Tennessee is the eighth state with a consumer privacy law. Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed the comprehensive bill HB-1181/SB-73 Thursday. The state House and Senate passed it unanimously last month (see 2304210060). The Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) praised the bill Friday. Consumer Reports sees room for improvement.
Liberty Broadband subsidiary GCI Communications agreed to pay $40.24 million to settle allegations it breached the False Claims Act by knowingly inflating its prices and violating FCC competitive bidding rules in connection with its participation in the commission’s Rural Health Care (RHC) program, said DOJ and the FCC in a statement Thursday. Just over $26 million of the settlement amount will be USF restitution payments directly to the FCC under a contemporaneous consent decree with the commission, said the settlement agreement.
Standard General, Tegna and many advocates for their deal, including former FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn and former FTC Commissioner Jon Leibowitz, on Wednesday again asked for an FCC vote on the matter in what the Enforcement Bureau called “highly unusual” ex parte meetings with Commissioners Nathan Simington and Brendan Carr, according to filings posted in docket 22-162 Friday. The EB, unions and public interest groups opposing the deal also attended the meetings. It's “unprecedented for parties to an on-going administrative hearing before the ALJ to request, let alone receive, a meeting with the FCC’s Commissioners concerning the issues designated for hearing,” said the Enforcement Bureau’s ex parte filing.
The State Department appears to be considering what it will do if Anna Gomez, tapped to lead the U.S. delegation to the World Radicommunication Conference (see 2301270060), is nominated to the FCC, said industry officials closely following the WRC. The conference starts Nov. 20 in Dubai and is considered especially important because of the focus on identifying internationally harmonized spectrum for 6G.
Commissioners supported cutting in half the Texas USF surcharge, unanimously without discussion, at a livestreamed Texas Public Utility Commission meeting Thursday. The monthly TUSF fee will drop to 12% from 24% of intrastate telecom revenue on July 1, which is when the commission expects to complete arrearage and interest payments to rural local exchange carriers that it underpaid (see 2305040026). Texas RLEC groups sounded optimistic Thursday they would be repaid.
Tower company CEOs expect a strong 2023, with 5G driving carrier investments, and the major carriers all building out mid-band spectrum. Meanwhile, a CTIA official said Thursday the key to the U.S. leading on 6G is getting 5G policy right.
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 21-0 Thursday to pass legislation intended to hold tech platforms more accountable for hosting child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., received sweeping support for his Strengthening Transparency and Obligation to Protect Children Suffering from Abuse and Mistreatment (Stop CSAM) Act (S-1199). The bill had zero co-sponsors heading into Thursday’s markup.
A draft NPRM on FCC regulatory fees circulated on the 10th floor uses a revamped methodology for assessing which full-time equivalents are connected with which bureaus, leading to proposed lower fees for Media Bureau regulatees such as broadcasters, and higher fees for Wireless and Wireline bureau industries, said FCC and industry officials. The rulemaking notice appears headed for unanimous approval soon, FCC and industry officials told us.
Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., and ranking member John Thune, R-S.D., said during and after a Thursday hearing they’re forming a USF-focused task force to evaluate how to move forward on a comprehensive revamp of the program that may update its contribution factor to include non-wireline entities. Senate Communications members cited several telecom policy matters that intertwine with the push for USF changes, including future funding for the FCC’s affordable connectivity fund and restoring the commission’s lapsed spectrum auction authority.