Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., emphasized Wednesday that rescinding CPB’s advance funding for FY 2026 and FY 2027 could result in “nearly 13 million Americans [being] left without access to their public media stations and the life-saving emergency alerts or information they need.”

There was mixed reaction to Verizon's request for the FCC to waive the handset-unlocking requirement that the carrier agreed to as a provision of its acquisition of Tracfone and its purchase of 700 MHz C-block licenses in a 2008 auction (see 2505200051). Verizon has said the unlocking mandate raises the risk that handsets will be used in crimes, an argument supported by law enforcement commenters. Comments on Verizon’s waiver request were due this week in docket 06-150.

Wireless carriers urged the FCC to move with caution in response to a Further NPRM on wireless location accuracy, which commissioners approved 4-0 in March (see 2503270042). The FNPRM probes ways to improve accuracy and whether providers should be required to deliver vertical location information to 911 call centers measured in height above ground level (AGL), instead of height above ellipsoid (HAE). The notice also asks about ways to ensure that more public safety answering points receive dispatchable location (DL) as part of calls to 911. Reply comments were due Monday and mostly posted Tuesday in docket 07-114.

The FCC should expand the payor base of regulatory fees, said NAB and Telesat in comments filed in docket 25-190 by Monday’s comment deadline. NAB and satellite industry commenters were broadly supportive of the agency’s proposal to reclassify 61 indirect full-time equivalents (FTEs) as direct FTEs and collect $390,192,000 in fees, but some said industries that benefit from FCC processes should bear part of the fee burden.

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.

Leaders of two 911 advocacy groups in Tuesday interviews offered slightly diverging plans for pushing Congress to address funding for next-generation 911 tech upgrades. Republican lawmakers decided against allocating any future spectrum auction revenue for that purpose in the budget reconciliation package both chambers passed last week (see 2507030056). President Donald Trump signed the measure Friday, authorizing an 800 MHz spectrum auction pipeline through Sept. 30, 2034 (see 2507070045). A Hill briefing Tuesday with the NG9-1-1 Institute and Intrado on emergency communications issues barely touched on the funding issue.

Litigants disagreed on whether the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Nuclear Regulatory Commission v. Texas precludes the challenge to an FCC order that lets schools and libraries use E-rate support for off-premises Wi-Fi hot spots and wireless internet services. The U.S. government and attorneys representing Maurine and Matthew Molak filed briefs last week at the 5th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court (case 23-60641), which asked for their perspectives (see 2506180067). The government said the FCC may reverse the order regardless of what the court does.

Lawyers for the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition and the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society said Monday that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last month upholding the USF was a clean win for the program and the FCC (see 2507020049). By rejecting the challenge -- brought by Consumers’ Research, a right-wing group -- SCOTUS lifted a cloud that has loomed over the USF for years, the lawyers said during an SHLB webinar.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr on Monday called for communications providers and power companies to work together in the aftermath of hurricanes and other natural disasters. Other speakers at the FCC's hurricane resiliency roundtable noted that communications between the domains have improved, highlighted by the work of the Cross-Sector Resiliency Forum (see 2504250050), which launched after Hurricane Michael in 2018.

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.