The three U.S. tower companies said their industry's outlook appears positive, with the big three major carriers continuing to expand their networks. SBA Communications became the last to report on Monday.

The already-high USF contribution factor is expected to rise, based on a Friday filing at the FCC by the Universal Service Administrative Co. The factor is projected to increase from 36% in Q3 to 39.3% in Q4. Congressional leaders recently relaunched a bipartisan working group to study a USF legislative revamp (see 2508010051), but experts warned Monday that addressing USF won’t be easy.

Upcoming FCC items on revamping emergency alerting and outage reporting are expected to be approved unanimously at Thursday’s open meeting, while a direct final rule item on eliminating broadcast regulations is likely to draw a dissent from FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, industry and FCC officials told us.

Under fire from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr for its supposed warehousing of its AWS-4 spectrum, EchoStar unveiled a $5 billion plan Friday for a direct-to-device satellite constellation using that spectrum. CEO Hamid Akhavan said the low earth orbit (LEO) constellation would start commercial service in 2029 and provide a 5G level of service to mobile devices.

The FCC’s draft NPRM on changing how the agency enforces the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) has led to only one ex parte meeting at the FCC (see 2507170048); however, that doesn’t mean the changes aren’t controversial, industry and agency officials said. They predicted approval when commissioners vote Thursday, but potentially with at least a partial dissent from Commissioner Anna Gomez.

CPB said Friday it has begun an “orderly wind-down of its operations,” given enactment of the 2025 Rescissions Act to claw back $1.1 billion of its advance funding for FY 2026 and FY 2027 and the Senate Appropriations Committee’s advancement Thursday of its FY26 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee spending bill, which didn’t allocate money to the public broadcasting entity (see 2507310062). Meanwhile, the FCC didn’t comment on whether the Enforcement Bureau will continue investigating PBS and NPR stations for possible violations of underwriting rules (see 2501300065) after the commission released a set of April letters from Chairman Brendan Carr to House lawmakers indicating that the probe “remains ongoing.”

The Senate Appropriations Committee voted 25-3 Thursday to advance the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee’s FY 2026 funding bill without any CPB allotment. The move underscored stakeholders’ consensus that it will be very difficult for public broadcasting advocates to restore that funding after Congress narrowly agreed in mid-July to claw back all $1.1 billion of CPB’s advance money for FY26 and FY27 via the 2025 Rescissions Act (see 2507280050). Most Senate Appropriations Democrats voted for the FY26 measure, but LHHS ranking member Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and other party-affiliated members indicated that they haven’t given up on bringing CPB funding back before FY25 ends Oct. 1.

Groups representing prisoners and their families on Thursday asked the FCC to rescind a Wireline Bureau order delaying some incarcerated people’s communications service (IPCS) deadlines until April 1, 2027. The prisoner advocates told us previously that they were weighing their options following the bureau order (see 2507030024).

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) adopted two resolutions at its Summer Policy Summit in Boston this week, calling for enhanced federal-state collaboration on telecom policy, particularly in phone number management and universal service funding. NARUC’s telecom committee passed both Monday, and the full board of directors adopted them Wednesday.

Comcast, like Charter Communications, saw Q2 continue a trend of broadband subscriber losses. But it also marked Comcast's best quarter ever in mobile subscriber growth, the company said as it announced results Thursday. It said it's starting to see progress from a revamp of its broadband offerings.