A new requirement buried in a robocall order that took effect Wednesday could lead to daily fines for nearly every entity that does business with the FCC, large and small, multiple attorneys told us.

Communications Daily is tracking the below lawsuits involving appeals of FCC actions. New cases are marked with a *.

AI is quickly evolving from something that was entertaining to something employed by businesses for real-world “tactical uses,” former White House official Asad Ramzanali said Wednesday. At the same time, the public doesn't like the data centers that AI is spawning, he said. Ramzanali, director of AI and technology policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, spoke during a Fiber Broadband Association webcast with Gary Bolton, the group's CEO.

FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty said Wednesday she hopes to see agency action on a GPS replacement in 2026 and also discussed AI, network resilience and copper wire theft during a “fireside chat” with Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Nicol Turner Lee. In addition, Trusty said working with Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez has been “a pleasure” but declined to respond to a question on whether she would support the White House firing Gomez if a third Republican was appointed to the agency. “I’ll defer to the president on the oversight and management of nominees,” she said. “I'm going to work with everyone and anyone at the commission to forward the agenda and the mission.”

House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Richard Hudson, R-N.C., told us Wednesday that there may be some minor changes to the draft First Responder Network Authority Reauthorization Act (see 2601280054), but bipartisan subpanel members’ apparent support for the measure during a hearing that day makes it unlikely he will make more sweeping revisions in response to criticisms from the Fraternal Order of Police and other groups. FOP said Tuesday that elements of the draft legislation “could foster unnecessary administrative hurdles that slow down FirstNet's functionality” and urged lawmakers to instead consider a clean reauthorization of the public safety broadband network (see 2602030047).

Industry groups urged the FCC to take a careful approach in imposing new rules in response to a further NPRM that was approved in October as part of a broader order that tightens the agency's equipment authorization rules (see 2510280024). Reply comments were due this week in docket 21-232, but many of those filed can’t be opened because of a glitch that occurred during the brief federal government shutdown. FCC officials said they're investigating the problem.

NTIA isn't worried about state laws that tangentially touch on AI but is instead focused on those that are seen as directly affecting the development and success of the technology, Chief of Staff Brooke Donilon said Wednesday. A White House executive order in December directed NTIA to potentially curtail non-deployment funding from BEAD for states that have AI laws that are considered overly burdensome (see 2512120048). Donilon said the report due March 11 from NTIA listing onerous laws will highlight a handful of states.

The roughly $20 billion in BEAD non-deployment funds should go foremost toward helping pay for counties' next-generation 911 transition, U.S. House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Richard Hudson said Wednesday. Speaking at Incompas’ policy conference in Washington, Hudson, R-N.C., said building consensus with committee Democrats about using the money to pay for NG911 is a top priority.

Western nations need to collaborate rather than compete over critical communications and tech network infrastructure in the face of adversary nations clearly trying to control them, Ericsson Americas CEO Yossi Cohen said Tuesday. Speaking at the Information Technology Industry Council’s annual Intersect policy event in Washington, Cohen said Ericsson competitors in those nations are making business moves that are “not rational” unless they're viewed as part of a geopolitical strategy of control.

Texting is “only the beginning” of what will be available to wireless consumers through direct-to-device (D2D) satellite service, Recon Analytics’ Roger Entner said Tuesday during a Technology Policy Institute webinar, the first in the group's winter spectrum series. Other experts said evolving D2D rules show that the FCC is allowing long-desired flexibility in spectrum rules.