The U.S. Supreme Court granted the FCC's cert petition challenging the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling in favor of Consumers' Research's challenge of the USF contribution methodology (see 2410010024). In a docket 24-254 notation Friday, SCOTUS said that along with the questions raised in the petitions, it wanted the parties to brief and argue about whether the case is moot given the challengers' not seeking preliminary relief before the 5th Circuit. NTCA, Competitive Carriers Association and USTelecom in a statement said they were "grateful" SCOTUS was taking up the petition. "The Fifth Circuit’s decision is contrary to Supreme Court precedent and the decision of several other circuit courts of appeals, and it threatens to undermine universal service programs that, for many decades, have served to promote the availability and affordability of critical communications services for millions of rural and low-income consumers, rural health care facilities, and schools and libraries across the nation," they said. "We look forward to presenting arguments in defense of the USF contribution mechanism as the case moves forward, and ultimately to dispelling the uncertainty that these challenges have created in furthering our nation’s mission of universal service.” Also applauding the high court's move, the Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition said the 5th Circuit decision "has no precedent in prior Supreme Court jurisprudence." It said it's "further encouraged by the Supreme Court's request that parties brief the question whether the Consumers' Research challenge is moot."

DirecTV's planned purchase of EchoStar's Dish Network (see 2409300009) is off, EchoStar said in an SEC filing Friday. EchoStar said it received notice from DirecTV last week that it was ending the purchase agreement effective 11:59 p.m. Friday because the deal's financial terms weren't being met. EchoStar said no termination fee or other payment is due from either party.

The FCC will hold its first meeting of 2025 on Jan. 15, said an FCC announcement Friday. "The rest of the 2025 Open Meeting schedule will be announced at a later date," the agency said. Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said Thursday that her final day at the FCC will be Jan. 20.

The current technology market is easy to characterize, Mark Bagley, managing director at Woodside Capital Partners, said during a Wireless Communications Association webinar Thursday. “What’s hot” is AI and generative AI “and what isn’t hot is whatever is not gen-AI -- that’s where we are at this stage.” The wireless sector is becoming more interesting for investors, partly because of SpaceX’s push to put more satellites into low earth orbit, offering satellite broadband with much lower latency than the two or three seconds users experienced in the past, he said. The latency and bandwidth from satellites means a service that offers more than just data, “which is what we thought it was going to be.” Venture capitalists are also interested in federal programs like BEAD and are investing, Bagley said. Carrier assumptions about 5G were wrong, he said: “They expected that everyone would be using continuously” 200 Mbps “or some ridiculous amount. That has not been the case.” Henry Huang, investment director at Micron Ventures, said he’s not very interested in investing in 5G. “If there’s anything related to wireless that’s interesting it’s going to be in the sky,” Huang said. “LEO is a big thing.” One big change for satellite is a tenfold reduction in launch costs, he noted. “You are able to launch a smaller satellite at a lower altitude and those satellites are much cheaper than the previous ones” and use “off-the-shelf components." SpaceX’s Starlink “is obviously the leader here, but there are a bunch of startups coming up.” The challenge will be trying to compete with the big players like Starlink and Amazon's Kuiper, but some smaller players will likely benefit from federal spending programs or may target the IoT rather than broadband consumers, he said. Huang mentioned he predicted three years ago that millimeter-wave frequencies would be increasingly important for U.S. carriers, but he was wrong. “If there is spectrum available at lower frequencies, then its propagation characteristics are just way better” and it doesn’t make sense to use mmW in satellite or terrestrial networks. High-band could still “take off” but that will take a long time because deployment costs are so high. There “could be opportunities in 5G, but it’s going to be in some large, emerging economies, for example, India.” Said Laura Swan, managing partner at Silicon Catalyst Ventures, five years ago investors got into 5G and that market remains slow. “How do we get data from the satellites?” For a country like India, the cost of fiber deployment is “too high” and fixed wireless access offers an alternative. “We have started to see" an opportunity in FWA, “but as we have seen with all 5G, is it actually going to take hold?” Lisa Oshima, managing consultant at Socialize Mobilize, said, the “really flashy stuff,” like launching satellites, is “always sexy and cool.” Getting data speeds on the ground “is really complicated.” Yet it seems "like some of the boring tech … is actually becoming important to the way the world is evolving.”

If the incoming presidential administration enacts the broadband regulatory suggestions in Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, it will bring "a new era of wild West-style deregulation for broadband," Penn State doctoral student Abby Simmerman blogged Tuesday at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. Project 2025's urges deregulation and public spending cuts. Simmerman said deregulation could benefit satellite broadband operators, such as SpaceX and Amazon's Kuiper and incumbent internet service providers, easing the path to potential acquisitions. Project 2025 also criticizes inefficiency in U.S. broadband programs, arguing that a lack of a national strategy has created redundancies and waste, Simmerman wrote. The comprehensive program review it recommends would attempt to eliminate programs deemed duplicative. The USF undoubtedly would see a reduction in spending, given how Project 2025 urges “right-sizing the federal government’s existing broadband initiatives," she added. The next FCC is also unlikely to initiate affordability programs, Simmerman predicted.

President-elect Donald Trump and Republican FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr delivered additional bad news to broadcasters Tuesday about how the incoming administration may interact with them. Carr during an interview with Fox News that a news distortion complaint against CBS over its editing of an interview with Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris (see 2410170051) could affect the Skydance/Paramount Global deal. Carr said he planned to “reinvigorate” the legacy media by emphasizing broadcaster public interest obligations, and referred to the Skydance transaction as a possible example. “I'm pretty confident that news distortion complaint over the CBS 60 Minutes transcript is something that's likely to rise in the context of the FCC review of that transaction,” Carr said (see 2411010044). Paramount didn’t comment. Carr listed conferring with Trump and the space economy as priorities for his upcoming chairmanship. “The first thing is to get together with the president's team and make sure that I 100% understand his agenda,” Carr said: “After all, it is going to be his administration, and his agenda we’ll be pushing.” He also listed tech censorship, rural broadband and accelerating permitting for the satellite industry as priorities. Carr repeated plans for ending the FCC’s promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion policies (see 2411180059). “The idea that the [FCC] listed its second-highest strategic priority as promoting DEI, there's no place for that,” Carr said. “And when the transition is complete, when we come in, the FCC is going to end its promotion of DEI.” Trump said he would nominate Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick, who heads the president-elect’s transition team, to be commerce secretary. Lutnick, just days before the Nov. 5 election, said the U.S. should auction broadcast spectrum to only outlets that “agree to be nonpartisan” (see 2410280037). Lutnick’s comments came amid Trump’s fights with several major broadcasters over election coverage. Lutnick “will lead our Tariff and Trade agenda, with additional direct responsibility for the Office of the United States Trade Representative,” Trump said: Lutnick as transition chief “has created the most sophisticated process and system to assist us in creating the greatest Administration America has ever seen.” USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter said in a statement the group could work with Lutnick and the Commerce Department “to advance America’s global connectivity leadership by deploying more broadband, collaborating to prevent cyber threats, and spurring innovation throughout the economy.”

A shortage of federal judges to resolve copyright, trademark, patent and contractual disputes means judges face "increasingly complex litigation and growing caseloads" and "endless" waits for parties initiating civil actions, U.S. Courts wrote Monday. The federal courts said the number of civil cases pending for more than three years grew from 18,280 on March 31, 2004, to 81,617 on March 31, 2024. The courts said employing magistrate judges, senior judges and visiting judges to reduce case delays is often seen as "Band-Aid measures that are insufficient to resolve case backlogs." The courts urged passage of the Judges Act (S-4149), which would authorize additional U.S. District judges. The bill has passed the Senate and is pending before the House.

The U.S. Court of Federal Claims on Monday partially granted and partially rejected U.S. arguments for dismissing Ligado's L-band takings suit against the federal government (see 2310130003). In an order Monday (docket 23-1797L), Judge Edward Damich said Ligado seems to have a rational argument that Congress has essentially barred DOD from conducting business with any entity contracting with Ligado for ancillary terrestrial component operations in the L band, putting the company's business in jeopardy. However, Damich also said, Congress may put limits on the L-band license that can't be challenged as a taking even if it effectively terminates the license. But because the FCC, in licensing the L band to Ligado, required cooperation with the DOD, Ligado's case can go forward, the judge ordered. He gave the government 45 days to respond to the company's complaint.

McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates laid out why the U.S. Supreme Court should overturn the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision that, under the Hobbs Act, courts must accept the FCC’s interpretation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. McLaughlin pointed to PDR Network v. Carlton & Harris Chiropractic, a 2019 SCOTUS case about FCC authority to implement the TCPA. The court handed down what was seen as a middle-of-the-road decision in that case (see 1906200055). “There, the Fourth Circuit held that it was bound by the FCC’s interpretation of the TCPA, just like the Ninth Circuit did,” said a brief SCOTUS posted Monday. “Although a majority of this Court didn’t reach the question, four Justices concluded that the Hobbs Act ‘does not bar’ a party ‘from arguing that the agency’s interpretation of the statute is wrong,’” the brief said: “Like PDR Network, this case involves private TCPA claims for money damages and the appeal turns on whether an FCC order bound the court.” Nothing in the Hobbs Act’s text “supports the Ninth Circuit’s reading,” McLaughlin said: “Nor is there any other basis to conclude that Congress designed the Hobbs Act to strip district courts of their authority to interpret a federal statute. … No one doubts that district courts may not hear pre-enforcement petitions seeking those specific forms of relief.” But the Hobbs Act “says nothing about other kinds of actions, like a private action for money damages, that are properly filed in federal district court under ordinary federal-question jurisdiction.” SCOTUS is to hear oral argument Jan. 21 in McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates v. McKesson. The case is viewed as having larger implications for the FCC beyond its legal interpretation of the TCPA (see 2410170015).

FCC and Alaska regulators will review Liberty Broadband's spinoff of GCI announced this week (see 2411130025), Liberty emailed us Wednesday. Charter Communications' purchase of GCI-less Liberty isn't expected to require FCC approval.