FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr took the unusual step of praising, ahead of Thursday’s vote by commissioners, a draft NPRM proposing to bar test labs from entities on the agency’s “covered list” of unsecure companies from participating in the equipment authorization process. Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel noted Carr’s work on the rulemaking when she announced it last month (see 2405010073). Industry officials expect the draft will receive unanimous approval Thursday. They note no one has visited the commission to protest or offer changes, based on filings in docket 24-136. “I am pleased we are taking the step of proposing that the test labs and certification bodies that review devices before they can be used in the U.S. are themselves trustworthy actors that we can rely on, including by barring those with risky ties” to China, Carr said Tuesday: “The proposal is based on time-tested precedent. The FCC has long limited foreign control of U.S. licensees in other contexts." He called it the FCC’s “Bad Labs” proposal.

Mediacom is testing a mobile service with its employees as beta users, and plans a public launch in June, a company spokesperson told us. Mediacom didn't say which mobile virtual network operator it's partnering with.

The FCC came in 13th out of 26 midsize federal agencies in the best places to work in the federal government rankings released Monday. Its 2023 employee engagement and satisfaction score, 73.6, was almost identical to its 2022 score. The FTC ranked 9th out of midsize federal agencies, with an engagement and satisfaction score of 75.4, jumping notably from 2022's 67.3. Among subcomponent agencies, NTIA ranked 180 out of 459, with an engagement and satisfaction score increasing to 74.8, compared with 2022's 65.3. The rankings, by the Partnership for Public Service and Boston Consulting Group, largely rely on Office of Personnel Management data obtained through its Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey.

Even in the face of slowing subscriber additions in Q1 for telcos' fiber service and fixed wireless access (FWA), cable net additions worsened, likely due to the affordable connectivity program (ACP) ending new enrollments and reenrollments for households that had received ACP support and then moved to a new address, MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett wrote Monday. He said home broadband penetration stalled and perhaps even declined in the quarter, especially when adjusted for rural home growth subsidized under the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund and for unsubsidized edgeouts. The FWA peak "has passed," with Q1 bringing its first year-over-year decline in subscriber net adds, he said. Fiber overbuilders are challenged as capital and labor costs are higher than when numerous projects were planned, while the most attractive areas are steadily being built out, he said. The U.S. broadband industry's total net adds in Q1 were the slowest since before the COVID-19 pandemic, he said. Broadband penetration increases during the pandemic were likely due to government subsidiary programs at the state and federal level, increasing affordability and bringing in numerous households that otherwise would have found the service outside their price range, he said.

A petition challenging FCC equipment testing rules should be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction and standing, the agency said in its respondent brief Monday (docket 23-1311) in the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit. Petitioners iFixit, Public Resource and Make Community allege the FCC violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it amended rules incorporating four new equipment testing standards, and did so without the proper notice and comment protocol (see 2403280002). Their petition asks the D.C. Circuit to remand the rules to the FCC for what they contend should be a proper rulemaking (see 2311090002). But in seeking review, the petitioners don’t address the suitability of updating the standards, the FCC’s brief said. Instead, they contend that by incorporating the standards in the rules by reference to their availability elsewhere, the commission violated the notice-and-comment requirements of the APA, and undermined the public interest in making law available to the public, it said. In its brief, the FCC argued that incorporation by reference “is a longstanding practice that allows an agency to refer, in the text of a published rule, to material available elsewhere instead of republishing that material in the rule itself.” In addition, the FCC said the petitioners aren’t labs engaged in testing RF-emitting equipment. Moreover, they haven’t identified any interest that the rules proposed and adopted by the commission would affect. The petitioners’ challenge fails even if the D.C. Circuit “were to reach the merits of their arguments,” the brief said, arguing the FCC provided the public sufficient notice and an opportunity to comment in the rulemaking. The agency also complied with the law governing incorporation by reference by ensuring that the standards were reasonably available to the class of persons affected, said the brief. That’s “all that the law requires,” it added. Accordingly, the petition for review should be dismissed, it said.

The price of smartphones and TVs dropped notably in the U.S. between April 2023 and last month, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index unadjusted data released Wednesday. Smartphone prices were down 9.8% year over year, while TV prices fell 8.2%, it said. Computers, peripherals and smart home assistant prices dropped 1.6%, while the cost of wireless phone service was down 2.7%, it said. The cost of residential phone service rose 4.2%, while cable, satellite and livestreaming TV service costs were up 3.8% and internet service increased 4.9%. The cost of video purchase/subscription/rental rose 9%. BLS said April prices for all items were up 3.4% year over year before seasonal adjustment.

AT&T and AST SpaceMobile signed a commercial agreement for a joint supplemental coverage from space service, the carrier said Wednesday. The agreement runs through 2030, and builds on the companies' existing memorandum of understanding, it said. AT&T Network President Chris Sambar will join AST's board, it said. In addition, the two companies will continue partnering on developing, testing and troubleshooting SCS technology.

AT&T says the FCC should vacate a recent forfeiture order against the company on grounds that it’s arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion within the meaning of the Administrative Procedure Act, said its petition for review Thursday (docket 24-60223) in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In the April 29 order, the FCC imposed a $57.3 million penalty for AT&T’s violations of Section 222 of the Communications Act and commission regulations governing treatment of customer proprietary network information (CPNI). It found that AT&T failed to use reasonable measures for discovering and protecting against attempts to gain unauthorized access to customer location information. However, AT&T said as a “threshold matter,” the location data isn’t CPNI within the meaning of Section 222. Accordingly, the company's petition for review said the FCC lacked statutory authority to issue the order. “At a minimum,” by first announcing its “novel and expansive interpretation” of Section 222 in its enforcement proceeding and “retroactively punishing” the carrier for conduct preceding that announcement, the FCC “failed to provide the fair notice that AT&T was due,” it said. Even assuming otherwise, the agency’s finding that AT&T acted unreasonably in discovering and protecting against unauthorized access to customers’ location data is arbitrary and capricious, it added. The imposition of a $57.3 million penalty based on the existence of 84 distinct location-based-services providers, despite zero breaches by those providers, “defies law and logic,” it said. The FCC “has long lauded the valuable and sometimes life-saving benefits of location-based services, the growth of which AT&T has facilitated by implementing industry-leading data security safeguards,” the petition said. Yet the order “takes the nonsensical position that AT&T should have abruptly cut off access to customer location data in response to a news report of a single provider’s misuse,” of which the FCC had been aware for a year, “and despite the absence of any evidence that AT&T customers’ information was subject to unlawful use,” it said. The agency’s enforcement regime also “runs afoul” of the Constitution, the petition argued. Rather than grant a hearing to an alleged violator, it may elect to issue a notice of apparent liability, pass judgment on its own proposed liability finding and penalty, and then demand payment as a prerequisite to an appeal, the petition said: “That regime violates due process, Article III, the Seventh Amendment, and the nondelegation doctrine.”

The FCC Enforcement Bureau classified a group of bad actors as a consumer communications information services threat (C-CIST) for "persistently facilitating robocall campaigns, aimed at defrauding and harming consumers," a news release Monday said (see 2308010075). In an enforcement advisory, the bureau classified Royal Tiger as a C-CIST for "impersonating government agencies, banks, and utilities." The entity, which included a group of individuals and entities based in India, the U.K., the United Arab Emirates and the U.S., received FCC warnings beginning in 2021. The first of its kind classification will allow the bureau to "formally name threat actors that are repeatedly using U.S. communications networks to perpetuate the most harmful, illegal schemes against consumers." It will also give industry stakeholders information to enhance their know-your-customer and know-your-upstream-provider processes.

Expect that fixed wireless access will continue winning broadband subscribers from cable operators in 2024, Chetan Sharma Consulting wrote last week in its Q1 mobile market update. FWA has "completely decimated" cable broadband net additions during the past two years, though mobile "is providing some respite" to cable giants, it said. The report noted cable's mobile sub base exceeded 15 million. Comcast and Charter Communications are the de facto top tier-two operators, it said. The U.S. wireless market has been slowly cooling from its 2021 historic high, with slower growth. Despite that, operators had another $50 billion service revenue in Q1, the report said. The revenue growth and net adds of the past five years, and especially since 5G's launch, have reversed trends of prior years, it said. "This is the best set of 3 years the industry has had in 16 years."