The FCC “will accept challenges” to the FCC's new broadband map on a rolling basis, at any time,” Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel told Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and other senators in letters released Friday. Cantwell, Commerce then-ranking member Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and 11 other senators urged the FCC and NTIA in December to extend the challenge deadline to at least March 14. NTIA declined in January to extend the Jan. 13 deadline (see 2301130046) for challenges to the next iteration of the map that will be used for broadband, equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program funding allocations, despite numerous requests from states and other entities. Jan. 13 “was not a deadline because the Commission continues to accept and resolve location and availability challenges so that they may be included in future iterations of the map,” Rosenworcel told senators. NTIA identified Jan. 13 “as the target date by which availability challenges had the best opportunity to be fully addressed and incorporated into the map, if necessary, ahead of NTIA's plan to allocate funds by June 30.” The 2020 Broadband Deployment Accuracy and Technological Availability Act “envisions ongoing challenges to the map, and” the FCC “stands ready to continue to work with all stakeholders to receive feedback and continue to improve our map over time.”

The FCC/NTIA/Agriculture Department interagency agreement set in 2020's Broadband Interagency Coordination Act (see 2012210055) has been working, resulting in new and improved coordination workstreams, the commission said Friday in a congressionally mandated status report. The FCC recommended the agencies keep coordinating ways to standardize broadband data. It also said they should make the coordination efforts more transparent. It said the three began regular and ad hoc meetings in spring 2020, in anticipation of the legislation, and those meetings about their various broadband funding programs have continued through the present. It said coordination efforts also expanded to include other agencies. At the same time, the agencies have run into challenges when trying to tackle potential program duplication, it said. Those challenges include the programs' distinct features and constraints, such as different speed performance thresholds and timelines, it said. Another complication is that the agencies have different standards for treating an area as served, and thus ineligible to seek funding in their programs, with some using an actual-deployment standard while others treat an area as served if there is a binding commitment with defined construction obligations. The FCC recommended the agencies look at revising the interagency agreement to create a minimum period of time for agencies to review proposed funding before the funding agency makes final commitments.

The FCC’s Communications Equity and Diversity Council will meet virtually Feb. 23, said a public notice Thursday. The meeting will feature reports from the council’s working groups on efforts to reduce barriers to entry, advance civil rights in the telecom industry, and accelerate equitable deployment of broadband access.

The FCC appears to be leaning toward an intent-based or disparate treatment standard, rather than one focusing on disparate impact, as it crafts rules barring digital discrimination, said Robert McDowell of Cooley Monday at an International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) panel. Language in the NPRM adopted in December (see 2212210054) indicating it might not always be technically or economically feasible to provide service to someone seems to be proposing an implied safe harbor, said the former FCC commissioner. However, the agency's proposed language doesn't fall neatly within the definition of disparate treatment versus impact as laid out in federal court precedent, he said. ICLE Senior Scholar Eric Fruits said the addition of income as a protected class in the NPRM creates an "income conundrum." Even if a provider went out of its way to not consider income in deployment, other factors like educational attainment, population density and race highly correlate with income, he said. That means it's possible to find discrimination even if an IPS is explicitly trying to avoid it, he said, and an intent-based standard makes most sense for defining digital discrimination. A standard based on disparate impacts could lead to false positives, he said.

Cost of internet service in the U.S. in January was up 2% year over year, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index unadjusted data released Tuesday. Residential phone service costs were up 5.7%, and wireless service costs were up 1.4%. Cable, satellite and livestreaming TV service costs were up 3.4%. January prices overall were up 6.4% year over year before seasonal adjustment, BLS said.

The Library of Congress' Congressional Record app will be pulled from app stores and no longer supported as of Feb. 28, it blogged Monday. It said it launched the app more than 11 years ago at a time when the legacy legislative website, Thomas, wasn't designed for mobile devices, but Congress.gov has since surpassed the app in functionality.

The FTC has the authority to regulate junk fees and should act to protect consumers, said two sets of joint comments submitted to the agency’s junk fee proceeding by Free Press, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the United Church of Christ Media Justice Office and several consumer groups. “Instead of incentivizing honest and transparent pricing, businesses are incentivized to bait consumers with low prices and hide fees until later,” said the joint submission from the Consumer Federation of America, Free Press, Consumer Reports and others. A proceeding against junk fees is consistent with past FTC practice and is needed because the FTC’s authority to pursue redress for deceptive business practices without a specific rulemaking was restricted by the U.S. Supreme Court’s AMG Capital Management v. FTC ruling, the groups said. The “prevalence of forced arbitration and class action bans” is also a reason for the FTC to step in, the filing said. “Individual arbitrations will not have the impact that is necessary to deter misconduct and change practices,” the groups said. The FTC should institute an “all-in pricing rule” that would require the clear disclosure of all fees in advertising and before the time of purchase. A joint filing from the National Consumer Law Center, Prison Policy Initiative, UCC, SPLC and a host of justice advocacy groups concentrated on junk fees in prisons. “Justice-involved consumers are all too frequently forced to pay junk fees imposed by private companies operating in the market for correctional services,” said the NCLC joint filing, citing fees for money transfers, “free” tablets, and email inside prisons. Prison email “appears to suffer from many of the same perverse pricing dynamics that spurred the FCC to regulate phone rates and fees in corrections facilities,” said the filing. Those include “prices that bear little relation to cost” and “consumer choice vested in corrections officials who are not obliged to protect the rights of end-users.”

SpaceX's satellite-provided mobile service "will be frictionless" for T-Mobile customers, T-Mobile told the FCC International Bureau Wednesday in a letter supporting SpaceX's application to use PCS G-block spectrum to provide satellite-enabled mobile coverage (see 2302080001). T-Mobile said the proposed SpaceX direct-to-handset system "protects T-Mobile’s primary terrestrial mobile operations from interference, consistent with the requested non-interference, non-protection basis upon which SpaceX requests to operate." It said it granted SpaceX rights to operate in the band. T-Mobile said it doesn't plan to partner with other satellite operators in the band, so the spectrum won't be available to other satellite operators.

SpaceX seeks FCC approval to incorporate the PCS G block, 2 GHz and 1.6/2.4 GHz bands into its second-generation constellation for use to provide direct-to-cellular connectivity. In two International Bureau applications Tuesday, SpaceX requested approval to deploy a direct-to-cellular mobile satellite service (MSS) payload that would use the 1910-1915 MHz and 1990-1995 MHz bands to operate with terrestrial mobile devices operating under LTE standards. It also asked for approval to provide direct-to-handset service using the 1610-1617.775 MHz, 2483.5-2500 MHz, 2000-2020 MHz, 2180-2200 MHz bands, and the 2020-2025 MHz band. The direct-to-cellular payloads would be incorporated into its second-gen satellites, SpaceX said. It said it and T-Mobile "have carefully coordinated" to ensure coexistence between T-Mobile's terrestrial operations in the same PCS G block spectrum and SpaceX's direct-to-handset service, and the two have a spectrum manager lease allowing SpaceX use of the frequencies licensed to T-Mobile. SpaceX said its operations will meet the technical limits for broadband PCS service "and thus will be indistinguishable from terrestrial PCS G Block operations from an interference perspective." It said its 2 GHz MSS system "will bring ubiquitous connectivity" to mobile users without interfering with other licensed operators. Earlier this week, SpaceX withdrew its previous application for MSS in the PCS G block and 2 GHz band (see 2302070069). SpaceX and T-Mobile announced in August they would partner on satellite-enabled mobile service (see 2208260038).

The FCC is revising Freedom of Information Act fees to reflect changes to federal employee pay enacted by Congress and the White House, said a public notice in Monday’s Daily Digest. “The Commission bases its FOIA Fee Schedule on the grade level of the employee who processes the request,” the PN said. “The Commission’s rules provide that the Fee Schedule will be modified periodically to correspond with modifications in the rate of pay approved by Congress.” The FOIA fee changes are effective as of the PN’s release, it said.