The FCC Public Safety Bureau will conduct a voluntary exercise of the disaster information reporting system (DIRS) for all communications providers June 16-18, according to a public notice Thursday. The test will begin June 16 with a mock activation letter to all registered DIRS participants from the Public Safety Bureau, it said. The letter, which "will clearly state that this is only an exercise,” will include a list of preselected counties that form the affected area for the mock DIRS activation, and providers will be asked to report data on any communication assets they have in those counties. "Since this is an exercise, the FCC does not expect to receive actual outage data," the notice said. Providers that don’t have communications assets in the affected counties can still participate in the exercise by reporting mock data for the counties. The agency wants initial data by 10 a.m. ET June 17 and an updated report by the same time June 18. The bureau will send a deactivation letter by 3 p.m. ET June 18 to let participants know that the exercise is over.

Comments are due July 7, replies July 21, on the FCC’s proposals for FY 2025 regulatory fees, said an NPRM released Thursday. The agency on Wednesday unanimously approved the NPRM, which seeks comment on a proposal to reclassify 61 indirect full-time equivalents (FTEs) as direct FTEs, as well as on the $390,192,000 in proposed fees. The costs of indirect FTEs are borne by all FCC regulatory fee payors, while direct FTEs are paid only by the licensees serviced by the bureau or office to which they are assigned. The reallocation is based on the FCC determining “that certain FTE work in the Office of General Counsel, the Office of Economics and Analytics, and the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau is sufficiently linked to the oversight and regulation of regulatory fee payors in a core bureau.” Among the proposed changes to FTEs, the Wireless and Wireline bureaus' payors would see their direct FTEs increase by 23 each, while Media Bureau payors would see an increase of 13 FTEs. The regulatory fee NPRM doesn’t seek comment on proposed changes to the way fees for space and earth stations are calculated, because the proceeding for a recent Further NPRM on that subject (see 2502260017) is still open, Thursday’s NPRM said.

Police have arrested Jeffrey Gary, formerly an assistant division chief in the FCC Enforcement Bureau, for allegedly assaulting a woman. The attack occurred Friday evening near the Braddock Metro Station in Alexandria, Virginia, per a release this week from the Alexandria Police Department. Gary is being fired from the FCC, where he had served in the Enforcement Bureau's Telecommunications Consumers Division. Police said Gary has been linked to at least one other attack.

If the U.S. wants to win on AI, it must focus on telecom regulatory issues like permitting, Incompas CEO Chip Pickering told the House Communications Subcommittee on Wednesday. Pickering spoke during a hearing on how U.S. communications networks can support AI.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and member Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said in interviews Wednesday night they were close to a deal with Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on spectrum language for the Cruz-led panel's imminent budget reconciliation proposal that will exclude certain bands from possible sale. Cruz in recent weeks had signaled he wanted to pursue a spectrum reconciliation title without band exclusions if possible (see 2505130059).

The Phoenix Center said Tuesday that President Donald Trump's administration is proving to be more focused on regulating industry than he promised during his campaign last year. “A disturbing number” of Trump appointees “are refusing to heed his message, targeting technology firms with aggressive antitrust enforcements, regulations, and even the sorts of jawboning coercion used during the Biden Administration to curtail constitutionally protected private speech,” the center's new report said.

EchoStar’s decision Friday not to make a $326 million cash interest payment due that day on corporate debt that matures in 2029 (see 2505300001) could give the company more leverage to negotiate over spectrum with the FCC, New Street’s Blair Levin told investors Monday. New Street believes FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s strategy “is to put a cloud over the value of [EchoStar’s] assets while using procedural maneuvers to keep [EchoStar] from challenging those actions in the Court of Appeals,” Levin wrote. The company also told the SEC on Monday that it wasn't making an $183 million interest payment due that day on notes that mature in 2026, 2028 and 2029.

The FCC’s “bad labs” order and Further NPRM, approved by commissioners 4-0 last week and posted this week, contains a lengthy cost-of-benefit analysis weighing the costs and risks of not moving forward with the rules. FCC officials noted last week that this was the only major change from the draft (see 2505220056), though the agency also added a paragraph on DOJ's concerns. Other changes were mostly cosmetic, based on a side-by-side comparison.

The FCC Public Safety Bureau on Wednesday denied a petition for reconsideration by China Unicom Americas, which asked the agency to rethink its 2022 decision revoking the company’s Section 214 authority to operate in the U.S. (see 2201270030). The order rejected each of CUA’s arguments. In December, the 9th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court turned down a petition for review from CUA that sought to overturn the 2022 decision (see 2412240032).

Members of the House this week asked FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to send to the Federal Register for publication rules for new multilingual templates for wireless emergency alerts (WEA), which the Public Safety Bureau released in January (see 2501080029).