Incompas CEO Chip Pickering said Tuesday’s White House memorandum on permitting “will accelerate the deployment of high-speed broadband networks, robust energy grids and advanced data centers” and help America win the global AI race, according to a release Friday. “By directing federal agencies to eliminate paper-based processes, implement automation and establish the Permitting Innovation Center, the administration is removing the roadblocks that have hindered our technological advancement,” Pickering said. The memorandum called for the Council on Environmental Quality and the National Energy Dominance Council to issue a plan for modernizing federal environmental review and permitting processes for infrastructure projects. “The administration's commitment to deliver results at 21st-century speeds demonstrates a clear understanding that America's AI leadership depends on our ability to build physical infrastructure efficiently,” Pickering said.
Pointing to a late Connect America Fund Phase II quarterly certification now having been submitted, Aristotle Unified Communications is asking the FCC for a rules waiver that would restore its Arkansas CAF support. In a docket 10-90 filing posted Friday, Aristotle said that despite curing the tardiness, the Universal Service Administrative Co. continues to withhold its Arkansas support, impeding its ability to provide broadband and voice service to Arkansas CAF locations. It said the submission failure was a ministerial error.
The FCC on Thursday suspended the comment deadlines on a petition by Talton seeking a waiver of the commission’s rules capping the rates for audio and video for incarcerated people provided to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “We find good cause to suspend the deadlines to file comments and reply comments addressing Talton’s Petition pending Commission review of the merits of Talton’s request for confidential treatment,” the Wireline Bureau said (docket 23-62).
The U.S. reliance on tariffs should have minimal impact on most fiber broadband equipment pricing and deployments, Dell'Oro Group's Jeff Heynen wrote Monday. Key U.S. fiber broadband equipment providers have onshored most of their manufacturing and assembly so they can qualify for BEAD's Build America Buy America provisions, he said. Most commonly deployed components have already been self-certified by vendors and seen big increases in domestic manufacturing.
USTelecom noted that the FCC is looking to get rid of outdated rules through its “Delete” proceeding (see 2504140046) and shouldn’t now layer on new pole attachment rules. USTelecom representatives met with Wireline Bureau staff on the issue, according to a filing posted Monday (docket 17-84). “At a time when the Commission is looking to cut burdensome and counterproductive regulations from its rulebooks, it should avoid imposing prescriptive make-ready rules that fail to account for the operational realities of broadband deployment,” USTelecom said.
Given the scope and scale of the reforms the FCC adopted in its 2024 incarcerated people’s communication services order, pushback by facilities and IPCS providers is to be expected, the Brattle Group and Wright petitioners' representatives told FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's office. In a docket 23-62 filing posted Friday recapping the meeting, the Brattle and Wright reps said there's no compelling evidence necessitating a change to the IPCS reforms. They discussed a Brattle analysis of cost data and argued that the price caps in the 2024 order allow a balance of IPCS providers recovering their costs and a reasonable profit while providing "just and reasonable rates" to consumers. Separately, provider NCIC Correctional Services requested an unredacted version of the Brattle analysis.
States, political subdivisions, tribes and Alaska Native villages or regional corporations have until the July 17 deadline to submit information on the amount of revenue collected in 2024 in 988 fees and charges and how that revenue was used, the FCC Wireline Bureau said Thursday (docket 18-336). The data will be used in a report to Congress, it said.
Lumen's Global Crossing subsidiary plans to end voice service in California, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee and Texas by Sept. 16, it told the FCC on Wednesday. It said its voice services operate "on aging, legacy network equipment, the majority of which is no longer supported by underlying vendors," so repairs and replacements have "become challenging, if not impossible." The company needs to decommission the network to head off an irreparable failure later, it said. The nondominant carrier said affected customers have already been notified and thus have time to arrange substitute services from other providers.
The last seven months of 2024 saw 5,770 reports of theft or intentional vandalism targeting communications infrastructure nationwide -- 27 a day -- said NCTA, CTIA, USTelecom and NTCA in a white paper Wednesday. It was an update of a November 2024 report in which the groups also called for updated state laws and harsher penalties (see 2411190058). The latest version said 10 states accounted for 93% of such reports during that seven-month span, with 51% occurring in California and Texas. Cuts into copper or fiber cables made up the single biggest category of reports, with 1,915, while there were an additional 1,300 reports of aerial damage, it said. As of this month, 20 states have pending legislation aimed at the issue. It said Kentucky became the first state in the 2025 legislative session to increase penalties for such tampering, with a bill signed into law in March by Gov. Andy Beshear (D) that designates communications equipment as critical infrastructure and imposes felony penalties for damage or tampering. "A wave of vandalism and theft threatens vital communications networks and other critical infrastructure," NCTA said.
The Coalition for IP Transition fired back Tuesday at Verizon on the issue of whether the FCC should impose interconnection requirements as part of the carrier’s buy of Frontier (see 2504010070). “Verizon admits that it does interconnect with some competitors for the exchange of traffic on an IP basis but only when it wants to do so and only on its terms,” the coalition said in a filing posted in docket 24-445.