Sprint and Ericsson plan to jointly build a distributed and virtualized IoT core network and an IoT operating system, they said Tuesday. They said the operating system capabilities would include managing configurations and updates for each device.
The National Coalition on Black Civic Participation told FCC Chairman Ajit Pai it supports cutting red tape for wireless and wireline infrastructure deployments. “As broadband becomes ever more essential to communities of color, it is critical that policymakers work to ensure that new networks can be built out as quickly as possible,” the group said in docket 17-79. It cited 5G.
Calling FCC informal interpretations, advice, policy statements and other unofficial guidance "illegal and unconstitutional 'extortion,'" limited government advocate New Civil Liberties Alliance is petitioning the agency to formally end such practices and give regulated parties the ability to petition to rescind such guidance and to seek judicial review, it said, posted Wednesday. The FCC didn't comment Friday. The group said it filed similar such guidance petitions in recent weeks with agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration and Education Department (see here) to DOJ (see here).
Seven Rockland, New York, residents were arrested Wednesday, accused of a multiyear scheme to defraud the E-rate program, said the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Between 2009 and 2016, the seven applied for $35 million in E-rate funding and received $14 million, prosecutors alleged. Simon Goldbrener, Ben Klein, Peretz Klein, Susan Klein, Aron Melber, Moshe Schwartz and Sholem Steinberg, who were vendors, consultants and yeshiva school officials, were charged with fraud. “As alleged, for years, these defendants stole money from the E‑rate program, billing the E-rate program for equipment and services which were not in fact provided,” said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman. “The defendants allegedly fraudulently obtained millions of dollars in E rate funds to which they were not entitled, and which should lawfully have been spent to help provide access to technology to educate underprivileged children.” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai tweeted he's grateful prosecutors are clamping down on E-rate fraud.
The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau established a pleading cycle on two Sprint petitions on IP captioned telephone service rules (see 1807300022 and 1807100066). Oppositions are due Sept. 7, replies Sept. 17 on dockets including 13-24, CGB said.
The FY 2019 fees for telemarketers accessing lists of phone numbers on the National Do-Not-Call Registry are going up slightly, the FTC said Monday. It said telemarketers will pay $63 for yearly access to lists of Registry phone numbers in a single area code, up $1 from FY 2018, up to a maximum charge of $17,406 for all area codes nationwide -- an increase from the $17,021 maximum in FY 2018.
DOJ and the FTC created email addresses for filing written notifications on the National Cooperative Research and Production Act, Justice said Monday. Notifications to NCRPAnotifications@usdoj.gov for DOJ and NCRPAnotifications@ftc.gov for the FTC.
The FCC and an employee alleging she was penalized after complaining about a hostile work environment in the Office of Communications Business Opportunities (see 1606010060) could come to a settlement agreement within the next 30 days, or should know by then if a settlement isn't achievable, the agency and plaintiff Sharon Stewart said in a docket 15-cv-00057-CKK joint status report (in Pacer) Friday.
Applicants to the 911 grant program must submit by Sept. 10 an initial package including identifying a designated 911 coordinator and required certification, NTIA said Friday. “Once applicants have submitted their initial application, NHTSA and NTIA will publish preliminary funding allocations for each of the States or Tribal Organizations meeting the certification requirements on www.grants.gov.” Revised 911 grant program rules took effect earlier this month (see 1808020021).
Questions remain about the best strategy for bringing broadband to rural America and whether subsidies are the answer, American Enterprise Institute scholar Bret Swanson blogged Thursday. “Federal and state programs designed to subsidize rural broadband deployment have done some good over the past 20 years,” he wrote. “And the US, contrary to much conventional wisdom, actually leads the world in most broadband categories. Yet the dilemma remains: Just how much money should we spend and in what format, or what other incentives can we design, to most effectively extend access to the last few percentage of the population?” For decades, the U.S. population has been shifting to urban areas where broadband is nearly ubiquitous, Swanson said. “What’s the right way to think about serving a shrinking proportion of Americans in high-cost geographies?”