The FCC Wireline Bureau approved Tuesday the withdrawal of the Catasauqua Area School District in Pennsylvania from the FCC’s schools and libraries cybersecurity pilot program. The district said it recognizes the importance of the program but lacks the financial support to continue.

Asset management company Pearce announced Tuesday that it has acquired JoeMax Telecom, which provides engineering, site acquisition and project management services for the telecom industry. “The acquisition expands Pearce’s presence in the northeast region and adds new technical capabilities,” said a news release. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

Better modeling of where Alaskans live within census blocks or polygons would give a better picture of GCI’s compliance with its Alaska Plan mobile commitments, the company said Monday in docket 16-271. It petitioned for a waiver or modification that would let it use the broadband serviceable location fabric in the Alaska population-distribution model in certain circumstances. "Wireless networks are built to serve where the people actually are, which will be more accurately reflected by adopting these changes," it said. GCI also asked for a change to the Alaska Plan's overperformance waterfall, so that if the company overperforms relative to its fiber or LTE commitments, the excess populations "waterfall down" to the next performance tier.

Electric utilities American Electric Power and Dominion Energy jointly filed in support of the Edison Electric Institute's petition asking the FCC to clarify that utilities have “prior express consent” under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act to send “demand response calls and texts” to their customers (see 2503100047). “Demand response initiatives are developed and implemented by electric utility companies to incentivize their customers to limit power use during periods of peak demand, or to shift power use to times of lower demand,” said a filing posted Thursday in docket 02-278. “The immediate impact of such behavior is to reduce stress on the electric delivery system, and in turn, to minimize the likelihood of a black out or brown out when power demand is expected to reach the maximum that the system can sustain,” the companies said. Utility National Grid USA also supported the petition.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit heard oral argument Wednesday on the National Treasury Employees Union’s pursuit of an emergency stay of President Donald Trump's executive order slashing staff at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The challenge is one of several that NTEU, which represents FCC employees, has against recent efforts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the Trump administration (see 2503310047).

The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau on Monday delayed for a year some of the requirements of the agency's February 2024 Telephone Consumer Protection Act consent order (see 2402160048). Originally set to take effect Friday, the requirements were delayed until April 11, 2026.

The FCC on Monday announced lower prices to check the agency’s reassigned numbers database. The agency said it cut the costs of all existing subscription tiers by 20% and added two new tiers “to better meet industry needs.” The database is “designed to prevent a consumer from getting calls intended for someone who previously held their phone number,” it said: “Subscribers use the database to determine whether a telephone number may have been reassigned so they can avoid calling the wrong consumer.” The changes should “make it easier for callers to check large volumes of numbers before calling them, potentially reducing misdirected calls from reaching consumers.”

The Large Public Power Council filed Friday in support of a petition by the Edison Electric Institute asking the FCC to clarify that utilities have “prior express consent” under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act to send “demand response calls and texts” to their customers (see 2503100047). “LPPC agrees with EEI that there is good ground for the Commission to clarify that utility customers have implicitly granted prior consent to communications from utilities eliciting demand response, that these communications are closely related to utility service, and that these communications are in the public interest,” said a filing in docket 02-278.

The FCC Office of Inspector General released its inaugural strategic plan for 2025-29 on Friday, focusing on enhancing FCC oversight and safeguarding communications services from fraud and abuse. The plan emphasizes four priorities: OIG will conduct "impactful oversight" to protect FCC programs; build and maintain relationships with stakeholders to enhance public awareness; strengthen operations to ensure accountability on a timely basis; and enhance workforce capacity and engagement internally. "Our success in fulfilling our critical mission is dependent upon our ability to assess current and future priorities and challenges and marshal our resources and skills to best address them," said Inspector General Fara Damelin. She noted that the plan was based on "critical input from all FCC OIG professionals" and feedback from external stakeholders. "We are committed to engaging in ongoing assessments of our goals and objectives and to identifying and employing effective measures to hold ourselves accountable."

The FCC is no longer seeking an 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals en banc rehearing regarding the court's decision on a 2023 FCC robocall and robotext order, so allowing proposed intervenors to become parties would only keep litigation going that the government has decided to quit pursuing, the FCC told the court Friday in docket 24-10277. In an opposition to a motion to intervene, the FCC said allowing those parties to become intervenors "would undermine the government’s prerogative to direct the course of this case." The agency also argued that the motion to intervene, filed by the National Consumer Law Center and Public Justice (see 2503100070), was untimely. A three-judge 11th Circuit panel ruled earlier this year that the agency overstepped its statutory boundaries in part of its implementation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (see 2501240068).