Provider DQE Communications on Friday urged the FCC to look closely at whether E-rate services should be subject to the USF contribution factor. DQE filed in docket 25-133, the FCC’s “Delete, Delete, Delete” docket. “In a paradoxical loop that only a bureaucrat would love: The Federal government uses USF funds to provide heavy discounts for E-Rate services, then levies a 36.6% tax against those same schools and libraries, all in the name of funding USF so it can be used in part to provide the subsidies to the schools that have been overcharged,” the provider said. The FCC should “act to eliminate this ridiculous Catch-22 situation by exempting all E-Rate services from the USF levy.”
The FCC Enforcement Bureau on Thursday asked voice service providers and USTelecom’s Industry Traceback Group to file information by May 1 on “private-led efforts to trace back the origin of suspected unlawful robocalls necessary for the Commission’s annual report.” The reporting period for the request is all of 2024. “Unlawful prerecorded or artificial voice message calls -- robocalls -- plague the American public,” the bureau said in a notice in docket 20-195. “Spoofed caller ID makes it more difficult to identify the source of the call.”
Traditional telecommunications service providers can't rely on their physical infrastructure for competitive differentiation, as the growth of disruptive market entrants means "anyone can now launch a telecom company in a matter of days," management consultancy Arthur D. Little said Wednesday. Those new competitors include big cloud and streaming providers like Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft, as well as mobile virtual network operators, it said in a report. Traditional telecommunications service providers must differentiate at the product and service level, it added. The report predicted that traditional companies will pivot from what have been core products and services and focus on such business approaches as being a no-frills connectivity provider or an AI-enabled digital life assistant that's integrated with numerous applications and platforms. It said some traditional telecommunications service providers might also opt to become bundlers of connectivity content, entertainment, cloud and cybersecurity.
The FCC on Monday notified the Universal Service Administrative Co. that the Wireline Bureau approves the Rural Health Care program funding 2025 review procedures. That decision is “subject to further modifications and/or instruction from the Commission,” the bureau said in docket 02-60.
Cybersecurity company Sygnia identified a new network threat from China, which it calls Weaver Ant. “Nation-state threat actors like Weaver Ant are incredibly dangerous and persistent with the primary goal of infiltrating critical infrastructure and collecting as much information as they can before being discovered,” the company said Monday. “Multiple layers of web shells concealed malicious payloads, allowing the threat actor to move laterally within the network and remain evasive.”
Any 988 text georouting requirement of the FCC should be a generalized obligation that lets the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline administrator still work with industry to develop a solution compatible with the existing lifeline architecture, Mosaicx said. In a docket 18-336 filing Friday recapping meetings with aides to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and Commissioners Anna Gomez and Nathan Simington, Mosaicx said any generalized text georouting obligation also should keep the 988 lifeline's centralized routing structure. Mosaicx, which is building a text-to-988 georouting offering, said the agency should focus on supporting such purpose-built georouting solutions that achieve those objectives.
A February FCC order expanding the reach of the do-not-originate lists and strengthening call-blocking capabilities will take effect March 24, 2026, said a notice for Monday’s Federal Register. Commissioners approved the order 4-0 (see 2502270058).
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that calls and texts from Zipongo, which does business as Foodsmart, to consumer James Hulce weren't a violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The calls offered free nutritional services through Hulce’s state and Medicaid-funded health care plan. In a decision written by Judge Amy St. Eve, the 7th Circuit, based in Chicago, upheld a decision by a district court in the Eastern District of Wisconsin.
Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia are joining a push urging the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to hold an en banc rehearing regarding the court's decision on a 2023 FCC robocall and robotext order (see 2501240068). "The FCC’s one-to-one consent rule at issue in this appeal is a critical nationwide enforcement tool" against illegal robocalls, the states said in an amicus brief Monday (docket 24-10277), backing the National Consumer Law Center's proposed petition for rehearing en banc. The 11th Circuit panel’s decision "invalidating this commonsense rule threatens Amici States’ interest in protecting consumers, families, and businesses from the deluge of invasive robocalls," they said. The one-to-one consent rule "provides a critical federal complement to state-level efforts to combat robocalls by creating a nationwide limitation on certain harvesting of consumer contact information." The states signing the amicus brief were: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
The Pew Charitable Trusts is taking a wait-and-see approach on the future of BEAD (see 2503170045), said Kathryn de Wit, project director of its broadband access initiative. “If the goal is to get shovels in the ground more quickly, our research shows that pursuing practical and bipartisan administrative changes to BEAD -- like using existing permitting processes from other federal broadband programs … rather than completely overhauling the program -- would foster trust between states and ISPs and keep progress moving,” she said in an email late Monday. On accommodating satellite broadband, she noted that “alternative technologies, including fixed wireless and satellite, have always been part of the solution, and states have had the ability to include them in their BEAD planning processes.” Nevada has already completed its ISP selection process, and while it’s using fiber to serve more than 80% of its unserved locations, satellite will serve about 9%, she said.