Democratic lawmakers said at a House Commerce Committee hearing Wednesday that cuts to staffing and budgets at the FCC and FTC threaten efforts to combat robocalls and robotexts. “Republicans are regularly undermining efforts to address these threats, cutting funding and staff from the very entities that protect consumers, all to give giant tax breaks to billionaires who don’t need them,” said ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J.

GCI slammed comments by the Alaska Remote Carrier Coalition and OptimERA opposing GCI’s request for modification or waiver of the Alaska population-distribution model to utilize the broadband serviceable location fabric and of the mobile “waterfall” methodology (see 2504140020).

Comments are due July 21, replies Aug. 18, on a Further NPRM on next-generation 911, the FCC said Wednesday. Comments should be filed in dockets 21-479 and 13-75. The NG911 FNPRM proposes updates to the agency’s 911 reliability rules, extending those rules that cover legacy 911 networks to service providers that control or operate critical pathways and components in NG911 networks. Commissioners approved it 4-0 in March (see 2503270042).

T-Mobile Fiber Home Internet formally launches Thursday, the carrier said Tuesday. The launch comes as T-Mobile deepens its focus on fiber, including buying a stake in fiber-to-the-home provider Lumos (see 2504010034).

Making cloud services pay into the USF would increase the price of the services, drive down adoption and negatively affect the economy, according to a new study from the Computer & Communications Industry Association. The study was written by Raul Katz, director-business strategy research at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information at Columbia Business School and funded by Amazon Web Services. Ruiz discussed the results Tuesday on a webcast with Trevor Wagener, CCIA's research center director and chief economist.

The FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council will meet June 12 at 1 p.m. at FCC headquarters, the agency said Thursday. This is the second CSRIC meeting under FCC Chairman Brendan Carr; the first was in March (see 2503190051).

The Alaska Remote Carrier Coalition discussed with an FCC staffer the differences between completing the Alaska Plan under the Form 477 format and shifting to the broadband data collection data, as required for the Alaska Connect Fund, said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 23-328.

The FCC Wireline Bureau on Tuesday reversed four Universal Service Administrative Co. audit decisions denying reimbursements for Lifeline support that Verizon/Alltel provided to eligible residents of tribal lands in North Dakota and South Dakota in 2007. Verizon Wireless acquired Alltel Wireless in 2008.

Representatives of TransUnion met with staff from the FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs and Wireline bureaus to discuss the company’s “market-driven” calling solution. “Businesses currently face two interrelated dilemmas -- certain calls that are authentic are being spam-tagged and/or blocked and calls that are fraudulently spoofed are getting through to unwitting consumers,” said a filing posted Thursday (docket 17-59). TransUnion has found that up to 25% of some companies’ calls “are mislabeled as spam,” while as many as 15% of some calls from financial institutions are “spoofed,” the filing said: “TransUnion’s solutions, based on global call authentication standards, allows consumers to see businesses’ name, logo, and call reason information on their incoming call screen, providing greater confidence that a call is legitimate.”

Bandwidth executives met with staff from the Public Safety and Wireline bureaus on interconnection issues (see 2503100030), according to a filing posted Tuesday in docket 21-479. “Bandwidth supports the transition to all-IP networks and wants to work with the Commission to speed the transition to IP while ensuring that all calls, and especially calls to 911, are delivered without interruption during that transition,” it said. The executives discussed “the ongoing difficulties faced by companies like Bandwidth that seek to continue to successfully deliver E911 calls nationwide as the industry transitions to more [next-generation] 911 service arrangements.”