The FCC is facing persistent calls from one unsuccessful bidder for Paramount Global to revisit the approval of the company's sale to Skydance Media, but we're told the commission is unlikely to heed them. The agency didn't comment Wednesday.
The three U.S. tower companies said their industry's outlook appears positive, with the big three major carriers continuing to expand their networks. SBA Communications became the last to report on Monday.
Ending the collection of biennial ownership data through Form 323 would eliminate virtually the only source of information about broadcast-ownership diversity, several civil rights and public interest groups told us. The FCC Media Bureau on Tuesday announced an 18-month pause on collecting Form 323 and seemed to indicate that the requirement to submit the data will be permanently deleted (see 2507300070). Halting Form 323 collection would be “yet another structural policy decision to brush civil rights under the rug, to obscure discrimination in the broadcast industry,” said Free Press co-CEO Jessica Gonzalez in an email. “It's a shameful and brazen dereliction of the FCC's duty to serve all Americans.”
The Trump administration has so far raised many questions about its approach to tackling cybersecurity, former acting NTIA Administrator Evelyn Remaley said during a USTelecom webinar Tuesday. Other experts said the administration is mostly on the right track, though they conceded its policies remain a work in progress.
Rep. Glenn Ivey, D-Md., on Friday accused FCC Chairman Brendan Carr of abusing his power by pushing Verizon and other companies to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs to win approval of transactions before the commission (see 2505160050). Verizon’s proposed buy of Frontier was held up as Carr sought assurance on DEI (see 2505160024). Ivey spoke during a Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC) conference.
AT&T expects to see up to $8 billion in tax savings for 2025-2027 as a result of the recently enacted reconciliation package and will invest $3.5 billion of those savings in its network, the carrier said Wednesday as it reported Q2 results. AT&T also reported 401,000 postpaid phone net adds for the quarter, 243,000 AT&T Fiber net adds and 203,000 AT&T Internet Air adds.
Leaders of two 911 advocacy groups in Tuesday interviews offered slightly diverging plans for pushing Congress to address funding for next-generation 911 tech upgrades. Republican lawmakers decided against allocating any future spectrum auction revenue for that purpose in the budget reconciliation package both chambers passed last week (see 2507030056). President Donald Trump signed the measure Friday, authorizing an 800 MHz spectrum auction pipeline through Sept. 30, 2034 (see 2507070045). A Hill briefing Tuesday with the NG9-1-1 Institute and Intrado on emergency communications issues barely touched on the funding issue.
Industry groups urged the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to move quickly in its rulemaking to modernize its carrier of last resort (COLR) requirements as the agency considers changing the state's 30-year-old rules (see 2410310044). Some suggested that the requirement be removed entirely in areas that are well-served, while advocacy organizations encouraged the commission to maintain the rules and instead update the framework.
The Trump Organization announced Monday that later this year, it will launch Trump Mobile, a mobile virtual network operator, and a gold-colored smartphone, which it said will eventually be made in the U.S. The launch would create ethics concerns regardless, but even more so given the Trump administration's pressure for the FCC to answer directly to the White House, public interest groups said.
The New York Senate voted 45-14 Thursday to approve a bill that would address junk fees. S-363 would require businesses, such as ISPs and cable providers, to display certain mandatory fees and the total price of their services. In addition, it would exclude "any tax, duty, fee or custom levied by any local, state, federal or other governmental or quasi-governmental entity" from its list of mandatory fees. Fourteen Senate Democrats introduced the legislation, the New York Junk Fee Prevention Act, in January. Providers would be deemed in compliance if they're abiding by the FCC's consumer broadband label rules. The bill accounts for the possibility of the FCC's rules no longer being applicable and establishes similar provisions for providers. Such mandatory fees would include surcharges that are "not reasonably avoidable" to make a purchase or require action by a consumer to remove them.