Google's YouTube said late Wednesday that it reached a short-term extension agreement with Fox, temporarily preventing a blackout of Fox channels on YouTube TV as it "continue[s] to work on a new agreement." The carriage agreement between the companies was set to expire at 5 p.m. Wednesday. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr took to social media this week to pressure Google to come to an agreement with Fox (see 2508270014).
The FCC should be skeptical about TV broadcasters' arguments that setting a date for the ATSC 1.0 sunset will lead to the consumer electronics industry stepping up production of 3.0 receivers, said YouTube content creator and tech reviewer Lon Seidman in a letter to the agency posted Thursday in docket 16-142. When Pearl TV and broadcasters supported a voluntary rollout of ATSC 3.0, they repeatedly said that widespread voluntary adoption of the standard would create enough demand for electronics manufacturers, Seidman said. “Given these contradictions, the Commission should treat the current claims with caution and weigh them against the industry’s own earlier statements,” the letter said. “The real reason the market failed to materialize is that Pearl’s members, working through the [ATSC 3.0 Security Authority], imposed a private and opaque regulatory framework that prevented this from ever functioning as a true free market.” Meeting the industry’s security requirements is “so costly that in many cases compliance costs more than the actual manufacturing costs.”
The FCC Wireline Bureau is seeking comment on whether it should make changes to its rules for granting extensions to providers unable to implement Stir/Shaken requirements, said a Thursday notice. The FCC currently allows only two “categorical implementation extensions based on undue hardship” for providers who can’t obtain the service provider code token necessary to participate in Stir/Shaken and for small voice providers that originate calls via satellite using North American Numbering Council numbers, it said. The Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act instructs the commission “to annually ‘consider revising or extending’ any extension granted due to undue hardship, including whether an extension remains necessary,” the notice said. Comment deadlines will come in a Federal Register notice.
Representatives of the Utility Broadband Alliance met with FCC Wireless Bureau staff about its members' need for data and the important role played by private networks, according to a filing posted Thursday in docket 24-99. The group said it supports a proposal for a rulemaking authorizing 5/5 MHz broadband deployments in the 900 MHz band (see 2505190025). While the earlier establishment of a 3/3 MHz broadband segment in the band “has been a tremendous success, the amount of broadband spectrum currently available to utilities for private network operations is not sufficient to meet utilities’ current and future needs.”
The Central Alabama Volunteer Exam Coordinator has been designated as a club station call-sign administrator under FCC rules, the Wireless Bureau announced Thursday. The bureau noted that volunteer organizations have been responsible for processing applications for amateur radio service club and military recreation station licenses since 1998. The Alabama group is one of five organizations that has been so designated.
The FCC is dropping parts of its 2023 robocall and robotext order rejected by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (see 2501240067), effective Friday. The 11th Circuit vacated the part of the order that said a consumer can't consent to a telemarketing or advertising robocall unless they consent to calls from only one entity at a time and consent only to calls whose subject matter is “logically and topically associated with the interaction that prompted the consent.” The 11th Circuit remanded the order to the FCC for further proceedings.
Comments on the FCC’s NPRM on reducing barriers to network improvements are due Sept. 29, replies Oct. 27, in dockets 25-208 and 25-209, said a public notice Thursday. The NPRM sought comment on “deregulatory options to encourage providers to invest in next-generation broadband networks so all Americans can benefit from technological developments in the communications marketplace.”
Meeting the goals of the budget reconciliation package to make 800 MHz of spectrum available for auction (see 2507070045) won’t be easy, especially with 3.1-3.45 and 7.4-8.4 GHz exempted from potential reallocation, warned Joe Kane, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation's director of broadband and spectrum policy. Kane spoke with former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly in a new webcast, part of a series for the Free State Foundation.
An FCC order on FY 2025 regulatory fees is expected to be unanimously approved soon and will likely contain few surprises, according to industry and FCC officials (see 2506050061). The draft order, circulated to the 10th floor last week, changes how fees are assessed in line with proposals in the June NPRM, but it doesn’t take up calls from broadcasters and satellite companies to expand the base of regulatory fee payors. FCC officials told us they anticipate that the order will be issued in time to allow fees to be paid by the deadline at the end of September.
Any changes to the non-geostationary/geostationary orbit satellite spectrum-sharing regime should protect incumbent services, numerous terrestrial and satellite incumbents told the FCC in docket 25-157 this week. Commissioners in April adopted an NPRM looking at changing the satellite spectrum-sharing regime in the 10.7-12.7, 17.3-18.6 and 19.7-20.2 GHz bands (see 2504280038). It sprung from a 2024 SpaceX petition urging changes to the NGSO/GSO sharing methodology for NGSO fixed satellite service downlinks (see 2408120018).