Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission appoints Matthew Homsher as secretary, effective April 19, replacing Rosemary Chiavetta, retiring … Correction: Retiring from FCC Wireline Bureau is Suzanne Yelen (see 2503270070).
Regulatory fees for satellite and earth station licensing should be approved in a way that looks to the future, SpaceX said in comments posted Friday. Filings on a February Further NPRM were due Thursday in docket 24-85 (see 2502260017). SpaceX, a company led by Trump administration adviser Elon Musk, said “any changes to the existing framework” must meet what FCC Chairman Brendan Carr calls the “Gretsky [sic] Test.” NHL Hall of Famer Wayne Gretzky advised skating “to where the puck is going, not where it has been,” SpaceX noted.
The FCC should allow low-power TV (LPTV) broadcasters to use the 5G Broadcast transmission standard on a voluntary basis, said broadcaster HC2 in a petition for rulemaking Friday. The technology “allows an LPTV station to transmit a single 5G signal to its entire service area, which can be received by any compatible mobile device,” the petition said. “5G Broadcast thus provides both the spectrum efficiency of the one-to-many structure of broadcast operations and access to compatible mobile devices on existing 5G networks.” Currently, stations can only broadcast in the standard using an experimental license granted by the FCC, and only a few such stations exist.
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez is asking the Enforcement Bureau to investigate scam calls targeting San Francisco’s Chinese community, one of which involved a scammer posing as a Mandarin-speaking FCC employee. “This is why it's so important for government to continue to reach communities who may be targets of these sophisticated scams in the languages they speak,” Gomez posted Friday on X. The call is part of a wave of scams in March involving callers posing as police officers and health care providers, said the San Francisco Police Department in an online warning. In many instances, the caller posed as a Chinese health care provider and convinced the recipient that someone had submitted their personal data to make a health care claim in China. "The suspects then transferred the calls to other suspects, who claimed to be police officers from a city in China. The suspects claimed they wanted to file police reports for the victims’ compromised personal information,” SFPD said. This eventually led to callers being persuaded to use apps like Skype for video calls with people dressed as police officers as part of the scam, it said. In the incident with the false FCC employee, the scammer connected the victim “to several suspects posing as different Chinese police officers in multiple Chinese cities,” and the victim was eventually persuaded to wire $23,000 to clear their name of a supposed crime.
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.”
Samsung Electronics America and Ericsson jointly disputed a recent FCC filing by NCTA raising concerns about citizens broadband radio service interference, including by dual-band radios that operate across CBRS and the C band (see 2503060016). Both companies have waiver requests for multiband radios before the regulator. “NCTA’s continuing efforts to put off FCC action on these waivers only serves to delay the public interest benefits the multiband radios will provide: an innovative, efficient, and cost-effective base station that is smaller and has more functionality than separate CBRS and C-band radios,” said a filing posted Friday in docket 23-93. “Multiband radios will support faster deployment through fewer site approvals, lower installation costs, smaller form factor, and more energy efficiency.”
UScellular provided additional answers to questions posed by the FCC in December on the carrier’s proposed sale of wireless assets to T-Mobile (see 2412270031). But all the data was redacted from the filing, posted Friday in docket 24-286. The carrier said the data submitted is “'Highly Confidential' pursuant to the Protective Order in this proceeding.”
The FCC posted Friday a notice of inquiry on alternatives to GPS for positioning, navigation and timing (PNT), approved by commissioners 4-0 Thursday (see 2503270042). “Relying on GPS alone as the primary source of PNT data leaves America exposed to a single point of failure and leaves our PNT system open to disruption or manipulation by adversaries,” the notice says.
The FCC Wireline Bureau on Friday approved a fiber deal proposed last year by T-Mobile, a venture with private equity firm EQT to buy fiber-to-the-home provider Lumos (see 2404250047). T-Mobile said it would invest $950 million for a 50% stake in the joint venture. “We find, upon consideration of the record, that a grant of the Application will serve the public interest, convenience, and necessity,” the bureau said. “The proposed transaction will not result in a reduction of competition.” Lumos provides telecom and other services to “more than 300,000 homes and businesses across Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina,” the order said.
Bobby Barker’s retirement from the FCC was not pursuant to the Voluntary Early Retirement Authority policy (see 2503270063).