ClearCaptions urged the FCC to provide "at least two years of rate stability" in a new rate plan adopted for IP-captioned telephone services using automatic speech recognition (ASR). There are "no additional efficiency gains expected" in ASR costs in the medium term, it said during a meeting with an aide to Commissioner Brendan Carr (see 2309250056). An ex parte filing was posted Thursday in docket 22-408. Raising concerns about further rate cuts, ClearCaptions said continuous rate cuts would "signal to banks and other investors that there could be no end in sight for rate reductions."
Republican FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington appears likely to win renomination regardless of which party takes the White House in November, lawmakers and lobbyists said in interviews. Some observers believe it's unlikely Democrats will use Simington's 2025 confirmation process to strike back against any FCC structural changes Republican Commissioner Brendan Carr may propose if former President Donald Trump wins and nominates him as chairman, as expected (see 2407120002). Carr’s reconfirmation last year (see 2310020043) means his term doesn’t expire until 2028, so he wouldn't face a new round of Senate scrutiny.
States hope they can increase federal engagement on telecom no matter who is president in 2025, current and former state utility commissioners said in interviews. In a possible second Donald Trump presidency, “the states and localities are really going to be where broadband policy is made,” predicted Gigi Sohn, Benton Institute for Broadband & Society senior fellow. Some said there is a lot of uncertainty about how a Trump administration might change rules for state grants under NTIA’s $42.5 billion broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program.
The FCC World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC) Advisory Committee scheduled a second meeting for Aug. 5 where the group will consider status reports and recommendations from its informal working groups preparing for WRC-27 (see 2403210049). The FCC announced the meeting in a public notice Thursday. The in-person meeting will begin at 9:30 a.m. at the FCC.
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel told Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., the FCC's study of fixed wireless use of the lower 12 GHz band continues with the agency drawing no conclusions so far. Proponents hope for a decision soon (see 2407030061). “Since the record in the proceeding closed, Commission staff has been carefully reviewing stakeholder submissions -- including technical feasibility studies and suggested coordination mechanisms -- with an eye to opening up this band for new services while protecting vital satellite services,” Rosenworcel said in a letter posted Thursday. “A wide range of FCC legal, technical, and policy experts are engaged in evaluating the complex questions raised in this record, which now includes competing technical analyses,” she said: The staff review “requires carefully examining the characteristics of this spectrum band -- including its propagation and capacity characteristics, the nature of in-band and adjacent band incumbent use, and the potential for international harmonization -- prior to determining technical feasibility and if harmful interference can be avoided.” Eshoo raised the issue in a letter to the FCC last year.
Donald Trump recently has distanced himself from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 manifesto (see 2407050015), but its authors are his close policy advisors. Accordingly, his election would likely mean chaos for the federal bureaucracy, including agencies like the FCC, FTC and the NTIA, experts said. As many as 50,000 federal employees could lose their jobs if a Trump administration cleans house, experts told us. Project 2025 includes a chapter on the FCC that Commissioner Brendan Carr wrote. Carr is considered the favorite to become FCC chair if Trump wins (see 2407120002).
Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., told us Thursday she plans to hold a follow-up meeting with members of that panel and the Armed Services Committee later this month on her Spectrum and National Security Act (S-4207). She’s hoping to jump-start stalled spectrum legislative talks after S-4207’s momentum appeared to stall amid a series of scuttled May and June Senate Commerce markups (see 2406180067). The Senate Armed Services-Commerce meeting will happen “when we get back” the week of July 22, after a week-long congressional recess to accommodate the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. “We had a call with some” Senate Armed Services and Commerce members before scheduling the canceled June 18 markup session, “but we didn’t get to communicate with everybody” before pulling the vote. She hoped to hold the follow-up meeting this week, "but everything that’s been transpiring” meant it’s been “pretty busy around here.” Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Roger Wicker of Mississippi and other Republicans in June blamed Cantwell’s lack of communication about behind-the-scenes revisions of S-4207 to secure backing from Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Biden administration-appointed military leaders as a major reason they couldn’t support the bill at that time (see 2406170066). Cantwell earlier this week cited a July 1 FCC report to Congress that found 40% of Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program participants lacked enough funding to complete removal and replacement of suspect network gear (see 2407020042) as a reason for Congress to move on S-4207.
Expect a Donald Trump White House and FCC to focus on deregulation and undoing the agency's net neutrality and digital discrimination rules, telecom policy experts and FCC watchers tell us. Brendan Carr, one of the two GOP minority commissioners, remains the seeming front-runner to head the agency if Trump wins the White House in November (see 2407120002). Despite repeated comments from Trump as a candidate and president calling for FCC action against companies such as CNN and MSNBC over their news content, many FCC watchers on both sides of the aisle told us they don’t expect the agency to actually act against cable networks or broadcast licenses under a second Trump administration.
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr is widely seen as the favorite to become FCC chair in a second Donald Trump presidency, and former FCC staffers and communications industry officials told us they expect a Carr-led FCC would prioritize policies he wrote about in the telecom chapter of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. For example, the chapter lays out plans for rolling back Section 230 protections for tech companies, deregulating broadband infrastructure and restricting Chinese companies.
Skylo Technologies sees a substantial market for satellite-connected IoT devices, Tarun Gupta, Skylo co-founder and chief product officer, said Thursday. Adding satellite coverage to terrestrial service “will really remove the borders of connectivity” and mean no one should worry “do I have coverage here or not?” Gupta said during a Mobile World Live webinar on non-terrestrial networks (NTNs). Other speakers said use cases for NTN are already emerging.