The U.S. Supreme Court is "clear[ly] ... exasperated with the FCC's flip-flopping between Title I and Title II" classification of the internet, International Center for Law & Economics scholars blogged Wednesday. ICLE's Eric Fruits and Ben Sperry pointed to Justice Neil Gorsuch's concurrence in the Loper Bright decision. Gorsuch cited the FCC's changing Title II policies despite no changes in statutes governing those regulations as a weakness of Chevron deference. The current legal appeal of the agency's most-recent reclassification (see 2406030053) could be tied up in courts for years, Fruits and Sperry added. It's unclear if the FCC's most recent flip "was the last or if there will be one more."
Communications Daily is tracking the lawsuits below involving appeals of FCC actions.
The FTC should rely more heavily on statutory text when writing rules, given the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent reversal of Chevron, FTC Commissioner Melissa Holyoak told us Wednesday (see 2407090044 and 2406280043). Chevron could significantly affect the FTC, given its aggressive rulemaking approach under Chair Lina Khan, legal experts told us in interviews.
The House Appropriations Committee voted 31-25 Wednesday to advance its Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee FY 2025 funding bill without advance FY 2027 money for CPB after Democrats didn’t attempt to restore the allocation. The House Rules Committee, meanwhile, will consider filed amendments to Appropriations’ FY25 Financial Services Subcommittee bill (HR-8773) that aim to undo a ban on the FCC implementing an equity action plan and increase the FTC’s annual funding. The measure proposes boosting the FCC’s annual allocation to $416 million but includes riders barring the commission from implementing GOP-opposed net neutrality and digital discrimination orders (see 2406050067).
Open network architecture is a flourishing trend beyond 5G and open radio access networks, speakers said Wednesday during a Broadband Breakfast webinar. The wholesale model has worked for the middle mile and in wireless, Incompas President Angie Kronenberg said: “It’s exciting to see the discussion now happening about last-mile connectivity and fiber.”
Regulators should establish an AI safety model with a supervised process for developing standards and a market that rewards companies exceeding those standards, former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said Monday in a Brookings Institution column. This supervised process should convene “affected companies and civil society to develop standards,” he wrote in a column with telecom and tech policy analyst Blair Levin. “Just as the standard for mobile phones has been agile enough to evolve from 1G through 5G as technology has evolved, so can a standard for AI behavior evolve as the technology evolves,” they wrote. Wheeler and Levin recommended ongoing oversight, which would require transparency and collaboration between public and private partners.
NextNav said Monday it won a $1.9 million award from the Department of Transportation to conduct real-world field tests of its 3D positioning, navigation and timing technologies. In April, NextNav asked the FCC to reconfigure the 902-928 MHz band “to enable a high-quality, terrestrial complement” to GPS for PNT services (see 2404160043). “We realize the importance of a terrestrial PNT complement and backup to support our nation’s critical infrastructure, and we look forward to working with the U.S. DOT to demonstrate our PNT capabilities,” NextNav CEO Mariam Sorond said.
NTCA urged that the FCC adopt additional safeguards as part of a draft order and Further NPRM that lets schools and libraries use E-rate support for off-premises Wi-Fi hot spots and wireless internet services. Commissioners are set to vote on the measure July 18 (see 2406270068). “The most effective use of E-rate funds would be to ensure that funded Wi-Fi hotspots are not made available where service is already available as reflected in the National Broadband Map,” a filing posted Tuesday in docket 21-31 said. The FCC shouldn’t fund a hot spot “at any location that is currently connected leveraging the use of high-cost USF support,” NTCA said. NTCA met with aides to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and Commissioner Nathan Simington.
Funding Wi-Fi on school buses through the E-rate program (see 2312200040) will advance students’ education, according to a Monday brief supporting an FCC declaratory ruling before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition filed the brief (docket 23-60641). Petitioners Maurine and Matthew Molak challenged expanding the program, contending it will increase the federal universal service charge they pay as a line-item on their monthly phone bill (see 2406040024). SBLB said when the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was enacted, teachers worked with chalkboards and handouts and students carried their textbooks home at night to do their homework. Today, “students are instructed to access reading assignments on web-based learning platforms, to watch online video presentations, and to complete and submit interactive homework assignments online,” SBLB said. The shift to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic “greatly accelerated the use of Internet-based education,” the group said: “School-bus Internet access serves an important educational purpose because Internet access is essential to modern learning.” The Molaks, whose son was a cyberbullied suicide victim, have also argued that the ruling will give children and teenagers unsupervised social media access.
CaptionCall will pay a nearly $35 million fine and implement a compliance plan following an FCC Enforcement Bureau investigation about data privacy for consumers with disabilities, according to a consent decree Tuesday. The bureau found that the company unlawfully retained call content beyond the duration of a call and submitted inaccurate information to the Telecom Relay Service Fund administrator. The investigation found that CaptionCall retained some call content of TRS users for three years before the issue was discovered. TRS providers must "take additional precautions given their unique access to the content of their customers' calls," Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said.