CTIA told the FCC that the Telephone Consumer Protection Act doesn’t apply to robocalls and robotexts from wireless service providers to their subscribers. Indeed, CTIA added that the FCC has affirmed this "multiple times." However, consumer groups said nothing in the TCPA “justifies special treatment for wireless providers.” Comments were posted Friday in docket 02-278. Commissioners approved an order and Further NPRM in February seeking comment on the wireless provider exemption (see 2402160048).
Globalstar is at the center of a regulatory tussle between the FCC and Chinese government over interference with Globalstar's HIBLEO-4 satellite system. The culprit seemingly was China's BeiDou/Compass global navigation satellite system. Correspondence between the commission and China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) shows a back-and-forth disagreement about BeiDou. We obtained 142 pages of that correspondence -- letters and emails between the two -- via a Freedom of Information Request filed with the FCC in October. The request was fulfilled at the end of February. Our request was for all written communications with MIIT Jan. 1-Oct. 19, 2023.
Industry and consumer advocates urged the FCC on Friday to include changes in its draft order reestablishing net neutrality rules. Commissioners will consider the item during the agency's April 25 meeting (see 2404040064). Some said the draft order didn't adequately address forbearance for ISPs. The draft’s state preemption provisions received praise -- and concern -- from current and former regulators.
Industry experts were still parsing the net neutrality rules Friday, looking at language about some hot-button issues such as 5G network slicing. On slicing, the draft doesn't reach conclusions about whether it should be exempt, noting carriers are just in the early stages of adopting slicing (see 2404040064). Slicing lets providers create multiple virtual networks on top of a shared network. How slicing should be treated has been hotly contested (see 2404010032).
Pointing to the FCC denying SpaceX permission for direct-to-device operations in the 2 GHz band (see 2403270002), Sateliot in a Space Bureau filing posted Thursday argued that its pending petition for U.S. market access shouldn't be subject to similar dismissal. Sateliot has requested FCC OK for its proposed narrowband constellation of 10 small satellites operating in the 2 GHz band that would provide IoT applications on a wholesale basis in areas where partner mobile network operators lack terrestrial coverage. In an amendment to its pending petition, Sateliot said the FCC's 2010 decision to restrict additional mobile satellite service (MSS) access to the 2 GHz band was reasonable then but didn't foresee adoption of the agency's smallsat rules, which are based on compatibility with existing and future operations. It said the agency also didn't foresee standards-based, multiband IoT equipment compatible with terrestrial operations. Given those changed circumstances, the FCC should consider a waiver on the outdated restriction of additional MSS operations in the 2 GHz band, Sateliot said. Commission rules require that smallsat systems are compatible with existing operations and not constrain additional access to the spectrum, it said. Sateliot said it complies with those requirements due to its limited constellation size, its provision of connectivity only in the absence of MNO terrestrial coverage, and its use of standards-based IoT terminals compatible with terrestrial operations.
The full FCC unanimously upheld the Enforcement Bureau’s revocation of Pennsylvania radio broadcaster Roger Wahl’s FCC license for WQZS(FM) Meyersdale (see 2304120067) in an order on review in Thursday’s Daily Digest. Wahl’s license was designated for hearing after he pleaded guilty to a felony and several misdemeanors involving attempting to arrange a woman’s sexual assault. Wahl took nude pictures of the victim using a camera he concealed in her bathroom, impersonated her on a dating website, and later tried to destroy evidence of his crimes. Administrative Law Judge Jane Halprin terminated Wahl’s hearing after he missed numerous filing deadlines, and Wahl also later missed the deadline to appeal the ALJ’s decision, Thursday’s order said. In his appeal, Wahl argued that the crimes didn’t intersect with his radio station, didn’t involve fraud and bodily injury, and represented a single “crime of passion” rather than a pattern of behavior. The FCC disagreed. “We find that an extended course of premeditated conduct cannot fairly be characterized as ‘an isolated crime of passion,'” the FCC said. Wahl’s “lack of candor in tampering with evidence is a form of fraudulent representation,” Thursday’s order said. “While his victim did not suffer bodily injury, his criminal conduct foreseeably placed his victim at risk of sexual assault," the FCC said. “We find Mr. Wahl’s offenses to be egregious and render him unqualified to be a Commission licensee."
The FCC's digital discrimination rules might inadvertently bar ISPs from offering discounted service to low-income subscribers, Phoenix Center co-founder/Chief Economist George Ford wrote Wednesday for the Yale Journal on Regulation. He said Congress in response needs to drop or rewrite the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) Section 60506, which prohibits digital discrimination of broadband access "based on the protected classes limited to income level," including requiring services to be offered on “comparable terms and conditions." Section 60506 seeks to prevent any differentiation in price based on income, so a lower price offered only to lower-income households "could be legitimately argued to be prohibited discriminatory conduct under the FCC’s rules," he said. The affordable connectivity program plans offered today, the low-cost plans offered by ISPs prior to ACP, and the low-cost offerings required by the broadband equity, access and deployment program seem "to constitute a prima facia case of prohibited discrimination under the plain terms of the IIJA and the FCC's rules," he said.
The Ultra Wide Band Alliance supports an FCC proposal expanding parts of the 6 GHz band where new very-low power (VLP) devices can operate without coordination and allowing client-to-client operations (see 2403280038), said a filing posted Thursday in docket 18-295. But the alliance opposed increasing VLP power above current levels. “UWB has been operating in the frequency range of 3.1 GHz to 10.6 GHz on an unlicensed basis for over 20 years,” the group said: It's often “misstated” that a 2020 order “opened the 6 GHz band for unlicensed operation” when “the band had been in use on an unlicensed basis for two decades at that time.”
The Maryland Department of Information Technology called on the FCC to require that FirstNet participate in the agency’s disaster information reporting system and network outage reporting system, an issue raised in a January Further NPRM (see 2401250064). The department noted that in 2013, FirstNet opposed reporting real time data to the FCC. “In the ten plus years since that initial opposition, everyone in the public safety broadband space has learned much from actual use in events requiring first responders,” said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 21-346: “FirstNet has migrated from a new system reaching out to public safety for subscribers to a mature tool vital to many first responders.”
Consumers' Research asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse the FCC's USF contribution factor for Q2 of FY 2024 (see 2401100044). In a filing posted Wednesday (docket 24-60160), the group repeated its claim that USF contributions are illegal taxes that the Universal Service Administrative Co. collects and "should be rejected."