The U.S. Office of Personnel Management released a final rule Thursday intended to clarify and reinforce protections for career civil servants and defend against future versions of former President Donald Trump’s Schedule F executive order (see 2010300048). “This final rule honors our 2.2 million career civil servants, helping ensure that people are hired and fired based on merit and that they can carry out their duties based on their expertise and not political loyalty,” OPM Director Kiran Ahuja said in a news release. Trump’s Schedule F order, which was reversed in the first week of President Joe Biden’s administration, would have reclassified many career civil servants, making it easier to terminate them and transfer their positions to political appointees. Trump’s campaign and the Republican Party have announced detailed plans -- partially authored by FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr -- to make sweeping changes to federal agencies, including the FCC, during a second Trump term. Thursday’s final rule is aimed at preventing another Schedule F order, and clarifies that a career federal employee who has earned civil service protections retains them until the worker voluntarily waives them. The order also establishes a transparent, appealable process for changing which positions receive civil service protections. “With these regulations, President Biden’s administration has strengthened the guardrails around the merit-based civil service,” said NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald in a release. “It will now be much harder for any president to arbitrarily remove the nonpartisan professionals who staff our federal agencies just to make room for hand-picked partisan loyalists.” An “independent federal workforce ensures that our government works for all of us, not for one party or one person,” said Bitsy Skerry, regulatory policy associate for Public Citizen, in an emailed release. The final rule will be published in the Federal Register Tuesday, OPM said.
While the wireless industry has explored georouting calls made to the 988 Lifeline, requiring carriers to implement georouting is necessary to ensure it happens in a reasonable time frame, the FCC said in the draft NPRM on the commissioners' April 25 open meeting agenda (see 2404030051). The 38-page draft item was released Thursday, as was the net neutrality draft order (see 2404040064). The draft asks about potential downsides to mandating use of georouting to connect wireless 988 callers with local crisis centers. The draft NPRM is short on specific policy recommendations, instead asking numerous questions. It seeks comment on "each functional step" needed to route a call from a wireless carrier to a geographically appropriate crisis center, that would perform each function and the facilities and systems needed to perform those functions. It also asks whether georouting steps involve proprietary elements, such as licenses, that would limit whether and how wireless carriers could implement it. The draft NPRM said that while georouting based on cell tower information would best identify a caller's location, it seeks input on alternative methods as well. The draft NPRM doesn't make a recommendation on a time frame for implementation but asks about timelines for deployment.
The FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee, which will have a special focus on AI, held its first meeting under its new charter Thursday at FCC headquarters. Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said the FCC eagerly awaits the group’s work on AI and robocalls. The group also heard reports from FCC staff about several consumer issues before the agency, including the affordable connectivity program's demise (see 2404020075). CAC last met in August (see 2208300059).
The FCC will take a series of steps to reestablish the commission's net neutrality framework and reclassify broadband internet access service (BIAS) as a Communications Act Title II telecom service in a declaratory ruling and order (see 2404030043). A draft of the items to be considered during the agency's April meeting, released Thursday, would establish "broad" and "tailored" forbearance for ISPs. The draft doesn’t make a final determination on how network slicing should be treated under the rules.
Comments are due April 29, replies May 13, on a proposed reinstated collection by the FCC of Form 395-A, which gathers multichannel video programming distributors' workforce composition data, the Media Bureau said Wednesday. The Form 395-A Further NPRM was adopted 3-2 in February alongside an order reinstating collection of broadcaster workforce demographic data via Form 395-B (see 2402220078). Comments are to be submitted in docket 98-204.
Opening briefs of the four petitioners and their intervenor supporters challenging the FCC’s Dec. 26 quadrennial review order for allegedly violating Section 202(h) of the Telecommunications Act (see 2403220041) would be due July 15 under a proposed briefing schedule that has the backing of all parties, NAB told the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a filing Tuesday. Sept. 13 is the proposed deadline for the FCC’s response brief and that of NCTA, which is intervening to defend the order against the petitioners’ Section 202(h) challenges, said the filing. Reply briefs would be due Oct. 15 and final briefs on Nov. 18, it said. The proposed schedule “would allow for the briefing to be complete and the cases ready for submission on the merits” before the end of calendar 2024, it said. The petitioners currently anticipate filing joint opening and reply briefs, it said. The intervenors supporting the Section 202(h) challenge anticipate filing two sets of opening and reply briefs, one from the four network affiliates associations, the other from six radio ownership groups, it said. “The number of briefs, the issues the parties intend to raise, and the number of words needed for full and efficient presentation of the issues could change if additional petitions for review or intervention motions are filed,” it said. April 15 is the deadline to file additional petitions for review of the quadrennial order; further intervention motions would be due 30 days later, said the filing. The parties request leave to file a supplemental joint proposed briefing schedule by April 22, seven days after the deadline to file a petition for review, it said. They further request leave to file a second supplemental joint proposal by May 22, if necessary, seven days after the deadline to intervene, “to ensure all parties are accounted for,” it said. The consolidated petitions pending in the 8th Circuit are from Zimmer Radio (docket 24-1380), Beasley Media Group (docket 24-1480), NAB (docket 24-1493) and Nexstar Media Group (docket 24-1516).
The Utah Public Service Commission granted SpaceX’s request to relinquish its eligible telecom carrier (ETC) designation, the PSC ordered Tuesday. The PSC made the company an ETC in 2021 so that it could participate in the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund. But the FCC last year upheld the Wireless Bureau’s 2022 rejection of Starlink’s application for RDOF support (see 2312130027).
The California Public Utilities Commission released NTIA curing instructions for volume one of California’s initial proposal for the broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program. The CPUC gave parties until Thursday at 5 p.m. PST to comment on the Tuesday notice in docket R.23-02-016. The record for volume one will stand submitted at the same time and date, said Administrative Law Judge Thomas Glegola. “A proposed decision may be issued anytime thereafter.” The CPUC attached NTIA’s curing instructions from Feb. 6 and March 8, plus the CPUC Feb. 23 response and a Jan. 13 letter to the FCC about the state’s challenge to the national broadband map. In California’s cured volume one, the CPUC added information from the FCC’s Jan. 6 broadband report showing that “advertised or claimed DSL speeds rarely meet or exceed actual speeds delivered to customers,” the agency said. That and other “sources of objective data provide ample evidentiary basis to substantiate” a CPUC modification to NTIA’s model that presumes “locations for which providers have claimed to deliver speeds only slightly above the ‘unserved’ threshold, up to [30 Mbps download and 5 Mbps upload], are actually receiving speeds below the ‘unserved’ threshold of 25/3 Mbps,” the commission said. “This modification is consistent with the CPUC’s and NTIA’s longstanding efforts to phase out legacy copper network infrastructure, and it does not seek to modify in any way the unserved threshold established in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.”
The Wireless ISP Association met with an aide to FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez on an NPRM proposing a ban on bulk billing arrangements in apartments, condos, public housing and other multi-unit buildings (see 2403050069). “Bulk billing agreements with a competitive carrier can provide a valuable consumer benefit by offering broadband service at up to 60% off retail rates to all multi-tenant environment residents, especially in low-income or public housing developments,” said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 17-142: “Competitive providers, especially small providers, benefit from securing a stable and steady customer base in an MTE at a significant reduction in transactional costs.”
T-Mobile answered three series of questions that FCC staff posed about the company’s proposed acquisition of Mint Mobile (see 2303150032), a low-cost prepaid wireless brand, and other assets from Ka’ena. Among the questions: “What are your top 3 risks? Who owns those risks? Who owns the risk management process?” and how will T-Mobile protect customer data as the assets are integrated? The answers were almost completely redacted in a filing posted Wednesday in docket 23-171.