The FCC Wireless Bureau on Wednesday granted 14 additional licenses in the 900 MHz broadband segment to PDV Spectrum, 11 in Texas and three in Missouri. The FCC approved an order five years ago reallocating a 6 MHz swath in the band for broadband while maintaining 4 MHz for narrowband operations (see 2005130057).
T-Mobile asked the FCC not to make public the data it must file by Saturday for the agency’s broadband data collection. “Because the Confidential Information is highly proprietary and non-public, T-Mobile requests that this information be afforded confidential treatment indefinitely,” said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 19-195.
AT&T defended its proposal to stop accepting new customers for parts of its legacy copper network (see 2501310046), responding to opposition from the Communications Workers of America and Bandwidth (see 2502240025). AT&T has four applications pending at the FCC involving legacy services in wire centers in 18 states. “As detailed in each application, demand for each of these services is very low in the Affected Service Area, and new orders are almost nonexistent,” said a filing Tuesday in docket 25-45. “Grandfathering these outdated services will benefit the public and serve as an important step toward meeting both AT&T’s and the Commission’s goals of advancing toward next-generation technologies that customers crave.” AT&T said no actual end users filed comments on the applications. Contrary to CWA's allegations, “all existing customers of the Affected Services will be able to keep their current service,” the carrier said. “AT&T spends over $6 billion annually in direct costs to keep its copper services running -- resources that would be much better spent connecting more Americans to newer networks.”
Former Republican FCC Commissioners Harold Furchtgott-Roth and Mike O’Rielly were among 10 officials who jointly endorsed GOP FCC nominee Olivia Trusty on Wednesday. In January, then-President-elect Donald Trump said he planned to nominate Trusty, a Senate Armed Services Committee Republican staffer, to the FCC seat that former Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel vacated (see 2501160064).
Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition Executive Director John Windhausen said Wednesday that the group is holding out hope that it can still head off a Congressional Review Act resolution of disapproval (S.J.Res. 7) to undo the FCC's July 2024 order allowing schools and libraries to use E-rate support for off-premises Wi-Fi hot spots and wireless internet services. Windhausen, who will retire next month, spoke during a SHLB webinar.
Communications Daily is tracking the lawsuits below involving appeals of FCC actions.
Facing what it sees as an onerous and lengthy process of submarine cable system licensing and permitting, the submarine cable industry is hoping the new White House administration offers a path to streamlining and speedier turnarounds. The FCC approval process used to be roughly 14 months, but now it sometimes reaches two years, said Sarah McComb, Amazon Web Services (AWS) principal business developer overseeing its undersea cable development activity in the Pacific. "That's just too long," she told an Information Technology and Innovation Foundation webinar Wednesday.
The FCC should establish a timeline for a nationwide TV transition to ATSC 3.0, with stations in the top 55 markets -- covering 70% of the U.S. population -- shifting to 3.0-only broadcasts by February 2028, NAB said in a petition for rulemaking Wednesday. Under the proposed timeline, the remaining markets would transition to 3.0 -- which ATSC 1.0 TVs can't receive without a converter -- by February 2030. The petition also asks the FCC to change its rules to require new TVs to be able to tune ATSC 3.0 channels and require manufacturers to make accessing broadcast channels easier on new devices. “Without decisive and immediate action, the transition risks stalling and the realistic window for implementation could pass,” NAB said in the petition. “The time for half-measures is over.”
Backers of federal funding for next-generation 911 tech upgrades told us they remain hopeful that lawmakers will reach an agreement on a spectrum title in a budget reconciliation measure that allocates some revenue from future FCC sales to those projects. GOP leaders have been pushing to reserve that money entirely as an offset for tax cuts initially enacted during the first Trump administration (see 2502190068). Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz of Texas and other Republicans are emphasizing auction proceeds as a reconciliation funding source after repeatedly opposing several spectrum packages during the last Congress that used the potential money to pay for a range of telecom projects (see 2308100058).
A notice of inquiry on the upper C-band and an NPRM on a proposed AWS-3 auction saw calls for changes from the drafts that FCC Chairman Brendan Carr circulated. However, industry officials said they expected only limited tweaks, with a vote scheduled at Thursday's open meeting.