The FCC Wireline Bureau could use $129 million in leftover funds “to fully satisfy demand for Rural Health Care Program funding” for 2025, said a public notice Wednesday. The FCC’s rules for the RHC Program “establish a process to carry forward unused funds from past funding years for use in future funding years.”
The shuttering of the North American Numbering Council (see 2506240074) could make it harder for the FCC and industry to deal with the problem of telephone number exhaustion and other issues overseen by the group for the last 30 years, former NANC officials told us. The NANC’s charter expires in September, and its last meeting was Tuesday. Members learned of the decision to end the long-standing advisory committee about two weeks ago, said 15-year NANC veteran Richard Shockey, board chairman of the SIP Forum.
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez visited Letcher County, Kentucky, in the latest stop on her “First Amendment Tour” series of panel discussions. In a release Wednesday, Gomez said the White House and FCC’s “unprecedented efforts to censor and control speech reach every community, including the coal towns and mountain communities of Eastern Kentucky.” Her message to the state: “Now is the time to stand up and push back against this assault on free expression and remind those in power that the First Amendment is not optional.” Gomez’s Kentucky event was organized by the Center for Rural Strategies, a nonprofit “focused on improving economic and social conditions for rural communities around the world through the creative use of media and communications,” the release said.
With the cost of space travel decreasing, regulatory hang-ups are starting to eclipse launch costs as the biggest barrier to commercial space, SpaceX Vice President of Satellite Policy David Goldman said Wednesday. Regulatory challenges are "where the bottleneck is," he said at a space and spectrum conference at the University of Colorado Law School in Boulder.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, locked down support Wednesday from a pair of top Armed Services Committee Republicans for the panel’s spectrum budget reconciliation package language after strengthening the original proposal’s exclusion of the 3.1-3.45 GHz and 7.4-8.4 GHz bands from potential FCC auction or other reallocation (see 2506060029). Cruz’s office also reemphasized his view that the revised proposal’s language to encourage states to pause enforcement of AI laws no longer threatens jurisdictions’ eligibility for the enacted $42.5 billion in BEAD funding (see 2506230043) in the face of Democratic assertions to the contrary.
The FCC's 1610-1626.5 MHz band and 2483.5-2500 MHz band licensing framework has been a huge success, and there's no reason to modify it, Globalstar CEO Paul Jacobs told FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, according to a filing posted Tuesday. Globalstar said the FCC should grant its C-3 constellation application (see 2502280001) without conducting a rulemaking on the spectrum bands or initiating a processing round. Allowing a new entrant into its licensed mobile satellite service spectrum "would inevitably cause extensive harmful interference." SpaceX has sought permission to operate in the 1.6/2.4 GHz bands (see 2506120011).
Securus wants the FCC to grant another waiver of a requirement that inmate calling providers bill for video on a per-minute basis, according to a partially redacted ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 23-62. The FCC granted Securus a waiver in December extending the deadline for the requirement to Sept. 1. “Securus, despite extraordinary effort, will not be able to fully deploy the new video calling platform by that deadline and will thus be seeking an extension of the current waiver through April 1, 2026,” said the filing. The FCC recently granted a similar waiver for TKC Telecom. Securus’ planned video-calling platform to allow the new billing structure requires additional development work, and the company must train staff and correctional employees and educate consumers about the new product, the filing said. Without an extension, “Securus will once again be in a position of either having to offer the service for free and incurring the resulting loss, or shutting down service, depriving consumers of this important communication platform.”
Comments are due July 8 on ACS of Fairbanks’ application to discontinue legacy voice services in Fairbanks, Alaska, said a public notice in Tuesday’s Daily Digest. The application will be granted automatically on July 24, unless the FCC notifies ACS otherwise.
President Donald Trump would have issued an order ending collective bargaining for the FCC and numerous other federal agencies even if he didn’t have retaliatory motives, the White House said Monday in filings in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The filings were made in the National Treasury Employees Union’s challenge of Trump’s executive order that removed collective bargaining rights at roughly 40 agencies on national security grounds, affecting two-thirds of the federal workforce (see 2506100045). They included a motion for summary judgment, as well as a response to NTEU's own motion for summary judgment.
New satellite entrants struggle in the face of incumbent operators taking up geostationary orbital slots with old satellites that barely operate anymore, said Kimberly Baum, regulatory head for Astranis, at a space and spectrum conference Tuesday at the University of Colorado Law School in Boulder. The related challenge of mini payloads on satellites that don't provide commercial service -- but nonetheless get licensed -- can stifle spectrum access for new entrants, she said. She called for the FCC to look at changing how it licenses payloads or older satellites that can't provide commercial services.