New CTIA President Ajit Pai met with FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez to discuss the group’s spectrum priorities, said a filing Wednesday in docket 25-59. Pai stressed the importance of the upper C band to carriers, the focus of a notice of inquiry commissioners approved 4-0 in February. CTIA urged the commission “to repurpose as much of the 220-megahertz band as possible for 5G,” the filing said.
Voice on the Net Coalition representatives met with an aide to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr on concerns the group has about know-your-customer obligations as part of robocall rules (see 2505120034). VON is worried “about the lack of clarity” around the obligations “and the potential for significant fines for violations of what is obviously a vague standard,” it said in a filing posted Wednesday (docket 17-59).
The FCC Wireline Bureau on Wednesday granted a limited waiver of the support reduction schedule for some recipients of Connect America Fund high-cost support that missed a July 1 network performance testing certification deadline. The waiver applies to more than 20 companies.
FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington wants the agency to immediately begin “a top-to-bottom review” of its enforcement process and foster an internal culture of “legal humility over expansive power,” he said in an op-ed published Wednesday in The Hill. Like the others in Simington’s recent blitz of opinion columns (see 2505090068 and 2505130050), the op-ed was credited to both Simington and his Chief of Staff Gavin Wax. Simington and Wax said the agency needs to reform its enforcement procedures to account for U.S. Supreme Court rulings such as Jarkesy v. SEC, which courts have interpreted as rendering the FCC’s ability to assess monetary forfeitures unconstitutional (see 2504180021). Simington previously vowed to dissent from all monetary forfeiture votes until the agency reviews its enforcement powers (see 2409060054).
Communications Daily is tracking the lawsuits below involving appeals of FCC actions.
The Trump administration’s tariffs will affect the cost of network equipment used in building BEAD projects, but they aren’t the program's biggest challenge, experts said Wednesday during a Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition webinar.
NextNav on Wednesday called on the FCC to move forward with an NPRM looking at its proposal for positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) in the 902-928 MHz band as an alternative to GPS. Others urged the FCC to encourage multiple alternatives as a backup to GPS. Reply comments were due Wednesday on a notice of inquiry that commissioners approved 4-0 in March (see 2503270042). Numerous commenters sharply criticized the NextNav proposal.
The FCC said in a release Wednesday that it has saved more than $567 million via cuts to contracts in an internal effort coordinated with the Department of Government Efficiency, but experts said those numbers may be misleading.
House Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., told us Tuesday night that he doesn’t see it as a setback that several Senate Commerce Committee Republicans want to pursue alternatives to parts of the House panel’s budget reconciliation package spectrum proposal (see 2505120058), even as some congressional DOD supporters raised their own objections to the measure. House Commerce cleared its spectrum and AI reconciliation language early Wednesday on a party-line, 29-24 vote after Democrats unsuccessfully floated a handful of amendments that reflected their objection to using future FCC auction proceeds as an offset for extending the 2017 tax cuts and other GOP priorities.
The FCC made a mistake when it put a greater portion of satellite regulatory fees on the backs of non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) licensees, reducing the burden on GSO licensees, and should reverse the unfair allocation, SpaceX told an aide to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. In a docket 24-85 filing posted Tuesday, SpaceX said that if the agency instead goes forward with its proposed alternative regulatory fee methodology for satellites, it should use a logarithmic scale rather than relying on the size of a constellation.