The FCC Wireless Bureau Wednesday denied a waiver request by Lincoln County, Maine, to operate a travelers’ information station (TIS) that deploys equipment not certified for Part 90 use, using AM radio spectrum. “Since the County did not include an engineering analysis in its … request, we cannot determine whether operation of the proposed transmitter at its maximum output power of 500 watts would interfere with incumbent AM broadcast stations,” the bureau said. The bureau also denied a similar request by Waldo County, Maine. The county argues it's “a coastal jurisdiction and is susceptible to severe summer and winter storms, in the form of blizzards, nor-easters, ice storms, tropical storms and hurricanes,” and it “can experience out-of-control forest fires that can burn into neighborhoods and cut off escape routes,” the bureau said: “Though these circumstances may be factual, and though [we] do not downplay the severity of such threats, we find that these do not constitute unique or unusual circumstances, as these circumstances could apply to other areas of the country."
The FCC should make inventory spectrum available for free to “non-dominant” carriers to promote competition, EchoStar, the parent of Dish Wireless, told the FCC (see 2404090045). “Non-incumbent carriers (more specifically, every carrier other than AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon) should have a ‘right of first refusal’ to all Inventory Spectrum,” EchoStar said. The company also urged the FCC to address the lower 12 GHz band, as advocated by the 12 GHz for 5G Coalition (see 2312270045): “Substantial evidence in the record shows that fixed 5G services can provide broadband to tens of millions of Americans, while fully protecting existing non-geostationary orbit Fixed-Satellite Service and Direct Broadcast Satellite customers.” In another filing this week in docket 24-72, electric utilities said the approaches the FCC is examining don’t provide the certainty they need. “Currently, utilities have very few options for accessing spectrum -- particularly spectrum with the certainty provided by licensed exclusive-use -- and those limited options are increasingly insufficient in bandwidth,” they said. “The ability to access Inventory Spectrum presents one potential solution to the problem of spectrum availability.” The filing was signed by the Edison Electric Institute, the Utilities Technology Council, the Utility Broadband Alliance, FirstEnergy, Southern California Edison and the Southern Co. The Blooston Group of small and rural carriers said the best approach would be site-based licensing, which “would provide a simpler and lower cost way to promote access to spectrum in rural areas, and by entrepreneurs and smaller operators.” Third-party coordinators and licensee-to-licensee coordination “could be relied upon to minimize harmful interference between operators,” Blooston said. NCTA said the Lower 3, 7, Lower 37 and 12.7 GHz bands would be “perfectly situated -- both spectrally and technologically” for licensed-shared and unlicensed spectrum access frameworks. “A coexistence-based approach in each band would allow for efficient and cost-effective spectrum use by a diverse set of users, offer the fastest method of putting this spectrum in the hands of businesses and consumers, and enable federal and non-federal incumbents to continue providing critical services without disruption,” NCTA said.
Most ISPs began displaying consumer-friendly labels at their online and in-store points of sale Wednesday, the day the FCC required compliance for providers with more than 100,000 subscribers. Smaller providers have until Oct. 10 (see 2310100058). The new labels, mandated by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, are based on the FCC's 2016 voluntary labels. "Consumers across the country can now benefit from consistent, transparent, and accessible point-of-sale information about broadband prices and services," said Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. The new disclosures are "designed to make it simpler for consumers to know what they are getting, hold providers to their promises, and benefit from greater competition," Rosenworcel said. "This new and important tool empowers consumers with clear, consistent, easy to understand and accurate information about current internet service offerings and allows them to make an informed choice that best meets their household needs and their long term budget," Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau Chief Alejandro Roark told reporters Tuesday during an embargoed news conference. Current subscribers will have access to labels describing their existing plans "wherever they pay their bill," Roark said. The new label is "a tool that can help consumers," said White House National Economic Council Deputy Director Jon Donenberg. It "will make sure that you have a clear, straightforward explanation of your home internet and mobile plans and services before you sign up for anything," Donenberg said, calling the move "common sense." Labels are required for all stand-alone home or fixed broadband and mobile broadband services. ISPs are required to include in their labels introductory rates, speeds, data allowances and links to additional information about network performance and privacy policies. Providers will also be required, beginning Oct. 10, to make the labels machine-readable to "enable third parties to more easily collect and aggregate data for the purpose of creating comparison-shopping tools for consumers," said an FCC consumer advisory Wednesday.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court should reverse the FCC's ruling authorizing E-rate funding for Wi-Fi on school buses (see 2312200040) by interpreting the Communications Act “in accordance with its ordinary meaning,” Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz (Texas) and six other Republican senators wrote in an amicus brief Tuesday (docket 23-60641). The brief supports Maurine and Matthew Molak's petition to defeat the Oct. 25 declaratory ruling (see 2404030010).
The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Weather Service (NWS) joined commenters from the broadcast, MVPD and emergency alerting industries in pushing back on an FCC proposal (see 2402150053) requiring multilingual emergency alert system warnings facilitated by scripted templates, according to comments posted this week in docket 15-94. Though nearly every commenter acknowledged the importance of multilingual EAS, they also said the FCC’s proposal is too preliminary, would greatly burden broadcasters and MVPDs, and in some cases isn’t technically feasible. “The use of pre-installed templates may not be an effective approach,” said the FEMA Integrated Public Alert Warning System Program Office.
Many small carriers could be in financial trouble if Congress doesn’t allocate more money to pay for removing unsecure Chinese-made gear from their networks, Summit Ridge Group President Armand Musey said in an interview. Congress has considered, but so far has failed to provide, the $3.08 billion needed to fully fund the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program (SCRP).
Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., is circulating a discharge petition (H.Res. 1119) in a bid to force a floor vote on her Affordable Connectivity Program Extension Act (HR-6929/S-3565), which would appropriate $7 billion to keep the ailing FCC broadband fund running through the end of FY 2024. Clarke's petition will likely help ACP backers in their push to advance the funding proposal out of the lower chamber and amplify pressure on Congress to act before the program's current money runs out in the coming weeks, lobbyists told us. Advocates acknowledge they still face headwinds in the Senate, where leaders continue eyeing alternative vehicles for the appropriation. Congress approved the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act FY 2024 minibus spending package last month without ACP money (see 2403280001).
The Q4 2023 inflation adjustment figure for cable operators using Form 1240 is 1.63%, said the FCC Media Bureau and Office of Economics and Analytics Tuesday. In the year-ago quarter, it was 3.88%.
Nex-Tech Wireless representatives complained to the FCC about the company’s failed attempts to submit data to the FCC through the broadband data collection portal. Nex-Tech said it conducted drive tests on more than 11,000 road miles throughout its service area in western Kansas. “Despite multiple attempts and a great deal of work from the BDC staff, the data submitted … could not be successfully formatted to be accepted into the BDC portal,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 20-32. “Certain data fields not germane to the data collection were not collected and made available to the portal and as a result the submission failed, despite the fact that key parameters, such as location, speed, and latency, were available.” The data is no longer valid and the test process was “wasted,” the company said. Nex-Tech met with aides to Commissioners Brendan Carr, Anna Gomez and Nathan Simington.
GCI updated the FCC on problems it has faced replacing text telephone (TTY) with real-time text (RTT). TTY is considered an outdated technology for deaf and hearing impaired communication. GCI’s first attempt “resulted in garbled, difficult-to-understand text for calls converted from RTT to TTY, and vice-versa,” said a filing Monday in docket 15-178. The Alaska provider and its vendors “worked diligently and expended significant resources to identify the cause of this translation problem and developed a unique solution to resolve it,” the filing said: “Due to the detailed nature of this process, the extensive back-and-forth between GCI and its vendors, and the need to ensure that this solution did not cause other unintended consequences on GCI’s network, this process took approximately eighteen months to complete.”