The FCC Enforcement Bureau issued a $25,000 penalty against the owner of a citizens band radio service station in Rockford, Illinois, for malicious interference and unauthorized operation, said a forfeiture order in Friday’s Daily Digest. Jayme John Leon violated FCC rules by using his station to make one-way transmissions and send nonverbal, indecipherable sound effects over long periods, the order said. His transmissions included recorded comedy routines, air raid siren sounds and “unintelligible, data-like” noises, said the 2023 notice of apparent liability that preceded Friday’s forfeiture order. The NAL said Leon has a history of noncompliance with FCC orders, previously being fined $14,000 for transmitting obscene and profane language. According to the NAL, Leon has said the broadcasts were caused by “a milk crate containing a battery-operated CB radio placed by an unidentified third-party at a corner near his house,” but he hasn’t provided evidence of the device. The Enforcement Bureau gathered evidence that showed the transmissions coming from an antenna on Leon’s home, the NAL said.
Metronet VoIP customers in 20 states will be moved to T-Mobile VoIP service on or after July 1, T-Mobile told the FCC on Friday (docket 00-257). T-Mobile and KKR announced in 2024 their $4.9 billion purchase of fiber operator Metronet (see 2407240020). The states are Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Submitting submarine line terminal equipment (SLTE) and indefeasible rights of use agreements through the Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the U.S. Telecommunications Services Sector process could mean big project delays, according to the International Connectivity Coalition. In a filing posted Friday (docket 24-523), ICC said the FCC's proceeding on rewriting its submarine cable rules should define submarine cable systems to align with how those systems are designed and deployed: from open cable interface to OCI, and not SLTE to SLTE. The filing recapped a meeting between ICC representatives and FCC Office of International Affairs acting Chief Tom Sullivan at which the industry group also said there's a lack of uniform definition for SLTEs. Commissioners adopted the subsea cable NPRM unanimously in November (see 2411210006).
Chapter 11 bankruptcy won't interrupt any service operations or change the rates or terms of service provided to existing customers, Everstream told the FCC in a letter posted Friday. The Cleveland fiber operator said it had reached an agreement to be purchased by Missouri-based Bluebird Fiber as part of a bankruptcy reorganization. The Bluebird deal follows the sale of Everstream's Illinois and St. Louis metropolitan area networks and its plan to wind down its Pennsylvania operations, it said. Absent a rival bidder, the company expects its Bluebird transaction to close by year-end, it added.
Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision limiting the scope of environmental reviews could ease permitting for infrastructure projects, including broadband buildout, said advocacy groups and policy analysts.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Commerce Committee ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Communications Subcommittee ranking member Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., pressed the Trump administration Friday to immediately release the $42.5 billion Congress allocated to NTIA’s BEAD program. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in March began a “rigorous review” of BEAD aimed at revamping the program (see 2503050067). Meanwhile, National Lifeline Association Chairman David Dorwart marked the one-year anniversary of the formal lapse of the FCC’s affordable connectivity program (see 2405310070).
Federal budget-cutting could mean degraded quality and timeliness of emergency alerts during major storms and disasters, emergency response and weather experts tell us. A number of advocacy groups, from the Urban Institute to the Natural Resources Defense Council, have raised concerns about budget cuts for the Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster response. Others say budgetary issues won't harm emergency alerting, and the system remains robust.
The New York office of the FCC Enforcement Bureau sent a warning to Ray Dolph Brown and Wilsonia Brown about pirate radio broadcasts emanating from their property in the Bronx, said an agency notice in Thursday’s Daily Digest. EB agents found unauthorized radio broadcasts coming from the property in February, the notice said. It warned that the landowners could face up to a $2.4 million penalty.
The FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council will meet June 12 at 1 p.m. at FCC headquarters, the agency said Thursday. This is the second CSRIC meeting under FCC Chairman Brendan Carr; the first was in March (see 2503190051).
Representatives of the ioXt Alliance, an IoT security group, met with Public Safety Bureau staff about the FCC’s nascent voluntary cyber trust mark program. They “provided a general overview of how ioXt’s own certified products registry operates and offered insights on challenges and opportunities associated with the design and development of the registry for the Commission’s IoT Cybersecurity Labeling Program,” said a filing posted Thursday in docket 23-239.