Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas and 21 other Republican senators are urging the FCC to “modernize [its] broadcast ownership rules to enable broadcasters to compete with today's media giants.” Broadcasters doubled down in late April on calls for station ownership deregulation as part of the FCC’s “Delete” docket (see 2504290054).
FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington wants to reassign staff at the Media Bureau, “slash” the USF and streamline FCC licensing, he said in a column in The Daily Caller Friday, co-authored with new Chief of Staff Gavin Wax. The FCC “is a prime candidate for [Department of Government Efficiency]-style reform,” they said in the column.
Wiley's David Gross, a former top State Department official on communications, said the next World Radiocommunication Conference in 2027 will be critical, as WRCs usually are. But it’s unclear where the meeting will be held, with China making a strong bid to serve as host, he said. Gross spoke during a Free State Foundation webcast posted Friday and hosted by former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly.
An ATSC 3.0 tuner mandate and a set date for the switch to the new standard are necessary for TV broadcasting to survive and compete with streaming, said Sinclair, Scripps, Gray and others in comments filed in response to NAB’s 3.0 petition in docket 16-142 by Wednesday’s deadline. The Consumer Technology Association, public interest organizations and multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) groups disagreed, arguing that a mandatory transition would increase costs for consumers and MVPDs, all to provide broadcasters with a new revenue stream.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said in an interview Thursday that “we are going to have [a restoration of the FCC’s lapsed] auction authority and a spectrum pipeline” in the coming budget reconciliation package, as talks appeared to be moving closer to a compromise headed into the weekend. Meanwhile, House GOP leaders are coalescing around a deal that would pair a 10-year renewal of the FCC’s auction mandate with a 450 MHz pipeline of airwaves that the commission can repurpose for 5G use, said several communications sector lobbyists who are closely monitoring negotiations.
The outlook on what happens next on the Digital Equity Act (DEA) is uncertain after President Donald Trump said his administration won’t fund the program. Congress approved DEA in 2021 as part of a $1 trillion infrastructure package under former President Joe Biden. In a Truth Social post late Thursday, Trump said he's canceling DEA, which industry officials predicted will lead to inevitable legal challenges and months if not years of uncertainty.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on Monday night called House Commerce Committee Republicans’ budget reconciliation proposal “encouraging” but stopped short of backing the measure. House Commerce’s proposal, which the panel will mark up Tuesday, would restore the FCC’s lapsed auction authority through the end of FY 2034 and tee up 600 MHz of bandwidth for sale within six years of enactment.
As part of its plan to launch a space-to-space and space-to-ground quantum key distribution network, quantum computing company IonQ said Wednesday it would buy synthetic aperture radar satellite Capella Space. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2025, pending regulatory approvals, it said. Capella holds multiple FCC licenses. IonQ said Capella's top-secret signals capabilities will help it build global quantum-secure networks. Financial details weren't released.
SpaceX provided false equivalencies about EchoStar's challenge to the out-of-band emissions limit waiver granted to SpaceX, EchoStar said Thursday (docket 23-135). EchoStar said the FCC Space Bureau failed in the waiver to determine that waiving the aggregate out-of-band power limit for supplemental coverage from space service was unlikely to cause harmful interference. It added that the waivers that were granted to EchoStar and SpaceX cites in its application for review (see 2504230021) included a bureau finding that harmful interference was unlikely. EchoStar said SpaceX's citations help prove EchoStar's point.
The New York office of the FCC Enforcement Bureau sent a warning to North Shore Financial in Tarrytown about pirate radio broadcasts emanating from its property in Springfield Gardens, said an agency notice issued Thursday. EB agents found unauthorized radio broadcasts coming from the property in January, the notice said. Unlike in recent similar notices, the precise address of the property was redacted. The FCC didn’t provide a reason for the redaction, but a footnote in the notice said the information is “confidential.” The notice warned that the landowners could face up to a $2.4 million penalty for hosting unauthorized broadcasts, but the FCC’s authority to issue monetary forfeitures is currently under legal challenge (see 2504180021).