The FCC Wireless Bureau sought comment Friday on a request from Garmin International (see 2310060031) for a waiver of rules concerning certification of the hand-held general mobile radio service (GMRS) devices it manufactures. Comments are due Feb. 12, replies Feb. 27, in docket 24-7. “Garmin alleges that its request builds on, but is narrower than, the recent waiver granted by the Mobility Division to Midland Radio,” the bureau said: Garmin claims “a waiver would serve the public interest by guaranteeing ‘that critical communications and location information are automatically available with sufficient time and information to’ locate individuals both in emergency and non-emergency situations.”
Aeronet representatives met with aides to all FCC commissioners except Commissioner Anna Gomez seeking technical changes to the draft 70 and 80 GHz band order revising rules for the spectrum, set for a vote at the FCC’s Jan. 25 meeting (see 2401040064). The company is among the biggest supporters of rules changes (see 2311080055). Aeronet expressed “appreciation for the significant efforts of the FCC staff as well as staff at the federal agencies involved in evaluating the technical issues raised by Aeronet’s proposed use of the 70/80 GHz bands to provide high-speed, ‘in-home’ equivalent broadband experiences to consumers in planes and on ships,” said a filing posted Friday in docket 20-133. Aeronet sought tweaks to provisions on proposed elevation angles for aviation ground and maritime stations and on coordination requirements, among other parts of the draft.
Securus met with FCC staff last week to highlight its pilot subscription programs for incarcerated people’s communication services, according to an ex parte filing posted Friday in docket 23-62 (see 2203090035). The provider gave Wireline and Office of Economics and Analytics details about its programs’ “utilization, effective rates, and the extent of usage required to save money compared to making calls rated on a per minute basis.” Securus said its data “demonstrates that consumers achieve savings from the pilot subscription programs at relatively low levels of usage compared to then-existing intrastate rates.”
As the FCC works on rules governing supplemental coverage from space, the agency needs to be sure efforts to provide direct-to-handset service aren't meanwhile delayed, according to T-Mobile. A docket 23-65 filing Friday recapped SCS discussions between company representative and Wireless and Space Bureau staffers. T-Mobile said SCS rules should be based on the idea the service supplements terrestrial coverage, and thus there's no need to modify the terrestrial spectrum allocation that will support SCS. It said making terrestrial operators obtain a license covering subscribers' devices for when those devices are receiving service from satellites is impractical. T-Mobile said there's no regulatory purpose for requiring blanket earth station authorization for mobile handsets and such an authorization would be difficult to enforce. If the commission opts to require a mobile handset authorization, the satellite operator and not the terrestrial licensee should have to obtain that authorization through its satellite license or get a separate user authorization, T-Mobile said.
Two FCC commissioners say social media companies' embrace of U.S. Supreme Court precedent is misplaced when it comes to their arguments in the challenges before SCOTUS of Texas and Florida social media laws (see 2309290020) that such platforms have a First Amendment right to censor users' speech. Writing last week in the Yale Journal on Regulation, Commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington said SCOTUS has never held that the First Amendment gives dominant companies like big social media "a freewheeling right to censor others’ speech." Pointing to such SCOTUS precedent as its Turner decision, requiring cable systems to carry broadcast TV channels, the Republican commissioners said the high court has allowed the government to apply anti-discrimination requirements to corporations in ways consistent with the First Amendment. The commissioners said social media regulations like Texas' House Bill 20 "are easily distinguished" from regulations struck down on First Amendment grounds in decisions such as Tornillo, which involved a Florida law requiring newspapers to run partisan editorial content. "Indeed, HB20 touches none of the First Amendment third rails that were at play in those cases," they said. When considering such issues as market power and the degree to which the regulated entity makes individualized decisions about speech rather than being a common carrier of speech, "it is clear that the government can, in the appropriate case, apply anti-discrimination rules to social media platforms," they said. "Texas’s HB20 is one of those cases."
The U.S. scored an important win for Wi-Fi at the recent World Radiocommunication Conference, beating back a move to harmonize the upper 6 GHz band for 5G, speakers said during a CES discussion of unlicensed spectrum late Thursday. Officials said restoration of FCC auction authority is critical, but when Congress will act remains uncertain.
Industry lawyers and analysts expect a busy start for the FCC in 2024, with the 3-2 Democratic majority able to approve items without the FCC’s two Republicans, and Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel eager to address priorities before the usual freeze in the months before and after a presidential election.
The FCC warned a New York realty company of the possible forfeiture of up to $2.3 million for allegedly hosting a pirate radio station, said an Enforcement Bureau letter in Thursday’s Daily Digest. The notice to Matovu Realty concerned a building at 3349 Decatur Ave., Bronx, and identified Matovu as the owner. The letter demands proof that unauthorized transmissions found by EB field agents have ceased and requests that the unauthorized broadcasters be identified. Matovu has 10 business days to respond. The company didn't comment.
The 2018 quadrennial review order supports Gray Television's arguments against the FCC’s $518,000 enforcement action over a 2020 transaction involving an Anchorage station, Gray told the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a response letter Thursday. Gray was responding to an FCC letter last week giving the court notice of the QR order, which was released in December. Gray has argued that the agency created a requirement for what data is used to determine station rankings without notice when it issued the forfeiture in 2022 (see 2307240065). Ratings data from the time of the transaction showed Gray already owned two of the top-four stations in the market, which the broadcaster has argued means the Anchorage deal didn’t result in a new top-four combination -- instead an existing top-four combination added another station. The FCC has argued that this ratings data wasn’t available to Gray when it made the deal and so is invalid. The QR order changes the ranking methodology to use “available data over a 12-month period immediately preceding the date of application,” Gray told the court Thursday. The inclusion of the word “available” in the QR order “underscores its prior absence, and it highlights the FCC’s failure to provide Gray with fair notice of such a requirement which the FCC invented to justify penalizing Gray,” said the broadcaster. The QR order also doesn’t show that applying the agency’s rule against affiliation swaps to Gray’s purchase of a station’s network affiliation “furthered an interest in competition, as the First Amendment requires,” Gray told the court. “Thus, nothing the FCC said in the 2023 Order cures the fatal defect in the Forfeiture Order.” Oral argument in the case is set for March.
Representatives of the Bristol Bay Cellular Partnership spoke with FCC Wireless and Wireline bureau staff on the company’s request for waiver and revised performance commitments demonstrating it “has met all applicable Alaska Plan deployment milestones.” The reps “explained that the ongoing withholding of support has forced the Company to put several planned system upgrades, network expansions, and other projects on hold,” said a filing posted Thursday in docket 16-271.