GCI counsel spoke with an aide to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to explain the carrier’s request for clarification on the agency’s Alaska Connect Fund (ACF) order (see 2501310053). GCI urged the FCC to adopt the adjustments it proposes "to ensure that the ACF continues to improve and expand mobile coverage in Alaska’s rural communities,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 23-328.
The proposed 18-month deadline for nationwide providers to implement 988 text georouting might be sufficient, but the FCC Wireline Bureau needs to be able to waive or stay such deadlines, CTIA said. In docket 18-336 Tuesday, CTIA said the agency also should direct the bureau, as part of its consultations with the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline and the Department of Health and Human Services, to remain apprised of the development and implementation of text-to-988 georouting solutions and standards. July's FCC meeting will see the commissioners voting on a text-to-988 georouting requirement (see 2507030049).
Members of the Connected Devices for America Coalition, in a meeting with FCC staff, opposed NextNav’s proposal that the agency reconfigure the 902-928 MHz band to enable a “high-quality, terrestrial complement” to GPS for positioning, navigation and timing services (see 2503030023). The proposal “would upend a successful light-touch regulatory regime for the enrichment of a single company,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 25-110. NextNav doesn’t “propose to use the licenses it bought with the service conditions mandated by the FCC but instead seeks to upend the reasonable investment-backed expectations of other users of the band,” the coalition said. “In contrast to the approach NextNav has taken for the last 30 years, many others have seized the opportunity in the Lower 900 MHz Band and turned it into a workhorse band for American unlicensed innovation.”
AT&T is hoping to discontinue legacy plain old telephone service for 21,000 customers in areas of 17 states, it told the FCC in a discontinuance application Tuesday. It said it anticipates discontinuing residential local service and business local exchange access line service on or after June 30, 2026, in the affected areas. The carrier said the customers would have AT&T Phone-Advanced and AT&T Phone for Business-Advanced service available as a replacement service. It said wireless service, including from rival Verizon, is available in the affected areas, as are competitive voice offerings via cable, fiber, fixed wireless and satellite technologies. It said the 17 states are: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin.
Four carriers have elected to move their business data services offerings to incentive regulation, said an FCC Wireline Bureau public notice in Tuesday’s Daily Digest. The carriers are Amelia Telephone and New Castle Telephone, both in Virginia; Chillicothe Telephone in Ohio; and Union River Telephone in Maine. The shift went into effect July 1.
The Trump administration is more focused on the Caribbean region than previous administrations, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said at a meeting of the trade association for telecom operators across that region. “We are putting our region, the Americas, first” and “we are doing so through actions, not just words,” he said. Carr’s remarks were posted Tuesday. Carr noted that the last FCC chairman to address CANTO was Ajit Pai in 2018.
Future rules for the 37 GHz band must protect licensed wireless operations in the upper 37 and 39 GHz bands and shouldn’t impose new emissions limits, CTIA said in comments on a Further NPRM aimed at spurring greater use of the spectrum. FCC commissioners approved an order and FNPRM on the band in April and comments were due Monday in docket 24-243. The National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Radio Frequencies (CORF) repeated its concerns (see 2409300028) about protecting the 36-37 GHz earth exploration satellite service (EESS) band, which is critical for science, it said.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last month upholding the USF in the Consumers’ Research case was a win for the FCC (see 2507020049), but the fight isn’t over, Jacob Lewis, FCC associate general counsel, said during an FCBA CLE on Tuesday. Lewis warned that Consumers’ Research has already renewed its challenge in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, making a different argument for overturning parts of the fund.
Charter Communications' proposed $34.5 billion purchase of Cox Communications, announced in May (see 2505160060), isn't expected to raise anticompetitive concerns at the FCC. If it faces headwinds from the agency, they are more likely to come from the companies' diversity, equity and inclusion policies, cable executives, agency watchers and others tell us. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has repeatedly said the agency won't approve acquisitions involving companies practicing "invidious forms of DEI discrimination" (see 2503210049), which Carr has defined as cases "where people are discriminating based on race and gender."
An AM station owner in Puerto Rico will pay $5,000 to settle an investigation into an unauthorized transfer of control, said a consent decree in Monday’s Daily Digest. Ricardo Angulo, who's now deceased, transferred 100% of the voting stock in A Radio Company, which owns WEGA Vega Baja, to Eddie Rivera in January 2023 but didn't file an application with the FCC until February 2024, the filing said. Under the terms of the settlement, the transfer will be approved as long as the penalty is paid within 30 days, it said. “Any proceedings that might result from the violations would be time-consuming and require a substantial expenditure of public and private resources.”