The FCC asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss Consumers' Research's challenge of the agency's USF contributions methodology. Consumers' Research "made the same arguments before the Sixth and Eleventh Circuits," the agency said in a petition filed Monday (docket 22-60008), adding the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the decisions (see 2406110008). "Those decisions are thus final and not subject to further review," the FCC said, and "petitioners are precluded from raising the same claims here." Also, Consumers' Research filed a motion for the D.C. Circuit for a voluntary dismissal regarding one of its challenges to the USF contribution factor.
The FCC and Massachusetts will probe a 911 outage reported around the state that lasted at least two hours Tuesday afternoon. Meanwhile, the Maine Department of Public Safety said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is checking why people in Maine and other states received wireless emergency alerts (WEA) about the Massachusetts incident. The FCC is "looking into what occurred" in Massachusetts and "the reports concerning WEA," a commission spokesperson said. A Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security spokesperson said in a statement just before 4 p.m. that the 911 system was restored. The office sent its first alert about the problem at 2:22 p.m. It said that the state 911 department is “aware of a disruption ... and is investigating the cause.” The state advised residents facing an emergency to call local police departments’ direct lines. “We will provide further information as it becomes available.” Multiple local public safety agencies alerted the public via social media about the problems calling 911. “The current 911 system is down statewide,” the Boston Fire Department posted on X at 1:55 p.m. The Brockton Fire Department posted “Major 911 outage in Massachusetts” at 1:41 p.m. on the same platform. People in other states said they received wireless emergency alerts about the Massachusetts outage, including a Comm Daily reporter with a Virginia area code. The same Virginia-based reporter later received another WEA that said Maine's 911 system was fully operational and to disregard the emergency alert from another state. The Massachusetts "alert was sent to other surrounding states in error and is being investigated by FEMA," the Maine Public Safety Department said in a statement. "Maine 911 is up and running." FEMA declined to comment.
NTCA urged the FCC to further refine its broadband mapping process “before bad decisions are locked in and have years-long implications,” Cassidy Hjelmstad, SRT Communications CEO-general manager, and Roger Nishi, Waitsfield and Champlain Valley Telecom vice president-industry relations, wrote in NTCA’s Advocacy Spotlight series (see 2405200065). Current maps encourage companies to overstate coverage areas, and it's "almost impossible" to correct data if an individual provider overstates coverage for thousands of locations, the NTCA members wrote. They recommended the FCC “take a step back and get coverage claims right.” The system “wasn’t built to handle overstatements on a widespread basis," they added.
IP captioned telephone service providers asked the FCC to act on a new IP CTS rate plan (see 2406030062). CaptionCall said in separate meetings with aides to Commissioners Nathan Simington, Brendan Carr and Geoffrey Starks that the rate plan "should set the basic economic framework for the development of the most functionally equivalent IP CTS." The company also met with an aide to Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. In addition, Hamilton Relay met separately with aides to Carr and Starks. It told the FCC that a new rate plan should "adequately compensate providers for the higher costs" associated with using a communications assistant (CA). Moreover, a plans should "require all certified providers ... to include an option for CA-assisted IP CTS."
Granting the FCC’s motion to transfer the consolidated challenges to the commission’s net neutrality order to the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit would “subvert” Congress’ preference for “dispersed regulatory challenges rather than specialized courts,” CTIA, USTelecom and eight other groups told the 6th Circuit in a joint opposition brief Monday (dockets 24-7000, 24-3449, 24-3450, 24-3497, 24-3507, 24-3508, 24-3510, 24-3511, 24-3517, 24-3519).
Expanding the reach of the citizens broadband radio service band via reworking the aggregate interference model (see 2406120027) opens the door to further significant CBRS operational changes, wireless and spectrum experts said Tuesday. They spoke during a CBRS seminar that the New America's Open Technology Institute sponsored. Preston Marshall, chairman of the OnGo Alliance, which promotes spectrum sharing, said that while the "CBRS 2.0" operational changes announced this month were uniformly beneficial to users, future "CBRS 3.0" discussions could start edging into areas, such as power levels, where there would be winners and losers. He said industry needs to come to a coherent, cohesive position to present to regulators rather than the government having to "arbitrate a food fight."
Public recriminations escalated Monday night and Tuesday after the Senate Commerce Committee yanked a planned committee vote on the Spectrum and National Security Act (S-4207) for the fourth time (see 2406170066). The panel described Tuesday's markup as “canceled” but characterized previous situations as postponed. Senate Commerce planned a vote on a revised version of the measure (see 2406140062) Tuesday that the Commerce Department, DOD and the Joint Chiefs of Staff endorsed last week. Observers cited the finger-pointing to justify their doubts that there's a path forward for the measure or another major spectrum package during this Congress.
Sean Spivey, former senior policy adviser in NTIA’s Office of Spectrum Management and also ex-FCC, joins Wilkinson Barker as a partner-telecom ... Tegna hires Artsy CEO Michael Steib as president-CEO and director, succeeding David Lougee retiring, effective Aug. 12; company also adds former Away President Catherine Dunleavy and X’s Denmark West to its board as independent directors ... Spectra7 announces the retirement of CEO Raouf Halim, with board Chair Ron Pasek becoming interim CEO ... Pax8 promotes global engineering lead Eric Stevens to chief AI officer ... Sangoma Technologies adds April Walker, ex-Salesforce vice president, to its board ... DigitalOcean cloud provider appoints Bratin Saha, former vice president-general manager, Amazon Web Services, as its chief product and technology officer.
Muon Space wants to add a third satellite to its authorization for a two-satellite non-geostationary orbit constellation. In an application with the FCC Space Bureau posted Monday, Muon said MuSat-4 will carry a global navigation satellite system reflectometry payload similar to MuSat-2 and -3, plus a new infrared sensor. The company said that while MuSat-2 is in orbit, -3 and -4 are scheduled for a Q1 2025 launch.
The FCC needs a solid threshold for accidental explosions that applies to all space operators, but the record lacks specific proposals for calculating or enforcing such a metric, SpaceX said Monday in docket 18-313, recapping meetings with the offices of the five commissioners. As such, the FCC should seek comment on methodologies that can make this transparent and ways of enforcing it, SpaceX said. It said the current record lacks much information about the appropriate method for calculating the probability of accidental explosions, so operators can assess compliance. A draft order on circulation proposes a cap on the probability that a satellite applicant suffers a debris-generating accidental explosion (see 2405290074).