The FCC Wireline Bureau updated the list it uses for determining rural health care program eligibility to reflect the 2020 census. On Tuesday, the bureau also granted a waiver for FY 2025 of its eligibility rules for existing providers. In an order in docket 02-60 it said that it will "allow health care providers whose status has changed from rural to urban to continue to participate in the RHC program as if they were rural." The "once-per-decade update to areas identified as rural creates special circumstances justifying our action to ease impacted health care providers’ transitions," the order said. It noted that many sites "play an important role in delivering health care and a sudden change in eligibility due to the loss of a health care provider’s rural status could have a serious effect on its ability to deliver needed health care services to patients in a given area."
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr on Tuesday urged the FCC to address allowing jamming to fight contraband cellphones in correctional facilities. “In prisons and jails throughout the country, contraband cell phones are being used to plan and orchestrate violent attacks and other criminal activity, posing a real and substantial safety risk to correctional officers, visitors, inmates, and the public at large,” Carr said. Jamming is “the easiest way to protect the public” from the dangers of contraband cellphone use, Carr added. The wireless industry has embraced managed access systems as the most effective tool for curbing contraband cellphones in prisons (see 2109140049).
The FCC’s Oct. 25 declaratory ruling authorizing E-rate funding for Wi-Fi on school buses (see 2312200040) was simply the commission’s response to requests to add to the list of services eligible for support under the E-rate program, the FCC’s 5th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court appellee brief said Monday (docket 23-60641) in support of the ruling.
Increased lunar activity is revealing a host of unanswered spectrum and other regulatory questions, space law experts said Tuesday at an American Bar Association space law symposium in Washington. In addition, legal liability questions about space mishaps are another area with more uncertainty than definitive answers, speakers said.
Investors aren't concerned with much that regulators do, but some are closely watching the FCC's reimposition of Title II net neutrality rules, discrimination rules and the agency’s bulk-billing proposal, said former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, now a partner at private-equity firm Searchlight Capital. Pai spoke during a Free State Foundation webcast posted Tuesday. Also joining the webcast was former Commissioner Mike O’Rielly, who served with Pai.
Sinclair Broadcast will sell anything in its portfolio -- at “the right price” -- so it can close the gap between its valuation and share price, CEO Chris Ripley told The Media Institute during a luncheon Tuesday. Ripley also predicted that generative AI eventually will create most media, and said asymmetric regulation and increased competition are broadcasting’s biggest obstacles. “Unfortunately, for our industry, we can't seem to get out from underneath some of these old regulations,” Ripley said. “There really isn't any reason for that to be, besides that's the way it always was.”
Industry experts are hopeful the FCC will make several changes in a proceeding on draft rules for a proposed $200 million cybersecurity pilot program for schools and libraries (see 2405160076). While commissioners are expected to approve the order Thursday, officials said dissents are possible from Republican Commissioners Brendan Carr or Nathan Simington.
The FCC should focus on the collective risk that satellite constellations pose instead of looking at the issue on a per-satellite basis, the Outer Space Institute said Monday in docket 18-313. It said the approaches of the European Space Agency or France "would be a considerable improvement" in regulatory clarity and system safety over the U.S. method. The FCC should treat operator claims that satellites will burn up entirely on re-entry skeptically. Instead, the FCC should require evidence of this. Pointing to vaporized metals entering the upper atmosphere by those satellite re-entries, the institute urged the FCC to study the issue "and be prepared to impose suitable mitigations." Any satellite operator exceeding the 100 object-years threshold -- the number of years each failed satellite remains in orbit, added across all the satellites -- should be barred from further deployments until the causes have been addressed, the institute said. It said operators should remove large debris coming from 100 object-years violations.
The Colorado Public Utilities Commission should pause a rulemaking on incarcerated people’s communications services (IPCS) until the FCC completes its rulemaking that will implement the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, said ViaPath in comments Friday at the PUC. Due to the 2022 law, "regulation of all IPCS -- intrastate, interstate, and international -- is now within the jurisdiction of the FCC,” the IPCS provider said in docket 24R-0184T. With the FCC required to finish the rulemaking by January, it “would be administratively inefficient for the [PUC] to proceed without having the benefit of the final FCC ruling on the scope of state commission jurisdiction over IPCS," ViaPath said. Separately, Securus raised concerns with the PUC possibly expanding reporting requirements beyond data on phone calls and video service complaints. “Expanding the scope of the reporting … would result in the publication of information beyond that contemplated by [law] and which [IPCS] providers have legitimate interests in maintaining as confidential and proprietary," the company said.
The FCC Wireless Bureau sought comment Monday on IDS GeoRadar's (IDSG) request for modification of its 2018 waiver allowing use of its 76-77 GHz band Hyper Definition Radar (Hydra) system for mining safety (see 1808130022). IDSG asked that use of the Hydra system be expanded to allow for “structural health monitoring” and “quarry, cut-slope and natural landslide monitoring,” the bureau said. The company also asked permission to use an updated version of Hydra. Comments are due July 3, replies July 18 in docket 17-358.