Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., filed cloture Thursday night on Republican FCC nominee Olivia Trusty, setting up potential floor votes on her confirmation next week. Thune sought cloture on Trusty's nomination to two terms -- one to finish out that of former Democratic Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, which ends June 30, and a subsequent full five-year term. Thune and other Senate Republicans have seen greater urgency to prioritize Trusty's confirmation after GOP Commissioner Nathan Simington resigned last week, shifting the commission to a 1-1 tie and leaving it without a quorum.
The European Commission has signed off on SES' purchase of Intelsat without conditions. The satellite communications and broadcast delivery markets have other "credible competitors" that will exert "sufficient competitive pressure" on the newly combined company, it said. The new entity will also face fiber and low earth orbit satellite competition and won't be able to foreclose downstream competitors by restricting access to its satellite capacity, the commission added. Transfer of Intelsat's FCC licenses to SES is still pending at the agency.
Earth exploration satellite service (EESS) startup Novi Space wants to launch a pair of non-geostationary orbit EESS satellites in 2026. In an FCC Space Bureau application posted Tuesday seeking authorization, Novi said its satellites will collect data and then downlink it either to commercial ground stations or Iridium's satellite constellation. It said it anticipates putting up the two satellites on SpaceX launches scheduled for January and June next year.
FCC licensees will now be charged regulatory fees on authorized satellites and earth stations, rather than on operational ones. A regulatory fees order in Tuesday's Daily Digest said the agency is also setting a two-tier non-geostationary orbit satellite regulatory fee category: one for small constellations of fewer than 1,000 authorized satellites, and one for 1,000 or more. Those categories replace the existing "less complex" and "other" NGSO fee categories, it said. The changes "will more accurately" apportion fee burdens among licensees, and most will pay lower per-unit fees in FY 2025 than FY 2024, the FCC said. The changes "support the Commission’s goal that our regulatory fees are fair, administrable, and sustainable." It noted that the order was adopted last week, and then-Commissioner Geoffrey Starks didn't participate. The changes will go into effect with the FY 2025 regulatory fees.
Allowing broadcasters to replace physical emergency alerting equipment with a software-based system won’t require the FCC to create an entirely new regulatory regime, said NAB and broadcast executives in a meeting with Public Safety Bureau staff last week, according to an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 15-94. Emergency alert system (EAS) equipment maker Digital Alert Systems has said NAB’s proposal would raise a host of regulatory issues (see 2505230056), but NAB and executives from iHeart, Beasley and Capitol Broadcasting told the FCC that such concerns are “overblown,” the filing said.
Public Knowledge and the Electronic Privacy Information Center urged the FCC to take privacy into consideration as the agency looks at wireless location accuracy for 911 calls (see 2506090022). Comments were posted this week in docket 07-114. “The Commission has presented acceptable proposals to make [enhanced 911] better, but has failed to properly consider in its proposals the importance of consumer privacy,” the groups said. Before adopting new E911 rules, the FCC should “seek further comment on how to protect subscriber information, including Customer Proprietary Network Information, as demands for sensitive location data increase.”
The FCC will hold a workshop at its headquarters July 7 at 9:30 a.m. aimed at promoting resiliency and recovery efforts ahead of hurricane season. The roundtable will feature three panels, the FCC said Tuesday: “Challenges to Response and Recovery of Power and Communications Outages in the Aftermath of a Hurricane,” “Current Government, Intra-Industry, and Cross-Industry Partnerships” and “The Advance Preparation Frameworks for Power and Communications Outages.” Speakers weren’t announced.
The National Treasury Employees Union wants the U.S. District Court for the D.C. Circuit to rule that the White House’s order ending collective bargaining at the FCC and numerous other federal agencies is illegal, said a motion for summary judgment filed Monday. The order said more than 30 federal agencies -- including the FCC, Department of Veterans Affairs and IRS -- fall under a national security exemption from congressional collective bargaining rules. That exemption had previously applied only to a few entities, such as the CIA. The district court issued an injunction blocking the order in April, which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit stayed last month.
Two Texas associations this week petitioned the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals asking it to overturn a January declaratory ruling by the FCC in response to the Salt Typhoon cyberattacks. CTIA, NCTA and USTelecom previously asked the FCC to reconsider the ruling (see 2502190081), which now-Chairman Brendan Carr had opposed (see 2501160041). Commissioners approved it 3-2 in the final days of the Biden administration.
Former FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington's suggestion that streaming platforms be subject to MVPD-like regulation (see 2505270054) lacks statutory justification and is the wrong approach from a competition policy standpoint, Free State Foundation wrote Monday. It argued that the better way to put virtual MVPDs on the same regulatory footing as traditional MVPDs is to roll back rules governing satellite and cable TV. Under the U.S. Supreme Court's Loper Bright decision, it's likely that federal courts would determine that the federal law governing the FCC's authority over MVPDs doesn't extend to virtual MVPDs, the group said.