The U.S. can lead the world on AI, but that requires consistent regulation and the ability of providers to build new infrastructure, FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty told the State of the Net conference Monday in Washington. Trusty emphasized the broader Trump administration theme that state laws shouldn’t be allowed to slow growth. “Leadership in AI is not something you declare. It is something you earn and something you must continuously defend.”
The FCC’s proposed Lifeline NPRM, posted Wednesday, seeks to restrict funding to only American citizens and a few classes of non-citizens. The NPRM is expected to be politically explosive, with Commissioner Anna Gomez already accusing Chairman Brendan Carr of proposing “the same cruel and punitive eligibility standards recently imposed for Medicaid coverage” (see 2601270051).
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said Tuesday that commissioners will take up changes to the USF Lifeline program at their Feb. 18 meeting in an effort to “prevent fraud, and ensure that federal dollars go only to eligible low-income Americans.” The Lifeline item ties back to the Trump administration’s broader campaign against illegal immigrants. Commissioner Anna Gomez slammed the proposed changes, saying they could cause eligible households to lose federal support, including on tribal lands.
FCC action on its proposed wireline and wireless infrastructure proceedings will likely come by June at the latest, with court challenges starting shortly thereafter, Best Best localities lawyer Cheryl Leanza said Tuesday during a webinar hosted by the National Association of Telecom Officers and Advisors. Given FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's prioritization of permitting reform and efforts to preempt local rules and regulations that slow down permitting, he will move as quickly as possible, she predicted.
Leaders of the House and Senate Appropriations committees released a compromise FY 2026 minibus spending package (HR-7006) on Sunday night that would mirror President Donald Trump’s request to increase the FCC’s annual funding but decrease the FTC’s allocation (see 2506020056). Meanwhile, the Senate planned to vote Monday night on the motion to invoke cloture on the House-passed minibus FY26 package (HR-6938), which would increase NTIA’s annual funding to $50 million (see 2601080070).
Consumers’ Research and its allies outlined the legal reasoning behind their latest attack on the legality of the USF contribution factor, filing a brief Monday with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals explaining why the conservative circuit should once again declare the factor unconstitutional.
ACN Communication Services asked the FCC Wireline Bureau for a waiver of agency rules so the company can revise the data it filed to determine the size of its payments to the USF. ACN said it’s a reseller of telecommunications and broadband services to residential and business customers and has paid into the fund since 1993. “Upon review of the most recent annual USF report,” ACN determined that its reports from 2023-25 were in error and that it had “significantly overreported its USF end user revenue,” said a filing Monday in docket 06-122.
Strand Consult said in its year-end predictions that pressure is likely to continue on big tech companies to pay into the USF. “The largest internet companies Alphabet, Meta, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, and TikTok derived an estimated $200 billion in revenue in 2024 from the 135 million users connecting to the internet through the USF,” Strand said last week. The companies earned on average $2,600 in 2024 through every household connected, it added. An “explosion of data centers is poised to exacerbate this free ride if left unaddressed.”
The FCC clarified Monday that the USF contribution factor for Q1 will be 37.6%, down from 38.1% in Q4. But it's higher than the earlier projection of 30.9% (see 2511100035), analyst Billy Jack Gregg noted in an email Tuesday. That increase came after the Universal Service Administrative Co. revised its estimates for the high-cost and low-income fund by a total of $219.2 million, Gregg said. Neither USAC nor the FCC has explained the reasons for the higher demand projections, he added.
The FCC barred Q Link Wireless from participating in the agency's Lifeline or any other USF program, according to a letter posted in Friday’s Daily Digest. In July, Q Link Wireless CEO Issa Asad was sentenced to 60 months in prison after pleading guilty to fraud tied to the Lifeline program (see 2507280019). Asad and the company also pleaded guilty to money laundering through the COVID-19-era Paycheck Protection Program.