The federal court reviewing California’s net neutrality law asked how DOJ's withdrawing its challenge (see 2102080073) affects the separate lawsuit by ACA Connects, USTelecom, CTIA and NCTA. ISP plaintiffs and California should file a brief joint status report by Feb. 16 “stating their position as to whether the United States of America's voluntary dismissal in 18-cv-02660 affects this matter in any way, and, if so, how,” said Monday's minute order (in Pacer) in case 2:18-cv-02684 at U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of California. ACA opposition to the California law is unchanged, a spokesperson said. USTelecom didn’t comment Tuesday, and CTIA and NCTA declined to comment.
Satellite interests backed and wireless interests opposed a Satellite Industry Association call for a fixed satellite service (FSS) allocation in the 51.4-52.4 GHz band, in FCC comments Tuesday in RM-11871. Many satellite operators are developing networks and systems that would operate using feeder links in the V band, Boeing said in support of SIA. "Immediate action ... is warranted" since a global FSS allocation in the spectrum adopted at the 2019 World Radiocommunication Conference took effect Jan. 1, Boeing said. Amazon's Kuiper said a proposed rulemaking should be expanded to allow non-geostationary use of the spectrum, as well as geostationary, instead of initiating a second NPRM for NGSO use. NGSO and GSO providers can maximize their feeder link operations with access to the 51 GHz spectrum, it said. Hughes said the swath is domestically allocated as a shared federal and nonfederal band for terrestrial fixed and mobile wireless services, but it's largely unused by federal and nonfederal services. But CTIA said access to high-band airwaves is a major part of the U.S. 5G strategy, and the availability of such "is already heavily imbalanced towards satellite use." It said SIA's effort would "forestall steady progress that the U.S. has made in identifying and licensing high-band spectrum for mobile terrestrial use." SIA's petition said FSS in 51 GHz can share with other services while protecting passive services in adjacent bands.
Reclassify broadband as a Communications Act Title II service, advocates urged the FCC in a petition for reconsideration in docket 17-108 Tuesday. Petitioners are Common Cause, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, United Church of Christ, National Hispanic Media Coalition, New America’s Open Technology Institute and Free Press. Santa Clara County, California, and its Central Fire Protection District also filed a petition, arguing the commission "wholly failed to consider public safety" when it repealed net neutrality. Incompas and Public Knowledge filed similar petitions in the past week (see 2102080061). The FCC didn't respond to a request for comment.
Commissioner Geoffrey Starks hosts an online panel Thursday at 2 p.m. EST on black-owned businesses and the digital divide, the FCC said Monday. Representatives from the African American Mayors Association, Black Economic Alliance, Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice, and U.S. Black Chambers will speak.
Thursday's Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment meeting hasn't been canceled and will continue as planned. See the FCC's announcement and our calendar here and here.
Carriers seeking funding to replace Huawei and ZTE gear in their networks face tight restrictions as part of the process to get money from the FCC under the 2019 Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act, Wireline Bureau Legal Adviser Justin Faulb said during a Rural Wireless Association webinar Monday. The FY 2021 appropriations and COVID-19 aid omnibus bill (HR-133) provides $1.9 billion (see 2012220061). Applicants must maintain detailed records for 10 years of all costs eligible for reimbursement, Faulb said. The FCC has 90 days to act on requests and can extend that 45 days, he said. If an application has “material defects,” companies have 15 days to correct them or must wait for a second window, Faulb said: Now the FCC is considering only one filing window, to be open for 30 days. All applications will be reviewed equally. The FCC will then analyze the level of demand and allocate funds based on individual applications, he said. If demand exceeds supply, eligible telecom carriers are first in line, with priority given for changes to the core network, he said. Once awards are announced, an applicant has a year to file the first reimbursement claim, “so you can’t sit on it and wait,” he said. Faulb advised companies to prepare now, noting that work must be completed within a year of the initial disbursement. The FCC can issue a blanket six-month extension if it finds equipment and services aren’t adequate, notifying Congress, he said. The agency can OK multiple individual six-month extensions, he said. “There’s a lot of pressure to get this done quickly and remove this insecure equipment,” he said. After the year, companies have an additional 120 days to file a claim and can seek a 120-day extension, he said. Only equipment on the FCC’s covered equipment list obtained before Aug. 14, 2018, is currently eligible for reimbursement, he said. Congress doesn't allow any equipment replaced to be used elsewhere, and companies must document that it's destroyed, he said. Recipients face audits and inspections similar to those in the rest of the USF, he said. Anyone who violates the rules can be required to pay back the funds, be barred from the USF and face legal penalties, Faulb said: “Please don’t break the rules.” The biggest question members have is when the FCC will release the public notice announcing the filing window, said RWA General Counsel Carri Bennet. “We’re working closely on it” and seeking a third-party fund administrator, Faulb said. “We’ll have to follow the government’s procure schedule, which will take some time based on just the steps we have to jump through.”
NTIA is developing a $1 billion Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program to provide grants for increasing broadband access on tribal lands, it announced Friday. Tribal advocates and governments sought more cooperation from federal agencies in recent weeks to expand broadband access (see 2101250036). NTIA held a virtual consultation with tribal leadership Friday and plans additional meetings Feb. 10 and 12 "to ensure that tribal input informs the new grant program" before the application process begins. The new program will provide funding for broadband deployment, including carrier-neutral submarine cable landing stations. It'll also fund free or reduced-cost broadband service, distance learning, telehealth, digital inclusion efforts and broadband adoption activities, and will prevent disconnection of existing services.
Rural and small carriers reported mixed progress in response to December questions from the FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau (see 2012220031) about their requests to waive the June 30 deadline to offer real-time text. Most said they hadn’t picked a vendor for the RTT transition, in responses posted through Thursday in docket 16-145. Viaero cited its use of a Huawei core as the reason it hasn’t picked such a vendor. “Huawei does not support RTT,” the carrier said: “Over the last 18 months, Viaero has been limited with respect to further investments and integration to upgrade the services offered, due to the fact that other vendors are not willing to integrate with Huawei.” Appalachian Wireless is talking to two network vendors “on potential solutions for implementing RTT for IP-based calls.” Both are working on a solution, Appalachian said. One said “it may have something available in 2022,” the carrier said: “Appalachian Wireless plans to adopt the solution from the first vendor to make such solution available.” GCI “has not yet contracted with its network vendor to deploy RTT because [the] Vendor has not finalized a compliant RTT solution for GCI” yet, the carrier said. Southern Linc redacted the identity of the company it's using and cited “good progress toward RTT deployment.” Parts of the transition are “complex and time consuming,” Southern Linc said. Nex-Tech Wireless said it didn’t have an RTT vendor. Cellcom reported it launched RTT in September.
The FTC and DOJ Antitrust Division temporarily suspended early terminations of the Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting-period review of mergers and acquisitions, over the objections of FTC Commissioners Noah Phillips and Christine Wilson. The commission said it expects the suspension to be "brief." Given "the confluence of an historically unprecedented volume of filings during a leadership transition amid a pandemic, we will presume we need those 30 days" for reviewing the competitive implications of a proposed transaction "to ensure we are doing right by competition and consumers," said FTC acting Chairwoman Rebecca Kelly Slaughter. Phillips and Wilson said the suspension seems "unwarranted" without better explanation, and past suspensions have been done only in response to a crisis.
The NARUC Telecom Subcommittee unanimously cleared a draft resolution urging the FCC to scrutinize Rural Digital Opportunity Fund long-form applications (see 2101290028). Thursday at NARUC’s virtual winter meeting, the staff-level panel tweaked the RDOF measure to specify that the FCC should ensure winners follow through “at the speeds and latency tiers” they promised. The Telecom Committee plans to vote on the measure at its Wednesday business meeting. Subcommittee Chair Joseph Witmer from the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission noted many RDOF winners in his state are new carriers. Based on conversation with the Biden transition team, including DLA Piper's Smitty Smith, NARUC General Counsel Brad Ramsay hopes FCC Democrats “will really see much, much more benefit in working closely with states on these policy issues, as they have at the state level ... for the last four years” on issues like net neutrality, he said earlier in the meeting. NARUC wants the FCC to quickly reengage with state members of the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service about a contribution overhaul, said Ramsay, noting the state association wrote the Biden transition team about it in December. He suspects the commission won’t want to address the subject until it has a permanent chair, he said. Acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel was federal chair when Democrats last ran the FCC and the joint board was close to consensus, but there wasn’t agreement in the Republican-controlled FCC, he said. The board’s new federal side should take up the proposal submitted by state members during the Trump administration or submit an alternative plan for debate, he said.