Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, acknowledged Wednesday that newly announced NTIA administrator nominee Arielle Roth may draw panel Democrats’ ire during her confirmation process over potential changes from the Trump administration and Congress to the $42.5 billion NTIA-administered BEAD program. Senate Commerce advanced commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick to the floor 16-12 Wednesday, as expected (see 2502040056), against near-uniform Democratic opposition aimed in part at his positions on BEAD. The panel also cleared a revised version of the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act (S-315) and three other tech and telecom bills: the Rural Broadband Protection Act (S-98), Insure Cybersecurity Act (S-245) and Kids Off Social Media Act (S-278).
The FCC opened a docket on the news distortion complaint against CBS, and both the FCC and CBS have released the unedited transcript of the 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris. Editing of the interview is also the subject of a suit that President Donald Trump brought against the network.
CTIA hopes the Donald Trump administration will continue the spectrum studies launched under the national spectrum strategy, though potentially with tweaks to account for earlier studies, said Doug Brake, CTIA assistant vice president-policy communications, during a Broadband Breakfast webinar Wednesday.
Legal experts expect President Donald Trump will use the Congressional Review Act process to reject regulations approved under President Joe Biden. The legal experts spoke Wednesday during an FCBA continuing legal education event.
New FCC Chairman Brendan Carr laid out an aggressive agenda for his first meeting as chair, with two items on future spectrum auctions, including a look at the upper C band. The FCC will also tackle wireless emergency alerts and robocalls and ways of strengthening the call-blocking capabilities of carriers. In addition, commissioners will consider an NPRM on the volume of broadcast commercials.
Avoid reading too much into the merger policies of the new Donald Trump administration based on the rejection last week of Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s proposed $14 billion buy of Juniper Networks, industry experts said. DOJ sued to block the transaction, citing the competitive effects on the wireless local area network (LAN) industry (see 2501300063).
The FCC abruptly declined to defend the inclusion of a nonbinary gender category in its broadcaster workplace diversity data collection shortly before the start of oral argument at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday. The eleventh-hour shift could lead to the court declining to rule on the case, attorneys told us.
Senate Commerce Committee Democrats are already signaling that they're unlikely to give new NTIA administrator pick Arielle Roth a free pass through her confirmation process, particularly given their amplified doubts about how the agency-administered, $42.5 billion BEAD program will fare under Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary nominee (see 2501290047). Several Senate Commerce Democrats are likely to vote against Lutnick at a Wednesday panel meeting, but lobbyists told us he is all but certain to advance to the floor with unified GOP support.
AST SpaceMobile's L-band spectrum access agreement with Ligado comes as the booming interest in direct-to-device service is running into limited spectrum availability, spectrum consultants and analysts tell us. Some see a similar deal with a satellite operator getting access to EchoStar's 2 GHz band spectrum for D2D as possible. The federal bankruptcy court overseeing Ligado's Chapter 11 plan signed off last week on the financial breakup terms of the Ligado/AST deal (see 2501270026). Ligado has said the AST deal is key to it emerging from bankruptcy (see 2501060026).
Lawyers for the government and AT&T faced questions from a panel of judges on the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals as the bench heard arguments concerning the FCC’s $57 million fine against the carrier for inadequately protecting customers’ location data. T-Mobile has also challenged more than $92 million in fines in the D.C. Circuit, and Verizon disputed a $46.9 million penalty in the 2nd Circuit, but the 5th Circuit case was the first where a panel of judges heard oral argument.