The Technological Advisory Council will hold its year-end meeting, traditionally the most important of the year, Dec. 1 at 10 a.m. EST via conference call, the FCC said Tuesday. TAC will hear presentations from its four working groups.
Allowing more foreign investment in Consolidated Communications would mean more financial support for its multiyear investment program to deploy fiber to the home to as many as 1.4 million locations and accelerate its commercial fiber build, said its FCC International Bureau petition for declaratory ruling Monday for foreign investment higher than the 25% benchmark in the Communications Act. Consolidated said it and Searchlight Capital Partners worked out a $425 million deal that would mean Searchlight investment funds owning 35% of Consolidated’s common voting stock and up to about 62.4% of its equity, with Searchlight's control ultimately being in a Cayman Island partnership run by a Canadian and a German.
The COVID-19 pandemic is an economic and public health challenge, with small businesses -- especially minority-owned ones -- bearing the brunt, Chairman Ajit Pai said Friday at an FCC tech supplier diversity event. (See also his prepared remarks). Black-owned businesses are shutting down at twice the rate White-owned businesses are, and the pandemic exacerbated preexisting issues like a lack of access to capital, he said. Much of the virtual showcase was an explanation of such resources as the Small Business Administration's. Melissa Bradley, founder of Washington startup accelerator 1863 Ventures, said there are other grant programs, though there's no good way of tracking them. They often are narrow in scope and focus on an underserved neighborhood or geography, she said. Sonja Wells, interim chief lending officer for Black-owned City First Bank, said it did about $32 million in Paycheck Protection Program loans, and could have done more. She said minority businesses often aren't as prepared with required documentation, such as audited financial statements, as they should be when applying for funding. In a discussion about available funding for LGBTQ-owned businesses, National Urban League Senior Vice President-Policy and Advocacy Clint Odom said lawmakers are listening to constituents more closely about social justice issues and "need to hear from you about such issues." Internet Association interim CEO Jon Berroya said a second benchmark survey on workforce data for companies in the internet industry is being prepared.
Enable portable operations in the 6 GHz band for immersive 5G services, Broadcom, Intel and Microsoft asked FCC Office of Engineering and Technology staff. “Enable communication between client devices when they are within range of an authorized 6 GHz Low Power Indoor Access Point,” said a filing posted Friday in docket 18-295. “The record clearly demonstrates that such operations would not increase the risk of harmful interference because clients would operate at the same power level as a client device communicating with the nearby access point … and only within that access point’s service area.” Commissioners may vote on changes in December (see 2010190040).
The FCC has “broad authority” to change rules for dedicated short-range communications and modify DSRC roadside unit licenses in the 5.9 GHz band, NCTA representatives told Office of General Counsel staff. Title III of the Communications Act provides "expansive authority to change spectrum rules in the ‘public interest,’ and Section 316 gives the agency power to modify the small number of existing licenses for DSRC roadside units,” said a filing posted Friday in docket 19-138. More than 50 organizations oppose the FCC’s proposal to reallocate 45 MHz of the band to Wi-Fi, ITS America President Shailen Bhatt said during a webinar Thursday. More use of safety technologies would prevent the “vast majority” of 36,000 yearly U.S. highway deaths, he said. Vehicle-to-everything technologies “could significantly reduce the more than $800 billion in annual costs associated with traffic crashes,” he said: “V2X safety technologies fully utilize the 75 MHz in the 5.9 GHz spectrum band.” For V2X to work, “messages must travel quickly and without interference,” he said. The FCC hasn’t provided any evidence to show that V2X can safely share the band with Wi-Fi, he said. Commissioners may vote on revised rules in November (see 2010190040).
The Open Technology Institute at New America is disappointed the FCC didn’t propose to “authorize or require” white space databases to utilize terrain-based propagation models, such as the Longley-Rice irregular terrain model, to “take account of real-world terrain and clutter in the local area where operators request use,” the group told an aide to Commissioner Brendan Carr. OTI supports authorizing fixed devices to use channels immediately adjacent to TV operations, provided they maintain 3 MHz separation from the adjacent TV channel, said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 20-36: “Extensive field tests and laboratory measurements by Microsoft have demonstrated that three megahertz of separation between a fixed [white spaces] signal and a TV broadcast channel is sufficient to avoid harmful interference to TV viewers at power levels even greater than 100 milliwatts.”
Amazon's Kuiper is continuing its eighth-floor lobbying against SpaceX's proposed lower orbit for more than 2,000 satellites (see 2009030002), per filings Monday with the FCC International Bureau on virtual meetings with Commissioner Brendan Carr and with Bureau Chief Tom Sullivan. Among the Amazon staffers involved was Aaron Goldberger, who until this fall was an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai (see personals section, Oct. 15). SpaceX didn't comment Tuesday.
The concept of the attention economy, where people's attention can help measure aspects of technology, may have merit for government and industry, stakeholders told the Technology Policy Institute. The FTC could "look at how someone" is giving attention as the agency uses various alternative metrics, said Competition Bureau Director Ian Conner in Q&A with TPI President Scott Wallsten. Connor, noting he was speaking only for himself, said he "would never typically define books" as in direct "competition with social media" and with movies, which could compete for a person's attention at "any given moment." The attention economy could be a way to measure markets that lack prices for consumers in the typical sense, he said in a video released Tuesday. "We’re trying to look for different metrics when we don’t have our normal price or revenue measures." Attention can be "kind of like a price" for a product or service, and "it has a price that is very subjective" to each person, said Brown University associate professor of economics Kareen Rozen. "There’s more complementarity between the services than we’re giving them credit for" sometimes, she said of technology. Because consumers can use multiple tech services at once, spending attention may not be a zero-sum game, said participants including Comscore Senior Director-Product Management James Muldrow.
Antitrust authorities approved Trian Partners buying a stake in Comcast, per an FTC early termination notice released Monday. Trian announced the investment in September.
The Competitive Carriers Association mostly supports the proposed 5G Fund order but seeks changes, said a filing posted Monday in docket 20-32. “Requiring legacy support recipients to immediately begin deploying 5G at 35/3 Mbps in rural America in 2021 would be unreasonable, particularly as many carriers have already completed their 2021 budgets, some carriers have already placed their equipment purchases for the year, and others have already submitted network plans to states that retain [eligible telecommunications carrier] oversight authority,” CCA said: To the extent that the draft is “intended to enable legacy support recipients to have greater flexibility in spending support towards 5G during this interim period” it should be “clarified to more explicitly allow for flexible use of legacy support.” CCA spoke with aides to the Republican FCC commissioners and staff from the Rural Broadband Auctions Task Force, Office of Economics and Analytics and Wireline Bureau. Commissioners vote Oct. 27 (see 2010060060).