“Four hours is not enough” for battery backup at wireless cellsites, since last year’s public safety power shutoffs lasted two to eight days, California Public Utilities Commission member Genevieve Shiroma said Wednesday. CPUC is looking into the issue, she replied to our question on a resiliency panel at the NARUC winter meeting. For the state commission, “the wildfire emergency has really put an exclamation point on the importance of communications and broadband during an emergency,” said former FCC and CPUC Commissioner Rachelle Chong in an interview.
The space economy is growing rapidly, but that means increased potential problems with orbital debris and the need for space traffic management (STM), speakers said at a Space Foundation event Tuesday. Rep. Kendra Horn, D-Okla., co-chairwoman of the House Space Power Caucus, said with looming satellite mega constellations, there's a need to "set some lanes" for STM.
Universal Service Administrative Co. sees “good momentum” on the Lifeline national verifier after a rocky start that state regulators criticized last year, USAC Vice President-Lifeline Michelle Garber told NARUC. Garber told Telecom Committee members about progress connecting state databases and refining enrollment and reverification processes.
The goal is to produce a draft bill this year to update the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, said Senate Intellectual Property Subcommittee Chairman Thom Tillis, R-N.C., Tuesday. “I have low expectations we can get it done in this Congress. But I think we can get a generally accepted baseline and continue to work with the House to move it on a bicameral basis,” he told us before Tuesday’s hearing on DMCA. “It hasn’t been touched since Chumbawamba was topping the charts” in 1998.
Communities unserved by broadband often overlap with those at risk of losing their jobs to displacement by new technologies such as 5G and artificial intelligence, panelists told FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks at an event he hosted. Earlier Tuesday, AT&T showcased how U.S. industries will adopt 5G and IoT technologies to increase productivity.
A set of FTC Act Section 6(b) orders to Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft aren't a warning to big tech, though the agency could start a criminal investigation if it finds something problematic in its analysis of their mergers and acquisitions, Chairman Joe Simons said Tuesday. He said the agency will look at "hundreds" of unreported transactions by the companies in 2010-2019 as it tries to decide if deals that fall outside Hart-Scott-Rodino Act reporting requirements nonetheless affect competition, and if those HSR thresholds should change. The FTC announced the 6(b) orders Tuesday (see 2002110020).
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., believes there’s a rapidly decreasing likelihood lawmakers will reach a deal on legislation allocating the proceeds of a coming FCC auction of spectrum on the 3.7-4.2 GHz C band before or after the commission's planned Feb. 28 vote on Chairman Ajit Pai’s proposal (see 2002060057). House Commerce Committee leaders don’t share Wicker’s pessimism. The House-side lawmakers plan further talks this week on a coming bill, which has become their main telecom policy priority (see 2002070044).
State plaintiffs’ arguments T-Mobile would “pursue anticompetitive behavior” after buying Sprint weren't “sufficiently compelling" to block the transaction, wrote U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero for the Southern District of New York. Monday's 173-page decision (in Pacer) was released Tuesday (see 2002100061). He attached no new conditions.
Canalys, which had forecast a 7 percent decline in smartphone shipments from Q4 to Q1 -- and an 8 percent drop in PC shipments -- “dramatically revised” projections to a 40-50 percent drop for smartphones and a 20 percent falloff for PCs based on currently available information on coronavirus impact.
With impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump completed, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker hopes to move bipartisan bills on broadband mapping, net neutrality and Huawei, the Mississippi Republican said in a Monday keynote speech at the NARUC Winter Policy Summit. NARUC President Brandon Presley announced members of a freshly minted broadband task force (see 1911270024).