A draft FCC Lifeline action would partly grant some industry and other requests for delaying the full impact of changes due Dec. 1 to the program, agency and industry officials told us Friday. The move could be released as state telecom commissioners are meeting in San Antonio, after they asked their federal counterparts at their last meeting to delay such changes. Various industry and other groups made their own requests.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai may be pivoting to a public auction for the C band and may plan to make completing an auction of 300 MHz of C-band spectrum a top priority for 2020, industry and commission officials said Friday. An order may not be ready for the Dec. 12 commissioners' meeting, but Pai will pull out all the stops to get an auction completed next year, they said. Some are hearing Pai may push the meeting to Dec. 19, to provide extra time to work on the item.
Huawei is winning the battle on 5G worldwide, Rivada Networks CEO Declan Ganley said at a Hudson Institute lunch Thursday. Ganley said cheap financing backed by the Chinese government has led to Huawei success. China’s goal is “dominating the cyber domain by 2025,” he said. Rivada backed a push for a national, wholesale 5G network, which got early support from the White House (see 1904120065).
The FCC isn't expected to provide clarity over authority to include or require broadband services as part of its Lifeline program anytime soon, said speakers at an FCBA workshop Thursday on what last month's Mozilla v. FCC net neutrality ruling means.
Federal legislation on privacy and net neutrality could be the common ground that helps break the balkanization and incivility endemic in politics, Comcast Chief Diversity Officer David Cohen told a Media Institute event Thursday. The rapid pace of technological and societal change needs to be met with a return of civility in political discourse and universal connectivity to facilitate training people to hold down post-artificial intelligence jobs and an embracing of diversity, he said. He argued public spending on broadband connectivity for underserved areas is likely being wasted.
Lobbying continues for and against proposed rules requiring carriers to identify the vertical location of indoor wireless calls to 911. APCO questions whether the requirement will help first responders locate callers (see 1911130030). Officials in the office of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai say the preponderance of public safety groups support the order, set for a commissioner vote at the Nov. 22 meeting.
Jobs remain an issue in T-Mobile's buying Sprint, stakeholders agreed. They differ on whether the deal would lead to more employment or hurt unionization. At the Capitol Forum Thursday and in Q&A with us, those for and against the deal expanded on existing policy positions. Topics included rollout of attorneys general backing the transaction after reaching pacts for the combined company to locate jobs in their states.
The House Communications Subcommittee advanced the Television Viewer Protection Act (HR-5035) and eight other bills on voice votes Thursday, as expected (see 1911130001). The subcommittee's debate over HR-5035, which would renew parts of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act, signals that measure faces a rockier path at a House Commerce Committee markup. The vote happened a day after the Senate Commerce Committee postponed a markup (see 1911130055) of the similar Satellite Television Access Reauthorization Act (S-2789) amid a committee members' revolt led by ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. STELA is set to expire Dec. 31.
AT&T had a Q3 net loss of about 1.4 million subscribers across its three pay-TV services -- DirecTV, AT&T U-verse and AT&T Now -- vs. a net loss of about 295,000 subscribers in the year-ago quarter, reported Leichtman Research Group Wednesday. AT&T’s subscriber losses, 79 percent of industry Q3 net losses vs. 30 percent in 3Q 2018, resulted from the company’s decision “to increasingly focus on retaining and acquiring more profitable subscribers,” said LRG principal Bruce Leichtman.
Full-power broadcasters and ATSC 3.0 boosters clamored for the FCC to relax rules governing distributed transmission systems (see 1910110040), in comments posted through Wednesday in docket 16-142. Microsoft and low-power broadcast entities have interference concerns. NAB and America's Public Television Stations' petition is “premature,” said the National Translator Association. “3.0 is incompatible with the present system, and the public’s paramount interest must be to preserve interference-free TV for present reception.”