A proposed $233,000 forfeiture against Cumulus and some subsidiaries wouldn’t adequately punish the company for violating a 2016 consent decree by allegedly breaking FCC sponsorship ID rules, said FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks -- formerly of the agency’s Enforcement Bureau -- in a dissent on a notice of apparent liability issued Tuesday. The NAL lists $25,000 of that forfeiture specifically as the penalty for violating the consent decree, and that’s not enough, Starks said in a dissenting statement. The proposed forfeiture “does not follow well-established Commission precedent and is not, in my mind, commensurate with the misconduct and violations at issue.” Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel concurred on the NAL.
Providers of video relay services for the deaf and hearing impaired want the FCC to quickly grant VRS users immediate access to new equipment during a two-week grace period while their eligibility is being verified, as proposed in a Further NPRM released in mid-May. The agency took comments on the matter through Tuesday in docket 10-51. "Granting users access to VRS during the verification period will further the goals of providing functionally equivalent service to deaf and hard of hearing consumers, more akin to how hearing individuals are able to use their new phones nearly immediately," said Convo Communications.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer shouldn’t include Section 230-like protections in trade deals, given ongoing policy discussions about the tech industry's liability shield, House Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, D-N.J., and ranking member Greg Walden, R-Ore., wrote Tuesday.
Congressional interest in the debate on Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization is continuing to heat up during Capitol Hill's August recess. Timing and leadership dynamics favor STELA renewal, but several lawmakers we spoke with are now openly declaring themselves undecided or opposed to renewing portions of the law. The timeline, meanwhile, is going to make it more difficult to include a revamp of media rules or other issues in an extension measure, lobbyists told us. STELA sunsets at the end of this year.
Geopolitical and macroeconomic factors slammed ON Semiconductor’s Q2 revenue, said Chief Financial Officer Bernard Gutmann on a Monday earnings call. A “sharper-than-expected” broad-based inventory correction, largely in the automotive market, drove revenue lower in the quarter, he said.
The FCC granted forbearance from unbundled network element (UNE) analog loop obligations for incumbent LECs to help encourage the continued move away from legacy TDM voice service and to spur further development of next-generation facilities-based networks, it said in an order issued Friday in docket 18-141. The forbearance is conditioned on a two-part transition. Competitive LECs are allowed to order new UNE analog loops for six months after the order's effective date and will grandfather any existing customer relationships for three years. An exception was made for Puerto Rico, where market transition was extended to five years.
Weakening Silicon Valley’s content liability protections potentially discourages platform moderation and emboldens extremists on unfiltered websites like 8chan, said progressive and libertarian tech observers Monday. Public Knowledge CEO Chris Lewis and TechFreedom President Berin Szoka warned government against intervening in speech moderation, discussing 8chan's role in the weekend’s mass shootings.
One of the bands NTIA seeks more information on from other agencies is a relative mystery band, 7125-8400 MHz, which has gotten little previous attention. It's among those mentioned in the Advancing Innovation and Reinvigorating Widespread Access to Viable Electromagnetic Spectrum (Airwaves) Act, which seeks to identify spectrum for unlicensed use and free up mid-band spectrum for auction (see 1802070054). The band is directly north of spectrum the FCC is already looking at for unlicensed use, the 6 GHz band.
The idea of a 120-day process for modifying an existing local franchise authority agreement gets a softer sell in the LFA final order approved 3-2 last week (see 1907010011) than in the draft released in July, according to our analysis. The draft had the agency preferring a proposal whereby a cable operator can request a modification and the LFA would have 120 days to make a final decision, but the final order released Friday says that procedure would have violated Section 625 of the Cable Act, and instead encourages the two sides to negotiate modifications "within a reasonable time" and that 120 days "in most cases" should fit that bill.
China vowed Friday to retaliate if the Trump administration carries out its threat to impose the 10 percent List 4 Section 301 tariffs on $300 billion in Chinese imports not previously dutied (see 1908010059). If the U.S. “imposes tariff measures and implements them” as threatened Sept. 1, “China will have to take necessary countermeasures to resolutely defend the core interests of the country and the fundamental interests of the people,” said a Commerce Ministry spokesperson. “All the consequences will be borne by the US.”