OneWeb received additional time it requested to provide complete responses to questions posed by the Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the United States Telecommunications Services Sector, per a letter last week from the DOJ Foreign Investment Review Section to the FCC International Bureau. The committee will notify the FCC when it has received the responses and is restarting the review period, DOJ said. The committee is reviewing OneWeb's pending application to modify its U.S. market access grant (see 2203290001).
Procedural concerns could complicate a case at the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on a New York law requiring affordable broadband. At oral argument Thursday in Manhattan, Judge Richard Sullivan grilled parties on a procedural maneuver they used to move the case to the 2nd Circuit from the trial court. Sullivan asked New York’s attorney tough questions on the state’s argument that its law isn’t preempted.
Procedural concerns could complicate a case at the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on a New York law requiring affordable broadband. At oral argument Thursday in Manhattan, Judge Richard Sullivan grilled parties on a procedural maneuver they used to move the case to the 2nd Circuit from the trial court. Sullivan asked New York’s attorney tough questions on the state’s argument that its law isn’t preempted.
A new FCC approach on how it calculates satellite constellation collision risks, used in its partial approval of SpaceX's second-generation constellation, is raising some space expert concerns, especially since it's seen as a possible harbinger of how the FCC might look at collision risk for future constellations. Viasat petitioned the commission to clarify aspects of that SpaceX authorization granted in November (see 2212010052). The agency and SpaceX didn't comment.
Samsung’s claim that its Z Fold 3 smartphone can be folded and unfolded at least 200,000 times -- the number of such actions a user would perform in five years -- is based on “flawed” testing methodology and “not representative of real-world usage,” alleged a fraud class action filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Dec. 26 (docket 1:22-cv-10882).
M&A activity in the technology, media and telecom (TMT) sector is down from the more heated pace during the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic but could pick up in 2023, TMT M&A experts told us. However, expect fewer big, transformative deals and more a series of bolt-on deals, they said.
The European Union said it is glad that the U.S. Treasury Department is reaffirming that European companies can benefit from the Commercial Clean Vehicle Credit without changing their production plans. "The EU welcomes this guidance, which reflects the constructive engagement as part of the EU-US Inflation Reduction Act Task Force at senior official level," the press office said Dec. 29, the day that guidance was released.
Here are Communications Litigation Today's top stories from last week, in case you missed them. Each can be found by searching on its title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
A court ruling striking down USF and the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund would significantly harm millions of people and businesses and threaten the operations and investments of cable operators, NCTA told the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in an amicus brief Monday supporting the FCC in Consumer’s Research v. FCC (docket 21-3886). Consumers' Research argued the funding mechanism for the Universal Service Fund violates the U.S. Constitution by delegating tax responsibilities reserved for Congress (see 2212130069). “The tremendous real-world stakes of this case should give this Court pause before entertaining Petitioners’ unprecedented non-delegation theory,” NCTA said. Ending RDOF would threaten internet connectivity across the country and strand investments in broadband infrastructure expansion “without any ability to recover the considerable resources operators have poured into these projects,” NCTA said. “Petitioners fail to give the Court any compelling reason to cut off consumers from their services, upend cable operators’ customer relationships, and disrupt the major investments cable operators have already made in reliance on USF support,” said the filing. Creating a separate funding entity to manage universal access to telecommunications is a common practice internationally and in line with International Telecommunications Union best practices, said Penn State Law Professor Robert Frieden in a separate amicus brief. Having a separate organization, “promotes greater transparency, accountability, and efficiency in the collection and disbursements of funds,” Frieden said.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted an FCC motion to extend abeyance on a lawsuit by the League of California Cities challenging the FCC’s June 2020 wireless infrastructure declaratory ruling. Proceedings are stayed until Jan. 30, the court ruled Thursday in case 20-72749. The FCC sought more time to get to five commissioners (see 2211150069). The court has approved multiple previous abeyance requests (see 2207290029) since March 2021.