The University of Oklahoma is reconsidering its ban of the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok on university-issued devices and networks, the school said in a statement Friday.
An administrative law judge shelved an LTD Broadband review by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission until the FCC rules on the company’s appeal of a denied long-form application for Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) support. LTD should file a status report every 120 days starting Feb. 1, ALJ James LaFave ordered Wednesday in docket 22-221. LTD had urged the PUC to delay considering whether to revoke LTD Broadband’s eligible telecom carrier status (see 2209200073). “Here, we are faced with the prospect of a time-consuming, expensive contested case hearing in a matter that may well be moot,” LaFave wrote. “Unless and until the FCC reverses its position on LTD’s long-form application, there is no issue to decide. Staying this proceeding makes sense.” Also, the PUC hasn't had a chance "to formally consider the effects and ramifications of the FCC decision,” and the FCC's determination will be relevant to the Minnesota proceeding since the independent federal agency "has a fiduciary interest in seeing the RDOF funds are properly dispersed,” said the ALJ.
A Supreme Court ruling in Gonzalez v. Google that an internet platform can be liable for the content it recommends (see 2301130028) would increase the cost and prevalence of content moderation, chill speech, step on congressional authority and ignore other routes for curbing abuses by tech companies, said amicus briefs supporting Google (docket 21-1333) this week . Public Knowledge, the Washington Legal Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology and others weighed in on the case.
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.