The House Communications Subcommittee unanimously advanced the Foreign Adversary Communications Transparency Act (HR-820), Future Uses of Technology Upholding Reliable and Enhancing Networks Act (HR-1513) and two other anti-China communications security bills Tuesday. House China Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., meanwhile, is pressing the FCC on whether it will act on reports that mobile devices in the U.S. are still processing signals from China’s BeiDou and Russia’s global navigation satellite systems (GNSS).
NTIA Tuesday released its implementation plan for the national spectrum strategy. Under the plan, studies for the 3.1-3.45 GHz and 7/8 GHz bands, top priorities of wireless carriers, will begin this month and be completed in October 2026 (see 2403120006). FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr criticized the plan, saying in “the best case” the lower 3 and 7/8 GHz bands won’t be available until 2028. Others had a more positive take.
Social media companies should obtain parental consent before sending children push notifications that keep them on platforms, a bipartisan group of 43 state attorneys general told the FTC in comments due Monday (see 2312280030). Some tech and telecom groups warned that the FTC's push-notification proposal is likely to be unconstitutional and outside its statutory authority.
SpaceX already dominates the U.S. commercial space launch market and many commercial space industry experts expect that trend will continue for the next few years. Its under-development Starship rocket -- able to carry upward of 100 tons of cargo per launch and potentially put satellites in orbit for a fraction of the cost on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket -- could further cement that dominance, launch experts told us.
The House will vote Wednesday on legislation that would ban TikTok in the U.S. unless Chinese parent company ByteDance divests the popular social media app, an aide for House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., confirmed Tuesday.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) aims to avoid industry litigation that has stymied kids’ social media laws in other states, his aide told a Tennessee House committee during a hearing Tuesday on an administration-sponsored bill requiring parental consent for kids younger than 18 on social networks. But afterward, Computer & Communications Industry Association State Director Kara Boender told us her group “still [has] concerns surrounding the bill's provisions.”
An FCC proposal prioritizing processing of applications from broadcasters that offer local programming (see 2401180074) won’t have much of an effect and doesn’t do enough, according to a wide swath of comments filed to docket 24-14 by Monday’s deadline.
An FCC proposal requiring that MVPDs reimburse customers for programming affected by retransmission consent blackouts (see 2401170072) is outside the agency’s authority, unworkable, and would lead to higher prices for subscribers, said MVPDs and MVPD trade groups in comments filed in docket 24-20 by Friday’s deadline. The rebate proposal would be an “unnecessary government intrusion into already difficult negotiations” and “disrupt the marketplace by placing the government’s thumb on the scale to the detriment of cable subscribers,” said NCTA.
Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Communications Subcommittee ranking member John Thune, R-S.D., filed their long-circulating 2024 Spectrum Pipeline Act Monday with some changes from a draft version proposed in the fall (see 2311220063). The proposal drew sharply divided reactions from communications policy stakeholders. Some lobbyists suggested Cruz and Thune filed the measure Monday to get ahead of NTIA's planned release later this week of its implementation plan for the Biden administration's national spectrum strategy (see 2403050048).
If Congress doesn’t approve kids’ online safety legislation, then it should repeal Communications Decency Act Section 230, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told us last week.