The FCC began to restart operations Thursday that were suspended during the government shutdown (see 2509300060) but immediately extended most post-shutdown deadlines in a bid to control the anticipated avalanche of filings. The agency furloughed 81% of its staff when the shutdown began Oct. 1 (see 2510010065). FCC staff and industry attorneys had raised alarms about what they saw as unclear filing requirements (see 2510160044). The 42-day shutdown, the longest in modern U.S. history, ended late Wednesday night when President Donald Trump signed a legislative package that restored federal appropriations at FY 2025 levels through Jan. 30.

Communications Daily is tracking the lawsuits below involving appeals of FCC actions.

House lawmakers from both parties continued Wednesday to criticize new Senate language in the package to end the government shutdown (HR-5371) that would allow senators to sue federal agencies in response to reports of DOJ spying on some Republican lawmakers' phone records during the Biden administration. The Senate-approved provision targeted claims that the FBI and former Special Counsel Jack Smith accessed the phone records of several Republican lawmakers as part of the Biden administration’s probe of the Jan. 6 Capitol siege (see 2510170039). The House was set to vote Wednesday night on HR-5371, which could lead the FCC to restart most of its operations Thursday. The FCC suspended most of its functions when the government shutdown began Oct. 1. and furloughed 81% of its staff (see 2510010065). The Senate passed HR-5371 Monday night 60-40.

This year has proven “tough” for open radio access network (ORAN) deployments, said James Joiner, GSMA's lead analyst for network strategy, during a Mobile World Live virtual conference Tuesday. With developments such as EchoStar’s decision to decommission part of Boost’s ORAN, “market sentiment” has “cooled” but “hasn’t collapsed completely.”

ACA Connects hopes to use the FCC's wide-reaching wireline deployment rules reform proceeding to pursue permitting reforms and stop local rate regulation efforts that Congress isn't currently tackling, President Grant Spellmeyer told reporters Wednesday. Brian Hurley, the group's senior vice president of legal and regulatory affairs, said that given the priority that FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has put on speeding up deployment, ACA expects to see action in 2026 coming out of the wireline proceeding.

Arpan Sura, an aide to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, warned Wednesday that the agency faces a huge amount of work to meet a congressional mandate to auction the upper C band in two years. “It’s a very aggressive timeline,” Sura said during a Center for Strategic and International Studies conference. Other speakers said federal spectrum work has continued despite the longest federal shutdown in history. Commissioners are to vote next week on an upper C-band NPRM (see 2510290047).

Former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and other witnesses at a Public Knowledge event Wednesday called for Congress to end what they see as actions by Chairman Brendan Carr's commission infringing media's First Amendment rights. PK CEO Chris Lewis framed the event as the first in an anticipated series of “people’s oversight” hearings on the FCC and other federal agencies in response to what he sees as Congress’ failure to counter Trump administration actions against the president's perceived enemies.

Nations worldwide are working on individual regulatory frameworks for direct-to-device (D2D) service, with satellite operators facing some challenges in dealing with the varied approaches, said Lynk Chief Global Affairs Officer Amy Mehlman at an FCBA continuing education seminar Monday. Some countries might have to revisit their rules, she said, depending on what the ITU does at its 2027 World Radiocommunication Conference and the outcomes of Agenda Item 1.13, which deals with D2D service.

Congress, and the FCC, may face reduced pressure to reform the USF with an expected drop in its contribution factor, but calls for change won’t go away, experts said Monday. The USF contribution factor is expected to decline from 38.1% in Q4 to 30.9% in Q1, as projected demand decreases, analyst Billy Jack Gregg said Saturday in an email. That’s based on new numbers from the Universal Service Administrative Co.

As the longest federal government shutdown in history likely nears an end, industry lawyers who depend on FCC decisions said there’s no question the companies they represent have taken a hit. Among the biggest problems, they said, are that everything the FCC has done has taken longer, while some transactions and license applications aren’t being processed with key systems offline.