The FCC lacks authority to act on NTIA’s petition for a rulemaking on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (see 2008030025), Vimeo said in comments to the agency in RM-11862. The FCC received 177 comments by Wednesday afternoon, almost all from individuals. The Computer & Communications Industry Association, NetChoice and Engine told us they plan to comment in opposition to NTIA’s petition.

The next few years will see a big shift from land mobile satcom focusing on narrowband devices such as handheld phones to broadband use cases, blogged Northern Sky Research analyst Alan Crisp Tuesday. Operators will need to look to a wider array of ground terminals to play in that broadband land mobile marketplace, he said. "A business model selling handhelds won’t cut it anymore," and offering flat panel and roof-mounted antennas and "backpackable connectivity must become the norm," he said.

The next few years will see a big shift from land mobile satcom focusing on narrowband devices such as handheld phones to broadband use cases, blogged Northern Sky Research analyst Alan Crisp Tuesday. Operators will need to look to a wider array of ground terminals to play in that broadband land mobile marketplace, he said. "A business model selling handhelds won’t cut it anymore," and offering flat panel and roof-mounted antennas and "backpackable connectivity must become the norm," he said.

The next few years will see a big shift from land mobile satcom focusing on narrowband devices such as handheld phones to broadband use cases, blogged Northern Sky Research analyst Alan Crisp Tuesday. Operators will need to look to a wider array of ground terminals to play in that broadband land mobile marketplace, he said. "A business model selling handhelds won’t cut it anymore," and offering flat panel and roof-mounted antennas and "backpackable connectivity must become the norm," he said.

The Coalition of American Chassis Manufacturers seeks the imposition of new antidumping and countervailing duties on certain chassis and subassemblies thereof from China, it said in a petition filed with the Commerce Department and the International Trade Commission July 29. Commerce will now decide whether to begin AD/CVD investigations, which could result in the imposition of permanent AD/CV duty orders and the assessment of AD and CV duties on importers.

The Wireless Speaker and Audio Association is rolling out more campaigns in its transition from a technology and certification provider to a “consumer-facing" organization. It expects to reach 100,000 website visitors in Q3, it said Monday. WiSA's goal is to draw 250,000 customers to the website by Black Friday to help members drive holiday marketing programs and spur adoption of the WiSA standard globally, it said. The WiSA site links visitors to the branded sites and shows them where to buy WiSA members’ audio and video products, it said. This year, 44% of visitors have clicked “learn more” or “buy now” to be directed to a member’s landing page, it said.

Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Geoffrey Starks, Public Knowledge and tribal groups slammed the FCC’s 30-day delay of the application window for tribes to apply for 2.5 GHz spectrum, after staff acted Friday (see 2007310027). With COVID-19 a problem in tribal areas, groups had asked for an extra six months, but got until Sept. 2. T-Mobile, the dominant player in the band, told the FCC it was comfortable with a 90-day extension (see 2007300052). The order said 229 applications have been submitted and another 55 applications started by tribal entities as of Friday.

The citizens broadband radio service auction will likely close at between the $2 billion raised in the 24 GHz auction and the $4.5 billion from the 37, 39 and 47 GHz band sale, New Street’s Jonathan Chaplin told investors. Wednesday's prices indicate an average of 4 cents MHz/POP, Chaplin said. “There is still lots of excess demand, suggesting that prices have a ways to run before we have a clear sense of where they will land.” The two previous auctions “saw prices start to stabilize around the 20th round,” he said: “We would expect the same here.” The FCC is now running three rounds a day and round 20 will come Tuesday, he noted. The auction hit $831.8 million Thursday after 13 rounds as bidding heated up. That's a jump from $775.2 million in the previous round.

The iconectiv petition asking the FCC to move to a competitive bidding process for selecting a toll-free numbering administrator (TFNA) (see 2006300003) got no clear industry consensus in docket 20-174 postings Thursday. AT&T said the TFNA's tariff use "is an anomaly" compared with competitive bidding and contracts the FCC uses for other numbering administrators. Going to a competitive process for the local number portability administrator resulted in hugely reduced costs, it said. Also backing the petition, USTelecom said FCC use of competitive bidding for numbering services shows market-based approaches lead to more efficiency. Now isn't the time to change TFNAs since the pandemic has been a major disruption to so many businesses already, and such a switch raises the risk of some kind of interruption that could hurt those relying on toll-free numbers, Unisys said. No one has shown that incumbent TFNA Somos hasn't been doing the job adequately, it said. Iconectiv should be commended for pointing out lack of Somos transparency, but its petition is meritless because it says TFN rates have gone up without reason when it's common knowledge Somos has been doing sizable technology upgrades, responsible organization Vanity International said. "This is nothing but a land grab by a 3rd party venture fund," it said. Iconectiv's complaint about use of a tariff-based approach would hold true no matter who is TFNA, and it would be nice to have multiple providers, but that isn't technologically feasible now, said EZ Texting. Somos is an independent, nonprofit TFNA, and someone else selected through competitive bidding might focus on cost control to the exclusion of protecting the public from scammers using toll-free numbers, Duke Energy said. Establishing a competitive bidding process for selecting a TFNA needs to carry guarantees the new TFNA provides the scam protection services Somos does, it said. Make sure new rules don't significantly interfere with or require changes to the way providers interface with the TFNA and don't require costly changes, said ATIS. Somos, in posting on meetings with aides to Commissioners Geoffrey Starks and Jessica Rosenworcel, said any consideration of changing processes to select a TFNA and changing the tariff structure requires issuing an NPRM. It said the current system "is working well." Its comments said similar.

The Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee unanimously OK'd Thursday a report by the Spectrum Strategy Governance Subcommittee on potential changes to federal oversight of spectrum (see 2004220059). They didn’t reach conclusions (see 2007280047).