The House Rules Committee appears likely to clear at least some of 17 amendments to the Save the Internet Act net neutrality bill for floor consideration this week, said communications sector lobbyists and officials in interviews. A final vote on HR-1644 is expected Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning.

Though “it appears” President Donald Trump’s threat to close the southern border “is (most likely) off the table for the time being” (see 1904040018), a bottleneck in the flow of import goods to the U.S. through Mexican ports of entry is likely to worsen, blogged customs expert Ted Murphy with Baker & McKenzie Friday. The Department of Homeland Security is still reassigning Customs and Border Protection agents “to help deal with the increase in the number of migrants seeking to enter the United States,” said Murphy. Roughly 750 CBP agents have been deployed so far, but the number could climb as high as 2,000, he said. With “fewer agents to handle cargo clearance, it is leading to increasing delays at many of the land border crossings," he said. "We expect this trend to continue, and likely to get worse, in the short term.” Trump, meeting with reporters at the White House Friday, denied changing his mind on the border closure. "I may shut it down at some point, but I’d rather do tariffs" on automobiles entering the U.S. from Mexico, he said. "Mexico, I have to say, has been very, very good" in reducing the flow of migrants into the U.S. "over the last four days, since I talked about shutting down the border," said Trump. "If they continue that, everything will be fine. If they don’t, we’re going to tariff their cars at 25 percent coming into the United States. ... That means we make money as opposed to lose money. We probably bring those car companies back into the United States."

LG Electronics consultant Madeleine Noland, newly named to succeed Mark Richer as ATSC president, effective May 15 (see 1904040037), will relinquish her post as chair of ATSC’s Technology Group 3, the committee responsible for framing ATSC 3.0, confirmed spokesperson Dave Arland. “Identifying a replacement is in process,” emailed Arland Thursday.

The California Supreme Court said cities may consider aesthetics of telecom equipment when reviewing permit applications. Thursday's opinion affirmed two lower courts’ decisions supporting a San Francisco ordinance providing the city that discretion. Local governments cheered rejection of the 2016 appeal by T-Mobile West, ExteNet and Crown Castle from the California 1st District Court of Appeal (see 1705170046).

A Texas Republican and a Michigan Democrat in the Senate are co-sponsoring a bill that would require CBP to hire at least 600 additional officers a year until its staffing needs are met. Sen. Gary Peters, the ranking member of the committee that oversees CBP, and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, introduced Securing America's Ports of Entry Act of 2019 on April 3.

USTelecom proposed creating a "Broadband Serviceable Location Fabric" (BSLF) as a "uniform foundation for dramatically more accurate FCC Form 477 reporting" to pinpoint unserved areas, said a filing in docket 11-10 on the mapping initiative it announced with partners Thursday (see 1903210041). "Multiple data sources, scoring routines, and managed visual review are required," including "parcel boundaries, parcel attributes (e.g., land use, assessed value, number of units, etc.)." With CostQuest, USTelecom plans a pilot in Virginia and Missouri lasting four to six months using "open source" and commercial data. Because some data is scarce or conflicting, CostQuest "will use a managed crowdsourcing visual review process to, for example, inspect satellite imagery to align building data with visible structures or to validate an incomplete attribute record," said USTelecom, projecting up to 75,000 such reviews per state. Carriers will provide confidential data on addresses they serve or have served with fixed service, and will be able to compare their lists with the final BSLF, helping them with Form 477 filings, it said. If the FCC agrees results show the methodology is applicable, it could take one to two more years to finish a nationwide fabric costing $10 million to develop and $2.5 million annually to update, the association said. NCTA highlighted its proposal "that can be implemented nationwide very quickly, without any need for a pilot, and would result in the granular data needed to more accurately identify areas ... not served by" fixed broadband. Providers would submit "shapefiles" -- electronic maps showing actual service contours -- that the FCC would compile into a national map, augmented by crowdsourcing.

USTelecom proposed creating a "Broadband Serviceable Location Fabric" (BSLF) as a "uniform foundation for dramatically more accurate FCC Form 477 reporting" to pinpoint unserved areas, said a filing in docket 11-10 on the mapping initiative it announced with partners Thursday (see 1903210041). "Multiple data sources, scoring routines, and managed visual review are required," including "parcel boundaries, parcel attributes (e.g., land use, assessed value, number of units, etc.)." With CostQuest, USTelecom plans a pilot in Virginia and Missouri lasting four to six months using "open source" and commercial data. Because some data is scarce or conflicting, CostQuest "will use a managed crowdsourcing visual review process to, for example, inspect satellite imagery to align building data with visible structures or to validate an incomplete attribute record," said USTelecom, projecting up to 75,000 such reviews per state. Carriers will provide confidential data on addresses they serve or have served with fixed service, and will be able to compare their lists with the final BSLF, helping them with Form 477 filings, it said. If the FCC agrees results show the methodology is applicable, it could take one to two more years to finish a nationwide fabric costing $10 million to develop and $2.5 million annually to update, the association said. NCTA highlighted its proposal "that can be implemented nationwide very quickly, without any need for a pilot, and would result in the granular data needed to more accurately identify areas ... not served by" fixed broadband. Providers would submit "shapefiles" -- electronic maps showing actual service contours -- that the FCC would compile into a national map, augmented by crowdsourcing.

T-Mobile, eager to land regulatory approval of its Sprint buy, said Thursday it’s launching a pilot to help close the digital divide: a Home Internet program available to up to 50,000 existing customers, by invitation and by year-end. It expects speeds of “around” 50 Mbps with fixed unlimited wireless service over LTE, with no data caps. The $50 monthly service will be launched in rural and underserved areas, T-Mobile said. “LTE network and spectrum capacity constraints” limit the program's size, the carrier said: “But if T-Mobile’s pending merger with Sprint is approved, with the added scale and capacity of the New T-Mobile, the Un-carrier plans to cover more than half of U.S. households with 5G broadband service -- in excess of 100 Mbps -- by 2024.” New Street’s Jonathan Chaplin told investors Thursday if the Sprint buy doesn’t go through, T-Mobile may have to increase prices. “If the Sprint acquisition is approved, we would expect them to deploy Sprint’s spectrum and use the increased capacity to take share,” Chaplin wrote. “If the acquisition is blocked, they will have a choice between increasing capacity by some other means or increasing price to slow subscriber and usage growth. Increasing capacity would be their first choice, but this may not be possible, at least not initially, making higher prices necessary.”

T-Mobile, eager to land regulatory approval of its Sprint buy, said Thursday it’s launching a pilot to help close the digital divide: a Home Internet program available to up to 50,000 existing customers, by invitation and by year-end. It expects speeds of “around” 50 Mbps with fixed unlimited wireless service over LTE, with no data caps. The $50 monthly service will be launched in rural and underserved areas, T-Mobile said. “LTE network and spectrum capacity constraints” limit the program's size, the carrier said: “But if T-Mobile’s pending merger with Sprint is approved, with the added scale and capacity of the New T-Mobile, the Un-carrier plans to cover more than half of U.S. households with 5G broadband service -- in excess of 100 Mbps -- by 2024.” New Street’s Jonathan Chaplin told investors Thursday if the Sprint buy doesn’t go through, T-Mobile may have to increase prices. “If the Sprint acquisition is approved, we would expect them to deploy Sprint’s spectrum and use the increased capacity to take share,” Chaplin wrote. “If the acquisition is blocked, they will have a choice between increasing capacity by some other means or increasing price to slow subscriber and usage growth. Increasing capacity would be their first choice, but this may not be possible, at least not initially, making higher prices necessary.”

T-Mobile, eager to land regulatory approval of its Sprint buy, said Thursday it’s launching a pilot to help close the digital divide: a Home Internet program available to up to 50,000 existing customers, by invitation and by year-end. It expects speeds of “around” 50 Mbps with fixed unlimited wireless service over LTE, with no data caps. The $50 monthly service will be launched in rural and underserved areas, T-Mobile said. “LTE network and spectrum capacity constraints” limit the program's size, the carrier said: “But if T-Mobile’s pending merger with Sprint is approved, with the added scale and capacity of the New T-Mobile, the Un-carrier plans to cover more than half of U.S. households with 5G broadband service -- in excess of 100 Mbps -- by 2024.” New Street’s Jonathan Chaplin told investors Thursday if the Sprint buy doesn’t go through, T-Mobile may have to increase prices. “If the Sprint acquisition is approved, we would expect them to deploy Sprint’s spectrum and use the increased capacity to take share,” Chaplin wrote. “If the acquisition is blocked, they will have a choice between increasing capacity by some other means or increasing price to slow subscriber and usage growth. Increasing capacity would be their first choice, but this may not be possible, at least not initially, making higher prices necessary.”