House Select Committee on China Chairman Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., and Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., urged the Treasury Department this week to expand the jurisdiction of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. to include land purchases near Coast Guard facilities, Energy Department national laboratories, maritime ports and critical energy and telecommunications infrastructure.

Comments are due Oct. 17, replies Nov. 1, on whether to require a winning bidder in the 5G Fund Phase I auction to show during the long-form application process that it has obtained the consent of the relevant tribal government for any necessary access to deploy network facilities using funds from the program, said a notice for Tuesday’s Federal Register. FCC commissioners approved 4-1 a Further NPRM on tribal issues along with an order on the fund in August (see 2408290041). Commissioner Brendan Carr dissented. “In seeking comment on this issue, the Commission asks commenters to provide input on how it can best assess an applicant’s eligibility to be authorized to receive 5G Fund support for the purpose of deploying network facilities that would enable 5G mobile broadband service located on Tribal lands, while incorporating Tribal government consent into the Commission’s approval process,” the notice says.

With FY 2024 regulatory fees due before Sept. 27 (see 2409100045), the FCC issued a series of regulatory fee fact sheets Monday. The agency said cable TV systems operating on Oct. 1, 2023, must pay a $1.27 per-subscriber regulatory fee for all the community units in which they operate. The number of basic cable subscribers served on Dec. 31, 2023, should be used to calculate the fee payment. IPTV subscribers and direct broadcast satellites should be included in the Cable Television Systems fee category and assessed a regulatory fee at the same rate as cable television fees. The number of IPTV and DBS subscribers served on Dec. 31, 2023, should be used as the basis for calculating the fee payment. In addition, the agency said Commercial Mobile Radio Service providers owe regulatory fees for each license held as of Oct, 1, 2023, even if the license later expired. CMRS fees will be assessed on the number of telephone numbers or subscriber counts, including non-geographic telephone numbers. The Office of International Affairs said regulatory fees for submarine cable systems will be paid, per cable landing license, for all submarine cable systems operating as of Dec. 31, 2023. Moreover, it noted that capacity for calculating fees should be based on “lit” capacity. It said any regulated party whose total FY 2024 annual regulatory fee liability, including all categories of regulatory fees for which payment is due, is $1,000 or less, is exempt from payment of FY 2024 regulatory fees. Also exempt are noncommercial educational (NCE) FM station licensees and full-service NCE television broadcast station licensees, provided that these stations operate solely on an NCE basis.

SpaceX landing United Airlines as an in-flight connectivity customer could signal its domination of that sector, analysts and consultants say. In its announcement Friday, United said it will begin testing the Starlink service early in 2025, with the first passenger flights getting service later that year. United said passengers would receive Starlink connectivity for free.

Working with Starlink last week, T-Mobile successfully transmitted and received a wireless emergency alert via satellite for the first time in the U.S., the carrier said Wednesday. “The breakthrough opens up the 500,000 square miles of lightly populated, mountainous and/or uninhabitable land across the country to critical, life-saving emergency alerts,” T-Mobile said: The test alert “was sent 217 miles into space where it was received by one of the more than 175 Starlink direct-to-smartphone satellites currently in low-earth orbit that effectively function as cell towers in space.” The process took only seconds to complete, the carrier said.

The EU Court of Justice on Sept. 5 said that a notary doesn't violate sanctions on Russia by authenticating the sale of a property owned by a non-sanctioned Russian company. The court said that authentication services don't amount to the provision of "legal advisory services," which are barred under EU sanctions if provided to "legal persons established in Russia."

The EU Court of Justice on Sept. 5 said that a notary doesn't violate sanctions on Russia by authenticating the sale of a property owned by a non-sanctioned Russian company. The court said that authentication services don't amount to the provision of "legal advisory services," which are barred under EU sanctions if provided to "legal persons established in Russia."

In a dissent attached to a combined $3.6 million forfeiture against Sinclair Broadcast and others over kidvid violations, FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington has vowed he will dissent from monetary forfeitures until the agency “formally determines the bounds of its enforcement authority.” Simington's move comes in the wake of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision SEC v. Jarkesy. The order was approved 3-2, with Commissioner Brendan Carr also dissenting. The forfeiture order was adopted Aug.14, but not released until Thursday. The FCC didn't immediately comment on the delay. “I call on the Commission to open a Notice of Inquiry to determine the new constitutional contours of Commission enforcement authority,” Simington wrote. “The statutory structure governing the FCC’s forfeiture power is quite different from that of the SEC,” the FCC said in a footnote in the order, arguing that the agency’s enforcement actions don’t violate the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial as SCOTUS ruled the SEC’s do.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation opposed NextNav’s proposal that the FCC reconfigure the 902-928 MHz band “to enable a high-quality, terrestrial complement” to GPS for positioning, navigation and timing services (see 2404160043). Comments were due Thursday in docket 24-240. “NextNav’s own proposal makes it clear that this is essentially a land grab,” the foundation said: “NextNav seeks to increase the amount of band they have sole use of, the size of the physical region those licenses operate in, the amount of power they can use, and amount interference they can cause.”

CTIA, Incompas, NCTA, the Wireless Infrastructure Association and six other communications industry groups urged House leaders Thursday that they should “prioritize consideration” of the House Commerce Committee-cleared American Broadband Deployment Act (HR-3557) “in the final months of this Congress.” House Commerce last year advanced HR-3557, a package of GOP-led connectivity permitting revamp measures, without Democratic support (see 2305240069). Some local government advocates have since also vocally opposed HR-3557 (see 2311060069). Congress’ bid to achieve the “goal of universal connectivity” via the $65 billion it allocated in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act “will ultimately be limited unless certain barriers are removed today,” the industry groups said in a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. The measure “would go a long way to address these barriers” by mandating “clear and streamlined” rules that will prevent permitting bottlenecks. The groups cited language in HR-3557 that “will codify several deployment streamlining orders and interpretations that the FCC has adopted over the past ten years," including the commission’s 2018 order that removed local barriers to small-cell deployment (see 1803220027). The bill also “takes proactive steps to improve siting on federal lands and reduce unnecessary red tape for applications to deploy or improve communications networks,” the industry groups told Johnson and Jeffries.