Communications Daily is tracking the lawsuits below involving appeals of FCC actions.
Wireless carriers must add spectrum and deepen their fiber commitment, New Street’s Jonathan Chaplin said Wednesday. “Carriers should buy every piece of spectrum they can get their hands on … because we’re going to run out at some point relatively soon,” he told a Broadband Breakfast webinar. “There’s a scramble for both categories of assets, and they’re both imperative.”
President Donald Trump’s latest norm-busting executive order (see 2502180069) directing the FCC, among other "so-called independent" agencies and executive branch bodies, to submit regulatory actions to the White House before they're published in the Federal Register could complicate Brendan Carr’s push to be an active chairman at the FCC, industry experts said Wednesday.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, seemed during and after a Wednesday panel hearing to be eyeing an escalation of his long-simmering battle with DOD and its most vociferous congressional supporters, who oppose legislation mandating reallocation of spectrum bands for 5G use, which they say could impact military incumbents. Cruz touted his 2024 Spectrum Pipeline Act during the hearing as the preferred language for an airwaves title in a budget reconciliation package, as expected (see 2502180058). Some witnesses strongly praised Cruz's proposal. Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., and many panel Democrats criticized it.
Supply chain annual reports from advanced communications providers are due by March 31, the FCC Office of Economics and Analytics said in a public notice Tuesday. The law and FCC rules require providers to report on whether they have rented, purchased, leased or obtained equipment or services from the agency’s list of unsecure companies. The filing results from prior supply chain annual reports were released as a public list last year (see 2411270027). The reporting portal and filing instructions are on the FCC’s website.
T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon make up the largest reach in the wireless market across the country, a report from Ookla found Tuesday. "Of course, much of their strategies have been dictated by their spectrum holdings -- particularly how much mid-band spectrum they were able to acquire," the report said. T-Mobile has the largest percentage of 5G users in urban and rural markets, it said, noting that the company has been the "most vocal" about its rural market expansion efforts. Ookla said more efforts are underway to expand 5G coverage in rural markets through the FCC's 5G Fund for Rural America.
UScellular filed a response to a December data request from the Wireless Bureau (see 2412270031) probing T-Mobile’s proposed purchase of much of UScellular’s wireless business, including some spectrum. Parts of the response were redacted. “UScellular’s spectrum and network cost challenges have limited UScellular’s relative competitive presence in its footprint,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 24-286. “These limitations have resulted in UScellular lagging behind its competitors and being increasingly unable to catch up to the network quality they offer.” The carrier noted that it has “substantially less spectrum depth than its competitors within its footprint,” with about 70 MHz “of aggregable spectrum below 4 GHz -- half or less than” than its biggest rivals. The company’s 600, 700 and 850 MHz licenses “cannot be aggregated and used as efficiently as possible due to mobile device limitations,” the filing said. While its devices “have the hardware to support the 600 MHz, 700 MHz, and 850 MHz bands individually, they generally lack the hardware (such as more antennas) to support spectrum aggregation.” The company said it also holds “substantial non-contiguous blocks of spectrum, particularly in the 700 MHz, AWS, and PCS bands.”
Aventiv Technologies CEO Dave Abel and other executives from the company and subsidiary Securus met with aides to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and Commissioner Nathan Simington on the FCC’s 2024 incarcerated people’s communication services (IPCS) order. Securus opposes part of the order, which it’s challenging in federal court (see 2502140049). The executives discussed “pending petitions for reconsideration, various appeals of the 2024 IPCS Order and related ongoing proceedings,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 12-375. “We also discussed the effect of the … Order on the state of the IPCS marketplace and our expectations.”
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr mocked singer Sheryl Crow, described former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg as an expert in incompetence, and called Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., “very shifty” in a series of posts on X during the weekend, apparently defending SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Crow posted a video on Instagram that showed her Tesla being hauled away, with a caption saying she donated the money to NPR, "which is under threat by President Musk," in protest of recent efforts to defund the broadcaster. Carr reposted the video Saturday and called it an argument for why taxpayers shouldn’t subsidize NPR stations. “Bravo,” said Carr, who has opened an investigation into PBS and NPR underwriting. “Wouldn’t take too many celebrities following Sheryl Crow’s lead and selling their cars to keep NPR going without taxpayer dollars,” he added in a second post.
An emergency petition Sunday by the executive branch seeking U.S. Supreme Court intervention to block courts from interfering with the removal of the head of the Office of Special Counsel could have implications for the president’s removal power over FCC commissioners, said Free State Foundation President Randolph May in a blog post Tuesday. Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris asked SCOTUS to vacate a temporary restraining order barring the removal of Office of Special Counsel leader Hampton Dellinger as “an unprecedented assault on the separation of powers.” Blocking the president from removing presidential appointees under his authority “inflicts the gravest of injuries on the Executive Branch and the separation of powers,” said the emergency petition. In it, Harris restated DOJ's argument (see 2502140047) that tenure protections for members of multimember commissions are unconstitutional. “If this view ultimately prevails in the Supreme Court, a president's authority to remove an FCC commissioner without providing any reason would be assured,” May said. The court could instead rule that Dellinger could be ousted based on language in the statute that allows the head of the Office of Special Counsel to be removed for inefficiency, malfeasance or neglect of duty, he added. Other agencies targeted in a recent letter to Congress from the Solicitor General -- such as the FTC and the National Labor Relations Board -- are based on statutes with similar language, but that language isn’t present in the Communications Act. That could be “determinative” if a president ever tries to remove an FCC commissioner, May said. He included a disclaimer at the end of his post clarifying that he isn't advocating for White House removal of FCC commissioners.