The Alaska Remote Carrier Coalition told the FCC that offering flexibility and allowing companies to take individualized approaches are critical to wireless service in the state, the subject of a Further NPRM on the Alaska Connect Fund that FCC commissioners approved in November (see 2411050002). Key factors that distinguish Alaska from the Lower 48 states and affect wireless deployment "include the middle mile economic challenges, logistical challenges not faced anywhere else in the country, and the vast geographies that must be traversed to touch where people live, work and play,” the coalition said in a filing posted Thursday in docket 23-328.
The FCC said Thursday that Andrew, Federated Wireless, Google and Sony have been approved for additional five-year terms as spectrum access system administrators in the citizens broadband radio service band. Andrew, the newest name, is an entity owned by Amphenol, which recently purchased assets from CommScope, including its CBRS operations (see 2502040037). Federated, Google and Sony were the first to be approved as administrators, and their initial five-year terms expired in January (see 2501100025).
The Senate voted 52-45 along party lines Thursday to invoke cloture on commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick, setting up his final confirmation vote for next week. The Senate Commerce Committee advanced Lutnick last week amid opposition from panel Democrats over the nominee’s stance on implementing NTIA’s $42.5 billion BEAD program and other matters (see 2502050052). President Donald Trump formally sent the Senate on Wednesday night his nomination of Armed Services Committee Republican staffer Olivia Trusty to the FCC seat former Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel vacated Jan. 20 (see 2501160077).
The Senate Commerce Committee said Wednesday night it plans a Feb. 19 hearing on spectrum legislative issues. Lobbyists expect panel Republicans will focus on party leaders’ proposals to move spectrum legislation as part of an upcoming budget reconciliation package (see 2501070069). House Communications Subcommittee Democrats said during a January hearing that they strongly object to using reconciliation as a spectrum vehicle because it would allocate future license sales revenue to fund tax cuts instead of telecom priorities (see 2501230064). “As our adversaries wage a war to control global communication networks, America’s spectrum leadership has become both an economic and national security imperative,” said Senate Commerce Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas. “This hearing will expose how the ongoing lapse in [the FCC's] auction authority and the lack of a clear commercial spectrum strategy have cost America jobs and weakened our global standing.” Cruz indicated that he's tiring of DOD backers’ objections to repurposing portions of military-controlled bands, which was a major factor in stalled legislative talks during the last Congress. “We can no longer allow Pentagon bureaucratic inertia to hold back innovation and economic growth,” he said: “Restoring American leadership in spectrum policy means unlocking billions for job creation, domestic investment, and the federal resources needed to pay for a secure border and stronger military.” The hearing will begin at 10:15 a.m. ET in 253 Russell.
Consumers’ Research, the conservative group that is a self-described opponent of “woke” culture, told the U.S. Supreme Court that the way the FCC assesses payments for the USF is “a historic anomaly at odds with 600 years of Anglo-American practice.” SCOTUS will hear FCC v. Consumers' Research March 26, challenging the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ 9-7 en banc decision invalidating part of the USF program (see 2501090045), in part because the FCC delegated authority for overseeing the program to the Universal Service Administrative Co.
Acting U.S. Solicitor General Sarah Harris told Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Dick Durbin, D-Ill., on Wednesday that DOJ plans to stop defending tenure protections that bar a president from firing a commissioner from an independent agency at will, including FTC commissioners. Harris said she plans to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn that precedent, established in its 1935 Humphrey’s Executor v. U.S. ruling, a shift that would also affect the FCC. DOJ “has determined that certain for-cause removal provisions that apply to members of multi-member regulatory commissions are unconstitutional,” Harris said in a letter to Durbin. The high court has held that Humphrey’s Executor “applies only to administrative bodies that do not exercise ‘substantial executive power’” and has explained it “misapprehended the powers of the ‘New Deal-era FTC’ and misclassified those powers as primarily legislative and judicial.” She said the precedent “thus does not fit the principal officers who head” the FTC and two other agencies: the National Labor Relations Board and Consumer Product Safety Commission. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other conservative groups asked SCOTUS in July to overturn Humphrey’s Executor in Consumers' Research et al. v. Consumer Product Safety Commission (see 2407290027).
Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts said Thursday he led two other Senate Commerce Committee Democrats -- Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico and Gary Peters of Michigan -- in raising concerns with FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and Republican Commissioner Nathan Simington about recent commission actions they see as “weaponizing its authority over broadcasters and public media for political purposes.”
The U.K.’s Office of Communications on Thursday announced a consultation that examines opening the 6 GHz band for unlicensed use, while considering licensed use of part of the spectrum. The Ofcom proposal would provide for low-power indoor (LPI) use across the entire band on a license-exempt basis.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s announcement that the FCC will begin investigating regulatees with diversity, equality and inclusion programs appears to be among the first actions a federal agency has taken to enforce President Donald Trump’s DEI executive order, though the FCC’s authority in this area is unclear, attorneys and academics told us. In his letter Tuesday to Comcast, Carr said the agency plans “broader efforts to root out invidious forms of DEI discrimination across all of the sectors the FCC regulates.”
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s plan to investigate agency regulatees over diversity, equity and inclusion programs causes Commissioner Geoffrey Starks “grave concern,” he said in an emailed statement Wednesday. “From what I know, this enforcement action is out of our lane and out of our reach,” Starks said. “I have asked for a briefing to understand the Enforcement Bureau’s theory of the case, the authority relied upon, and any prior precedent.” In a letter Tuesday to Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, Carr said the FCC “will be taking fresh action to ensure that every entity the FCC regulates complies with the civil rights protections enshrined in the Communications Act and the agency’s [equal employment opportunity] rules, including by shutting down any programs that promote invidious forms of DEI discrimination.” Starks pointed out that as a commissioner, Carr excoriated the prior FCC’s digital discrimination proceeding as “a framework that gives the FCC a nearly limitless power to veto private sector decisions.” At the time, Carr said the FCC’s restrictions on digital discrimination were “motivated by an ideology of government control that is not compatible with the fundamental precepts of free market capitalism.” In a post Wednesday on X, he said, “I expect that every entity the FCC regulates will be complying with our civil rights laws.”