Providers of incarcerated people's communications services (IPCS) insisted Tuesday at the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the court shouldn’t even be hearing the case challenging a 2024 FCC order -- the 5th Circuit should. Oral argument in the case came the same day that FCC Chairman Brendan Carr circulated a draft order and Further NPRM that would make sweeping changes to IPCS rules approved last year.
A tug-of-war is continuing in the Senate over language from the FY 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (S-2296) that Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said last month would give the DOD and the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman excessive authority to veto commercial use of the 3.1-3.45 and 7.4-8.4 GHz bands (see 2509100064). The Senate Armed Services Committee approved the spectrum language in Section 1564, but Cruz filed an amendment in September to remove the proposal. He's also negotiating to remove it as part of a manager's amendment (see 2509110073). The House-passed FY26 NDAA (HR-3838) doesn't include similar language.
The number of geostationary orbit (GSO) satellites ordered in 2024 was at a 30-year low, and there's no sign of demand picking up, Analysys Mason satellite analyst Dallas Kasaboski said during the consultancy's webinar Monday. Analyst Lluc Palerm said time is of the essence for satellite or mobile network operators that are interested in direct-to-device (D2D) service but haven't yet entered into cooperative partnerships or agreements. Any such operator "needs to act fast [as] the train is moving."
Industry experts are criticizing the Trump administration’s decision last week to ax the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee, which has long worked on more complicated spectrum issues, including sharing (see 2509300065). A CSMAC member said the decision was unexpected since potential members of the reconstituted group had undergone enhanced security and background checks, even more than was done for previous CSMACs. NTIA decided to dedicate its resources to other issues, a spokesperson said last week about the CSMAC decision (see 2510010034).
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is proving to be “a very consequential chairman,” New Street’s Blair Levin said in a new webcast with former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly, part of a series for the Free State Foundation. Levin also said he doesn’t view President Donald Trump as a true advocate of free markets.
The FCC's October agenda will see commissioners tackling issues ranging from an NPRM on accelerating the ATSC 3.0 transition to loopholes in its covered equipment list, Chairman Brendan Carr wrote Monday. The agenda is particularly space-centric, he noted, saying in a speech Monday that the FCC remains "riddled with backwards-looking regulations" regarding space. Carr's blog also said the commission plans to vote at the Oct. 28 meeting on revisions to incarcerated people’s communications services rules, as expected (see 2510030047).
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez signaled that she's open to relaxing some broadcast-ownership rules, called for a clearly defined public interest standard, and again condemned FCC “censorship and control” efforts in her latest “First Amendment Tour” speech Thursday evening. “While one set of outlets is defunded, stripped of licenses or publicly admonished, others are quietly promoted and cleared of regulatory obstacles,” Gomez told a modest crowd at the University of Mississippi. The Trump administration’s goal “is not to reduce bias or to ensure balance, but to engineer a media environment that echoes the government's worldview.”
The American Library Association is disappointed that the FCC’s order canceling the Biden-era internet hot spots program cuts grants for FY 2025 applicants, said Megan Janicki, the group’s deputy director for strategic initiatives. FCC items eliminating that program, as well as one that provided Wi-Fi connections for students on school buses, passed Tuesday in a pair of 2-1 votes (see 2509300051), with dissents by Commissioner Anna Gomez.
Providers are pushing back on a California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) proceeding that suggests regulating how much wireline and wireless carriers and ISPs can rely on portable generators to guarantee network resiliency. The proceeding, initiated this summer, asks about the right ratio of mobile generators to network facility sites to ensure system resilience, as well as where the mobile generators need to be stored to ensure that they're deployed in a timely fashion during disasters.
Wednesday was the start of the first fiscal year in over 50 years without federal funding for public broadcasting stations, and public broadcasters are starting to cut programming and even making plans to eventually go dark in some parts of the country, said America’s Public Television Stations CEO Kate Riley in interviews. “It feels like every day an announcement comes from another station talking about the services that they're having to cut, the layoffs they're having to make,” Riley said. “Our sense is that this is really just the beginning, and that this is going to be a rolling wave of these types of station cuts and reductions in services over the coming months.”