Motorola Solutions, Inc. (MSI) is locked in a fight at the FCC with three Chinese equipment companies -- Hytera Communications, Hikvision USA and Dahua Technology USA -- on whether gear from suppliers on the FCC’s “covered list” of companies deemed to pose a security risk should be barred from being authorized for use in the U.S. MSI executives spoke with aides to Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and Commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington.
The Health and Human Services Department asked the FCC to clarify whether certain automated, prerecorded calls and text messages are allowed under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. "We anticipate that no more than six to eight individual messages will be sent to any individual enrollee through some combination of text messages and automated, pre-recorded calls," said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, in a letter posted Friday in docket 02-278. The calls and texts would end "approximately 18 months after the end of the public health emergency."
A looser content moderation approach at Twitter under Elon Musk's ownership risks turning it into a fringe, extremist platform like 4chan, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., told us Thursday. “I’m concerned with what he’s rumored or said to believe” in terms of moderation, said Nadler: “That means you’re going to have all this disinformation on Twitter that wouldn’t have been previously allowed. That would concern me.” The Judiciary Committee will have to “wait and see” whether action is necessary, he said.
Fewer Americans are moving, creating broadband woes for big cable, said three cable providers in their quarterly earnings reports. Charter Communications and Alitice cited fewer people moving as a big challenge for adding subscribers. Comcast also pointed last week to fewer people moving as an issue with its slowing broadband growth (see 2204280004).
Mexico needs to invest heavily in infrastructure and education and address local regulatory barriers and high spectrum costs to realize the potential of 5G, said telecom executives, regulators and academics in an AT&T Mexico-hosted webinar Friday. Mexico has the spectrum needed to offer 5G, but it will be “as if this spectrum didn’t exist” without the proper supporting infrastructure, said Instituto Federal De Telecommunicaciones (IFT) Commissioner Javier Juarez Mojica, via an interpreter. The IFT is Mexico’s federal communications regulatory agency.
Public Knowledge and other groups urged FCC action on a March petition asking the regulator to classify interconnected VoIP as a Communications Act Title II service (see 2203020052), in a webinar Friday. With revised net neutrality rules on hold at a 2-2 FCC, Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld said the FCC faces a dilemma, and the time to provide clarity is now.
Top U.S.-based Huawei executives said Friday that they're hopeful the Biden administration will be open to revisiting sanctions against the company, in a virtual briefing for reporters.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Federal judges pushed attorneys into overtime at an 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals oral argument Thursday on tech companies’ challenge to Florida’s social media law. Asking the most questions by far, Judge Kevin Newsom dug into Florida’s arguments for why the state may regulate social networks. However, Judge Ed Carnes seemed to dismiss looking at Florida’s motivations through lawmaker and governor statements.
Comcast is facing growing broadband competition, particularly from fixed wireless and fiber providers, though its churn is at record lows, Comcast Cable CEO David Watson said Thursday, announcing Q1 results. He said its response includes various broadband tiers of service and its increasing convergence of its broadband and mobile services packaging and marketing. The company will do field trials of its first 5G radios as a means for offloading traffic in high-load areas in Q2, he said. Comcast stock closed at $41.70, down 6.2%, in response to what analysts said were soft results.
E-rate groups and industry broadly rejected the FCC’s proposal to establish a centralized online bidding portal for the E-rate program, as expected (see 2112070053). Groups asked the agency to abandon the NPRM, saying the record doesn’t reflect a need for such a change to E-rate, in comments posted Thursday in docket 21-455.