Industry groups and ISPs participating in the FCC’s affordable connectivity program sought more time to comply with the program’s non-usage tracking rule. Comment posted Friday in docket 21-450 backed a USTelecom petition for an additional 60 days after the April 15 deadline (see 2203230041).
Nearly half of U.S. broadband homes subscribe to four or more over-the-top video services, with streaming now the primary way consumers view TV content, said Parks Associates analyst Paul Erickson on a Thursday Future of Video webcast. But service stacking is starting to slow, as viewing bumps up against an “inevitable point of subscription overload from having a finite amount of time and budget to spend on watching video,” Erickson said.
The Oregon Public Utility Commission faces “a really tight deadline” to update state USF rules, said the Nicola Peterson, PUC senior telecom analyst, at a virtual workshop Thursday. There and in written comments earlier this week, telecom industry groups gave mixed reviews of the PUC’s plan to adopt a CostQuest model to determine the size of the Oregon USF (OUSF) starting Jan. 1.
The Treasury Department is reviewing state and territory plans for the Capital Projects Fund on a “rolling basis,” said the fund's director, Joseph Wender, during a Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition webinar Thursday (see 2105100060). “We’re hoping to make awards in the pretty near future,” Wender said, noting tribal applications are due by June 1 and all grant and program plans by Sept. 24.
A draft notice of inquiry on receiver performance notes that looking at receivers now is important, as spectrum becomes increasingly congested. A draft Further NPRM on wireless emergency alerts proposes a mechanism for providers to file reports on the effectiveness of the alerts. The FCC released both Thursday, three weeks before the commission’s April 21 meeting (see 2203300072).
With ATSC 3.0-compliant TV sets “beginning to make advances in the consumer marketplace,” the day should come “in the near future” when rising household penetration of 3.0 TVs “will enable us to be able to start phasing out 1.0,” Sinclair President-Technology Del Parks told the TV Tech Summit Thursday. “The question for us is, how soon can we turn off 1.0 and take advantage of all of the capabilities of ATSC 3.0?”
Industry experts expect the FCC to act, probably this summer, on an enhanced competition incentive program (ECIP) now that reply comments are in docket 19-38. Several predicted the agency may wait for a third Democrat to be confirmed to the commission. Commissioners approved a Further NPRM 4-0 in November (see 2111180071) following up on a provision in the Mobile Now Act, which became law in 2018.
House Communications Subcommittee members largely but not completely avoided using a Thursday FCC oversight hearing to make partisan points, amid the commission’s focus on bipartisan issues during the ongoing 2-2 split, as expected (see 2203300001). Lawmakers instead focused on questions about the FCC’s work to produce improved broadband connectivity data maps, its handling of the affordable connectivity program and Emergency Connectivity Fund programs, and how commissioners believe Congress should structure a renewal of the commission’s spectrum auction authority.
California's privacy agency should try to counter inequity and manipulation, said academics at California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) informational sessions this week (see 2203290062). The CPPA board held the second day Wednesday of a virtual hearing to gather background information for an upcoming rulemaking to implement the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), which is the sequel to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Across the country, the Maryland House Economic Affairs Committee weighed a bill Wednesday to set up a privacy study group to make recommendations for comprehensive legislation next year.
Russia's Ukraine invasion is creating potential business opportunities, and also possible bottlenecks, for the commercial space industry, per a Washington Space Business Roundtable panel talk Wednesday. Quilty Analytics founder Chris Quilty said a recent dip in investor funding for commercial space could just be a blip, depending on the performance of the market overall and of a wave of space companies recently going public.