Three Louisiana public safety answering points are down and six more are rerouting calls, said Tuesday’s disaster information reporting system on communications systems affected by Tropical Storm Ida. The FCC also extended deadlines, among other actions. New Orleans and nearby Louisiana parishes have faced 911 outages, and landlines have been out of service in some areas (see 2108300054).
Nearly seven in 10 households getting the FCC emergency broadband benefit chose to receive mobile broadband services rather than fixed broadband. Experts said in recent interviews that the trend is likely because most enrolled households participate in Lifeline.
The FTC should have privacy enforcement authority over common carriers, Commissioner Noah Phillips said Monday. Whether online platforms should be considered common carriers for purposes of speech and First Amendment issues is a “very active debate” before Congress and the courts, he told the Hudson Institute.
New Orleans and nearby Louisiana parishes faced 911 outages Monday after Hurricane Ida hit, local authorities reported. Ida caused “significant impacts” to AT&T's Louisiana network due to “massive power outages and storm damage,” the carrier said Monday. The FCC disaster information reporting system (DIRS) was activated Sunday for affected counties in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. Staffers were deployed “to assess the post-landfall impact to communications networks and to assist in efforts to restore service as quickly as possible,” acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said Saturday before landfall: “We know the reality of the danger from this kind of hurricane all too well.”
California’s public advocate wants a delay in updating state LifeLine wireless minimum service standards until the California Public Utilities Commission considers the impact of the federal Lifeline MSS increasing Dec. 1 to 18 GB. By failing to acknowledge the federal MSS increase, the CPUC's Aug. 6 proposed decision could mean customers lose federal support, warned the agency's independent Public Advocates Office (PAO) in comments posted Friday. California’s proposal also includes automating the renewal eligibility process and updating specific service amounts. AT&T raised concerns about how much the state plans to replace federal support for wireline services that don’t meet federal broadband minimum standards.
The FCC unanimously approved an order and NPRM on FY2021 regulatory fees released Thursday, shelving a proposed increase to broadcaster fees (see 2108260050), adopting subcategories of non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) satellite regulatory fees based on system complexity, and seeking comment in docket 21-190 on getting regulatory fees from tech companies and unlicensed device manufacturers in the future. A proceeding on extending the payer base of fees is likely to be a struggle, said Pillsbury broadcast attorney Scott Flick, who represented state broadcast associations in the reg fee proceeding. “Almost any result would be better than the current approach,” he said.
More than 5 million households have enrolled to date in the FCC emergency broadband benefit program, the agency said Friday. Experts welcomed the more granular data about enrollment figures that accompanied the announcement and said the program may last 18 months.
The FCC's next steps on open radio access networks are unclear, three months after the agency wrapped up a comment cycle on a notice of inquiry, industry experts told us. The big question they have is what the FCC could propose in an NPRM that would help speed the deployment of ORAN. Experts said acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and other commissioners see open networks as offering an alternative to an equipment market with a limited number of players, but a decision may have to wait for a permanent chair and full contingent of commissioners.
Shorter attention spans, competition for entertainment time share and continually rising rights fees are ongoing challenges as the TV sports world straddles traditional pay-TV and over-the-top video models, said panelists on a Thursday FierceVideo webcast on TV monetization in the sports industry.
The three major national wireless carriers reported problems during the recent nationwide wireless emergency alert test, but they said the system mostly worked as expected. The FCC posted reports from Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T Thursday, in docket 15-94. Some glitches were observed during the test earlier this month (see 2108110067). In the first national test in 2018, many alerts didn’t go through (see 1812210056).