Consumers' Research Executive Director Will Hild expressed confidence after the U.S. Supreme Court heard the group’s challenge of the USF contribution factor in lengthy oral arguments Wednesday (see 2503260061).
Telecom carriers are under pressure from the FCC to end their diversity, equity and inclusion programs, with Chairman Brendan Carr saying last week that the FCC won’t bless mergers by companies that have DEI policies in place. Carr sent a warning letter Friday to Disney on its DEI programs. Industry officials say companies have no choice to comply, though the FCC moves have created regulatory uncertainty. T-Mobile explained in a letter to the FCC how it’s getting rid of DEI.
A White House executive order issued Thursday ends federal employee union bargaining rights at a host of federal agencies, including the FCC, citing national security concerns. Laws that allow for collective bargaining enable “hostile Federal unions to obstruct agency management. This is dangerous in agencies with national security responsibilities,” said a White House fact sheet on the order.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr announced retirements, including: Carr’s longtime confidential assistant Drema Johnson; Wireline Bureau: Victoria Goldberg (22 years of service), Al Lewis (19), Todd Mitchell (30), Suzanne Yelen, Sue McNeil, Terri Natoli, Ted Burmeister (25); Public Safety Bureau: Nikki McGinnis (20), Rochelle Cohen; Wireless Bureau: Kevin Holmes; Enforcement Bureau: David Strickland (25), Jeremy Marcus (23), Jane Kelly, Kimberly Cook (24), Greg Hermes (25), Luke Kessinger, Brian Wondrack (24); Media Bureau: Bobby Baker (50), Dale Bickel (41), Radhika Karmarkar, Karen Kosar (42), Raelynn Remy (30), Gary Schonman (40); Space Bureau: Kal Krautkramer (34); Office of International Affairs: Francis Gutierrez (25), Sumita Mukhoty (30), Larry Olson (62).
Pointing to possible further limits on C-band capacity in the U.S., Eutelsat is seeking U.S. market access for its Brazil-licensed Eutelsat 65 West A geostationary orbit satellite as an alternate way of serving U.S. customers. In an FCC Space Bureau application posted Thursday, Eutelsat said it wants to make use of the satellite -- launched in 2016 -- to receive uplinks in the 6725-7025 MHz band from U.S. earth stations and to downlink those transmissions in the 4500-4800 MHz band to a single earth station in Pittsburgh. The FCC commissioners in February approved an upper C-band notice of inquiry looking at ways of freeing up spectrum there for new services (see 2502270042).
A bipartisan group of former FCC commissioners have condemned the agency’s news distortion proceeding against CBS in joint comments posted Thursday. “These comments are submitted to emphasize the unprecedented nature of this news distortion proceeding, and to express our strong concern” that the FCC “may be seeking to censor the news media in a manner antithetical to the First Amendment,” said the letter from former Chairmen Alfred Sikes and Tom Wheeler and former Commissioners Gloria Tristani, Rachelle Chong and Ervin Duggan. Sikes and Chong are Republicans, while Chong, Duggan and Tristani are Democrats. The signatories “served under both Republican and Democratic leadership, and from that experienced perspective, express deep concern about the breadth of the content regulation authority asserted by this proceeding.” If the FCC doesn’t act to close the proceeding, it would suggest “that the Commission has been transformed into a tool of White House-driven speech suppression.” In response to a request for comment, the FCC repeated a statement from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr declining to end the proceeding, which it previously issued after a similar request from conservative groups (see 2503210060).
The FCC Enforcement Bureau on Thursday asked voice service providers and USTelecom’s Industry Traceback Group to file information by May 1 on “private-led efforts to trace back the origin of suspected unlawful robocalls necessary for the Commission’s annual report.” The reporting period for the request is all of 2024. “Unlawful prerecorded or artificial voice message calls -- robocalls -- plague the American public,” the bureau said in a notice in docket 20-195. “Spoofed caller ID makes it more difficult to identify the source of the call.”
CTIA filed a petition Thursday at the FCC asking the commission to launch a rulemaking aimed at updating its rules implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has promised to focus on streamlining regulation and cutting red tape but has yet to outline a specific agenda (see 2503030040). Carr led the FCC work on cutting wireless infrastructure red tape during the first Trump administration.
Comments are due April 10, replies April 17, on transfers related to the proposed purchase of Kansas telecommunication services provider IdeaTek Telecom by private equity funds Oak Hill Capital Management and Pamlico Capital Management, the FCC Wireline Bureau said Thursday (docket 25-129).
There were no surprises during U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments Wednesday on the Consumers’ Research challenge to the constitutionality of the USF contribution factor, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said Thursday following the commission's open meeting. Most observers saw SCOTUS as unlikely to issue a ruling that would imperil the USF program (see 2503260061). “I got a high-level briefing from some of our team that attended it,” Carr said. “The read that I got is it went really well for the U.S. government’s position.” He added, “You never know when you’re reading tea leaves from an oral argument,” but “the net consensus was that it was good day” for the USF.