Microsoft’s proposed Activision Blizzard buy involves a “vertical merger” of the sort that the U.S. antitrust agencies “have rarely sought to enjoin” and have lost “every recent case in which they tried.” So said the Microsoft-Activision 9th Circuit answering brief Wednesday (docket 23-15992) in the FTC’s appeal of U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley’s denial of its preliminary injunction to block the transaction from going through (see 2307110061).

The Senate's 55-43 confirmation Thursday of Democrat Anna Gomez to the FCC (see 2309070052) will soon end the 2-2 partisan tie at the commission that has lasted more than two years into President Joe Biden's term. Agency watchers and former insiders expect a flurry of activity, with Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel issuing and launching long-bottled-up orders and proceedings once Gomez formally becomes a commissioner.

Nearly 300 broadband experts, ISPs, consumer advocates, and business groups urged NTIA to eliminate its letter of credit requirement for the broadband, equity, access and deployment program. The coalition, in a letter Wednesday, raised concerns about how the requirement will affect local providers and competition. Under the current rule, awardees must obtain an LOC for 25% of their award amount.

Proposals from GOP presidential hopefuls Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy to abolish the Commerce Department face long odds of coming to fruition, but space experts told us the calls raise new questions about how that would affect commercial space operations and the operators that the entity currently regulates. Right-leaning groups want a new Republican administration to consider restructuring Commerce’s space regulatory operations. House Communications Subcommittee leaders, meanwhile, believe the chamber can resurrect the Satellite and Telecommunications Streamlining Act (HR-1338) to revamp the FCC’s satellite regulatory process.

Duke Energy’s argument the FCC lacks jurisdiction over the pole attachment rates utilities charge incumbent local exchange carriers like AT&T “is barred by principles of issue preclusion,” said the commission’s final redacted public reply brief, dated Thursday and docketed Friday (docket 22-2220) in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in opposition to the Duke and AT&T petitions for review of the agency’s 2018 order (see 2212290050).

Meta removed a pro se fraud complaint Thursday to U.S. District Court for New Jersey from the Superior Court of Essex County, New Jersey, brought by a plaintiff who opted out of the $725 million Facebook, Inc. Consumer Privacy User Litigation. Deciding the settlement was “inadequate,” plaintiff Aakash Dalal “timely opted out” of the settlement by certified and regular U.S. mail to the settlement administrator “requesting exclusion from the class action," said his June 19 complaint (docket 2:23-cv-13558).

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin (R) is “disappointed” in Thursday’s ruling by U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks for Arkansas in Fayetteville, granting NetChoice its preliminary injunction to block Griffin’s enforcement of SB-396, the state’s age-verification Social Media Safety Act (see 2308310068), emailed Griffin through a spokesperson Friday. NetChoice won the injunction just hours before SB-396 was to take effect early Friday.

Defendant Diamond Resorts seeks a Sept. 27 hearing on its motion to compel plaintiff Paul Sapan’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act claims to arbitration, said Diamond’s notice of that motion Wednesday (docket 8:23-cv-00147) in U.S. District Court for Central California in Santa Ana.

The FCC released a draft Further NPRM on the long-awaited 5G Fund Thursday, with commissioners scheduled to vote Sept. 21 (see 2308300062). Also on the agenda is a Space Bureau “transparency initiative,” with the bureau giving more guidance at initial application stages. Per the draft order and accompanying Further NPRM, the streamlining proposal is to be the first in a series of intended improvements to the Space Bureau. Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel also is seeking a vote on an additional action targeting VoIP robocalls.

Groups representing incumbent licensees in the 6 GHz band, led by electric utilities, asked the FCC to seek comment on any revised rules for the band, “consistent with the Administrative Procedure Act,” before issuing an order as expected later this year (see 2308070060). “The Commission may not adopt rules which were not proposed” in the 2020 Further NPRM “or otherwise considered in this proceeding,” said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 18-295: “Actual notice of any new rules must come from the Commission and not from monitoring comments in the record. Although the Commission may adopt rules that are the logical outgrowth of those that were proposed, it must provide fair and sufficient notice, including about the material components of such a rule.” The opportunity for comment is “particularly vital where, as here, the matter involves complex technical issues and a modification of the proposed rule results in a substantial change affecting the technical issues under consideration,” the groups said. The filing was signed by the Utilities Technology Council, the Edison Electric Institute, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, APCO and the Enterprise Wireless Alliance. AT&T also weighed in, raising concerns about very-low-power operations in the band, a focus of the FNPRM. Advocates “continue to assert as gospel various technical theories that are subject to considerable debate on the record, to urge the Commission to rely on their self-interested, curated summaries of simulations that remain unfiled and undocumented, and to extrapolate insignificant results to broad assertions of interference protection,” AT&T said: “In the face of substantial real-world testing demonstrating the potential for interference, the Commission should not rely on unfiled, untested, and undocumented assertions for decisions that could impact critical radio communications infrastructure.”