The FCC's second 5G auction, of 24 GHz spectrum, will start March 14. Upfront payments are due Feb. 19, said a Wireless Bureau and Office of Economics and Analytics announcement Thursday. The FCC plans a bidding tutorial by Feb. 15 and mock auction March 11. The 28 GHz auction ended last week with $702.6 million in provisionally winning bids (see 1901240034). The 24 GHz auction is widely expected to get somewhat more interest and higher bids.

Lack of fiber connectivity everywhere, such as rural areas and poorer urban areas, reflects U.S. policy failure, said Susan Crawford, Harvard Law professor, Wednesday at a reading from her book Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution -- and Why America Might Miss It, released in January. South Korea -- with its ubiquitous high-speed connectivity -- is "the future," she said. The U.S. "took a wrong turn" in 2004 when it assumed a fiber-wireline battle would lead to competitive markets, but instead phone companies have focused on wireless, and cable ISPs now dominate a stagnant market with little competition. She said broadband connectivity is following the same pattern electrification did last century, when a few companies dominated the market and largely bypassed rural and poorer residential areas until major efforts by the Franklin Roosevelt administration. She said the interest by hundreds of communities -- often with Republican mayors -- and cooperatives in municipal fiber networks shows it's not partisan. She hopes pressure from cities eventually will "embarrass" federal policymakers. She said federal tax policies are needed to make capital cheaper for such co-ops and startup network providers. Former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said a policy problem is the billions spent annually subsidizing carriers' operating expenses instead of paying for fiber network buildouts in specific areas. Crawford said a separate connectivity concern is China's plan to have 80 percent of its homes wired with fiber, and to extend that to developing countries, bringing an "essentially a Chinese internet." She said 5G almost surely isn't the route to closing the connectivity divide because it won't increase coverage but instead likely lead to markets being divided up, each with a single operator dominating.

5G's inefficiency as a fixed mobile broadband business, due to capital costs to get close to the home, means it's not a big competitive worry, Charter Communications CEO Tom Rutledge said during a Q4 call Thursday. "We're going to 10G," he said, citing cable industry plans for 10 gigabit networks (see 1901070048). That would provide better broadband at lower cost, and skyrocketing data consumption should help drive demand, he said. Charter ended 2018 with its national footprint nearly all digital and its 1 GB service available throughout. It said Q4 revenue was $11.2 billion, up 5.9 percent year over year. It ended 2018 with 16.1 million residential video customers, down 1.8 percent; 23.6 million broadband customers, up 4.9 percent; and 10.1 million voice customers, down 2.8 percent. Rutledge said Charter is embracing the video anywhere marketplace but bundled video remains its primary service. Capital expenditures for 2018 were $9.1 billion, and Rutledge said lower capital spending this year -- an estimated $7 billion -- comes as it increasingly employs IP-based and cloud-based services. Analyst Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson called that $7 billion lower than expected to an "eye-popping" degree. New Street Research's Jonathan Chaplin said the decline in capex is much faster than expected. He said the broadband subscriber growth puts the company "on a strong path for faster growth in 2019." The stock closed at $331.05, up 14 percent.

The Federal Register ran two FCC NPRM notices Thursday, the first since the agency mostly shut Jan. 2 and subsequent resumption of operations Monday. The Office of the Federal Register said it couldn’t discuss any FCC backlog but has seen “a significant increase” in document submissions since Monday over what it usually would get during a three- or four-day span. It said 80 percent of the pending documents have been submitted since 8:45 a.m. Monday. The FCC didn't comment. Comments are due Feb. 15 on Ion’s request to change the community of license for Tennessee’s WNPX Cookeville to Franklin, replies Feb. 25. Comments are due March 18, replies April 16 on a draft NPRM for an optional unified license that covers satellites and earth stations in a geostationary fixed satellite service network, and repealing or streamlining some annual reporting requirements of satellite operators.

Initial comments were positive, but others are expected to oppose a 5G Automotive Association request to deploy cellular vehicle-to-everything technology (C-V2X) in the 5.9 GHz band's upper 20 MHz. Comments are due Feb. 8, though many filed early (see 1901280031) or before the FCC delayed deadlines (see 1901290043). The Public Interest Spectrum Coalition, NCTA, Wireless ISP Association and auto companies supporting dedicated short-range communications are among those likely to raise objections, industry officials said. One objection is the waiver would undermine the requests for a Future NPRM in the broader 5.9 GHz proceeding. T-Mobile supported the waiver in a filing posted Wednesday in docket 18-357. It would "remove a regulatory barrier to near-term deployment of C-V2X, unleash new investment and innovation in this technology, and ensure America’s continued global leadership in the development and evolution of C-V2X,” T-Mobile said. The groups didn't comment.

A NARUC draft resolution seeks to increase Lifeline access by proposing changes to the national verifier that has launched in 11 states and Guam. The FCC and Universal Service Administrative Co. should “work with the states to properly launch the National Verifier so that eligible low-income consumers can reasonably and efficiently sign up for the federal Lifeline program without undue burdens or delays,” said Tuesday's draft by Nebraska Public Service Commissioner Crystal Rhoades (D), a NARUC Telecom Committee member. The FCC should continue to allow Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid cards as proof of enrollment to show Lifeline eligibility, streamline Lifeline paper applications, ensure states that launched the national verifier can access SNAP, Medicaid and other critical state and federal databases used for eligibility, and let Lifeline providers provide proof generated by managed care organizations to Medicaid recipients if requested. A SNAP card may be a Lifeline applicant's only document to show participation, but USAC wants to invalidate them because the cards don’t show issued or expiration dates, it noted. USAC hasn’t established a “single, complete database to determine eligibility for Lifeline, as directed by the FCC,” and has hard launched some states without access to any major state and federal databases, it said. Without that, it “will not be able to perform automated, near-real time eligibility verification” and instead must rely on a costlier and more error-prone manual process, it said. Paper applications are confusing, leading to rejections, the draft said. Applicants must initial “nine separate boxes to signify their assent” to nine statements, but “many applicants incorrectly interpret the boxes as checkboxes, check-marking each statement rather than initialing it.” NARUC plans to consider the resolution at its Feb. 10-13 meeting in Washington. The FCC declined comment.

Pointing to electronic systems and databases not fully accessible during the partial federal shutdown, the FCC is again extending filing deadlines, said a public notice Tuesday (see 1901290014). Filings due Jan. 3-7 remain due Jan. 30. Now, those due Jan. 8-Feb. 7 aren't due until Feb. 8. Responsive pleadings to filings with new deadlines get an extension of the same amount of time after the comment deadline. Any transaction shot clocks that froze Jan. 2 when the agency closed restarted Tuesday. Universal licensing system applications and notifications due Jan. 3-Feb. 8 now have a Feb. 8 deadline. ULS filings held during the shutdown and afterward will be considered received as of Tuesday. The large number of ULS filings received during the shutdown will be entered in batches over weeks, with a Jan. 29 receipt date. Written provider responses to informal consumer complaints filed via the complaint center that became due during the shutdown now are due Wednesday. Online public inspection quarterly filings due Jan. 10, and all non-quarterly filings required for a station’s online public inspection Jan. 3-28, now must be submitted by Feb. 11. Filings during the shutdown must be resubmitted to the proper online public inspection file site. The FCC said it can't waive statutory deadlines but won't consider itself open for the filing of documents with statutory deadlines -- other than filings related to spectrum auctions -- until Wednesday. Special temporary authorities that would have expired Jan. 3-29 are extended until Feb. 8. Fee and other payments that can be made only through the fee filer system and due Jan. 3-Feb. 7 are extended by the same schedule as regulatory filings. Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee membership nominations to BDAC@fcc.gov are needed by Feb. 4. The tower construction notification system, electronic Section 106 system and antenna structure registration system resume Jan. 30. Related deadlines and tribal review timelines are tolled Jan. 3-30. Tribal nations have 30 days to review an application uploaded to the E-106 system. The PN supersedes earlier guidance. A separate PN said the Media Bureau will set new deadlines on NAB/NCTA's election cycle notification proposal in the Federal Register. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai got positive reactions for moving next month's meeting to Feb. 14, the day before the next shutdown would occur if there's no new budget, and making the tentative agenda the same as originally planned for this Wednesday (see 1901290031).

Providers cited anti-robocalling efforts to help consumers but seemed to make few changes in response to FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel's December call they provide consumers with blocking (see 1812120026). One exception was Verizon. "We currently offer free alerts about potential spam calls to customers with certain Android phones, and we will begin rolling out free spam alerting and blocking to all of our customers whose smartphones support those features starting in March," wrote Senior Vice President Kathleen Grillo, posted Monday. Senior Vice President Kathleen Ham wrote that T-Mobile "just rolled out to customers our 'Caller Verified technology, which, for now, implements [Secure Handling of Asserted information using toKENs/Secure Telephony Identity Revisited] standards for calls made to Samsung Note9 smartphones" on its network. "We need to help give consumers a fighting chance against robocalls and I will continue to press this agency and my colleagues to fix this mess," said Rosenworcel, releasing the letters. Also responding were: AT&T, Bandwidth, CenturyLink, Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications, Frontier Communications, Google, Sprint, TDS, U.S. Cellular and Vonage.

The House Commerce and Judiciary committees set a Feb. 13 hearing on T-Mobile's proposed purchase of Sprint, as expected (see 1901250004). That confirmed what communications sector lobbyists told us earlier Monday. The House Communications and House Judiciary's Antitrust subcommittee will jointly conduct the hearing, which will include testimony from Sprint Executive Chairman Marcelo Claure and T-Mobile CEO John Legere. The merger "would combine two of the four largest wireless carriers and the carriers with the largest numbers of low-income customers," said Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone, D-N.J., Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., Communications Chairman Mike Doyle, D-Pa., and Antitrust Chairman David Cicilline, D-R.I., in a news release. "We must hold this hearing to examine the effects on important issues like jobs, costs to consumers, innovation and competition." The hearing is "good news,” said Public Knowledge Vice President Chris Lewis in an interview. PK expects the committees would have a “full and serious discussion on the implications of the merger. We want Congress to help promote that discussion and raise concerns about issues and ask important questions of stakeholders.” The group was among 14 that wrote House Commerce and Judiciary Democratic leaders in November urging the hearing (see 1811280071). Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and 12 other House lawmakers wrote Friday night in support of T-Mobile/Sprint. Both agencies should “carefully examine all dimensions of competition” in the communications market, “including investment, innovation, spectrum resources, the evolving nature of the wireless industry, and the prospect of expanded broadband deployment,” they wrote FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and DOJ Antitrust Division Chief Makan Delrahim.

The Newseum building is being sold for $372.5 million to Johns Hopkins University, after a year-plus review of the media museum's "unsustainable operating costs," said its creator, Freedom Forum. The forum has committed more than $600 million for the museum, and said the property will remain open to the public through the year. Newseum Chair Peter Prichard said it's "ready to continue much of the Newseum’s important work for decades to come -- through digital outreach, traveling exhibits, and web-based programs in schools around the world, as well as hopefully in a new physical home in the area." Finding a new space is the museum's preference, said a spokesperson. Johns Hopkins "will use the building as a new consolidated center for its DC-based graduate programs," the Freedom Forum said Friday. The museum declined further comment. For the new owner, "transforming" 555 Pennsylvania Ave. NW "will require a significant renovation, as well as a number of required reviews and approvals by regulatory agencies," the university said. "Construction could begin as soon as the fall of 2020 and will take about two and half years." JHU plans to keep operating the property's restaurant and residences "as commercial entities" in their current form, and it's buying the entire property, a university spokesperson emailed us. "The intention is to consolidate our DC presence there. We expect to eventually sell our current DC properties."