NCTA, meeting Chief of Staff Matthew Berry, urged the FCC act on opening the 5.9 GHz band for unlicensed use. NCTA sees the band as ideal for Wi-Fi, it said in docket 13-49. “This band is located adjacent to the existing U-NII-3 band, would enable the use of additional 160 MHz channels needed to support Gigabit Wi-Fi, and incumbent operations are limited to just a few pilot deployments,” NCTA said: “Changes in the automotive technology market and in the adjacent spectrum environment ... suggest that the Commission should renew its efforts in the band.” The band has been a target of Wi-Fi advocates and an FCC focus since 2013 (see 1305310035). Toyota said it met Chairman Ajit Pai to argue for preserving the band for dedicated short-range communications. The automaker has a "strong commitment to automotive safety, citing its industry leadership in making Automatic Emergency Braking and other active safety features standard on Toyota and Lexus vehicles in the United States,” Toyota said. “By helping vehicles identify potential hazards that are beyond the range or capability of sensor technology, DSRC will further help Toyota achieve its goal of reducing crashes.”

Former FCC interim Chairman Michael Copps said Geoffrey Starks will find his own way as commissioner once confirmed (see 1806290037). “I’m for letting Starks be Starks, trusting he’ll do fine, and we’ll verify as events develop,” Copps emailed. “It is amusing, though, to read about the need for ‘independent’ commissioners from former transition officials who reportedly thought about deep-sixing the entire independent agency.” Copps is now at Common Cause. Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood accused Republicans of hypocrisy: “People who are complaining about the [Tom] Wheeler FCC being partisan when they were on the losing end of 3-2 decisions seem really happy to take a victory lap in the Trump FCC when the 3-2 decisions go their way instead.”

An FCC draft item to amend application fees in sections 1.1002-1.1109 of its rules is on the commission's list of items on circulation updated Friday. "It's an Order implementing the statutory requirement that the commission update its application fees every two years," a spokesperson emailed us Monday.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai added another state government official to the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee and named a new vice chair, a city official. BDAC has been criticized for having too little local and state representation (see 1801230043). David Young now is vice chairman of the full BDAC. Young, right-of-way manager for Lincoln, Nebraska, was already on BDAC and replaces in that position Kelleigh Cole, who left as the director of the Utah Broadband Outreach Center and resigned from the BDAC last week, the FCC said. Young represents the National League of Cities on BDAC. With one state official gone, another is coming on. Pai appointed Danna MacKenzie, a member of the BDAC’s Removing State and Local Regulatory Barriers working group, to be on the BDAC as a representative of the Minnesota Office of Broadband Development, the FCC said. MacKenzie is “taking on this important responsibility at a critical time for the BDAC as the Harmonization working group resolves differences between the State Model Code and Municipal Model Code to ensure that the model codes are harmonized with each other and with the BDAC’s prior recommendations,” Pai said. In April, Young replaced Sam Liccardo, mayor of San Jose, California, on BDAC. Liccardo resigned, saying the committee had too little local representation (see 1801250049).

A fiber cut at one of Comcast's backbone network providers led to video, broadband and voice outages, Comcast tweeted Friday. It believes the cut also affected other providers. The cable ISP didn't comment on questions seeking more details. CenturyLink's Level3 tweeted its network was "operating normally." Online outage tracker Outage Report showed widespread Comcast outages Friday afternoon across the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic.

The FCC Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council approved working group reports on the "Transition Path to NG911" (here) and "Re-imagining of Emergency Alerting" (here) at a meeting Friday. Working Group 1's next-generation transition report includes analysis and recommendations of best practices for enhancing the migration from legacy 911 systems, said Budge Currier, branch manager of the California Governor Office of Emergency Services, presenting highlights. He said the report also deals with cybersecurity issues. "Read the report -- there's a lot of good information in there," he said. Working Group 1 received FCC approval to continue to review best practices and identify gaps that could be filled, with a target of reporting back by December, and no later than spring 2019, he said. Dorothy Spears-Dean, public safety communications coordinator of the Virginia Information Technology Agency, said the group is developing a report on the small carrier NG-911 transition for the Sept. 28 CSRIC meeting. Working Group 2's report made a series of recommendations for emergency alerting mechanisms, including on technical enhancements, improved geographic targeting to devices, and improving alert usefulness for people with hearing or vision disabilities, said Farrokh Khatibi, Qualcomm director-engineering, showing highlights. "It's really important we take care of everyone." Drew Morin, T-Mobile director-federal cyber security technology and engineering programs, presented an update on Working Group 3's efforts to deliver in September best practices and recommendations to secure wireless 5G networks.

The FCC adopted new telecom relay service provider compensation rates for the funding year beginning July 1 and set a $1.5 billion budget for the TRS fund with an industry contribution factor of 2.8 percent of applicable telecom revenue. The new per-minute provider compensation rates "for interstate TRS,1 shall be: (1) for traditional TRS, $3.2592; (2) for speech-to-speech relay service (STS), $4.3902; and (3) for captioned telephone service (CTS), $2.0007," said a Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau order Friday in docket 03-123. It said the rates were based on the recommendations of the fund administrator RolkaLoube Associates and the agency's review of the relevant data. The per-minute compensation rate for internet-based TRS will be "for Internet protocol (IP) CTS, $1.75" and "for IP Relay, $1.40," the order said. The per-minute rates for video relay service providers are divided into tiers based on minutes of use: Emergent (1st 500,000 monthly minutes) for VRS providers with 500,000 or fewer minutes in a month, $5.29; Tier I (1st 1,000,000 monthly minutes) for VRS providers with more than 500,000 minutes in a month, $4.82; Tier II (1,000,001 to 2,500,000 monthly minutes), $3.97; and Tier III (monthly minutes exceeding 2,500,000), $2.83."

A Norwalk, California, man was arrested Friday in Los Angeles for allegedly threatening via email in December to kill FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s family, according an affidavit (in Pacer) filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia and a DOJ release. Markara Man was said to have told police he was angry over the net neutrality rollback order when he sent the emails, one of which included the addresses of Arlington, Virginia, area preschools and the words "I will find your children and I will kill them.” Man is charged with “threatening to murder a member of the immediate family of a U.S. official with the intent to intimidate or interfere with such official while engaged in the performance of official duties,” DOJ said. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, DOJ said. Man sent three emails total to Pai, on Dec. 19 and 20, DOJ alleged. The first accused Pai of being responsible for children that committed suicide over repeal of Communications Act Title II broadband regulation. “Their blood is forever on your hands,” the email said. The second was the list of preschools, and the third contained no text but a photo of Pai that included a framed photograph of his children in the shot, the affidavit said. Man allegedly later told police he found this image on Google,. The emails were traced by the FBI to an email address used by Man and his home. When the FBI executed a search warrant there in May, he admitted to sending the emails, using his phone and the email handle “stubblemanliness” to conceal his name and sound “tougher” the affidavit contended. Man told the FBI he was angry about the net neutrality move because "'they pretty much ignored, like, 80 percent of comments ... they ignored 'us,' and just didn't care," the affidavit said. When asked if he was trying to scare Pai to change his mind, Man said "pretty much," the affidavit said. Man was said to have told the FBI he "was not really thinking" and was "just angry and frustrated." Man wrote an apology letter to Pai admitting that threatening his children was “crossing the line,” adding he hoped Pai would change his mind on net neutrality, but doubted he would. The FCC declined to comment.

AT&T Mobility must pay a $5.25 million fine and make internal process changes after suffering 911 outages in March and May last year on the carrier’s Voice over LTE service (see 1703230075), the FCC said Thursday. “Such preventable outages are unacceptable,” the agency said as the Enforcement Bureau settled its investigation about possible legal violations in a consent decree. AT&T agreed to “implement proactive system changes to reduce the likelihood and impact of future 911 outages, improve processes for notifying 911 call centers of any future outages, ensure reliable 911 call completion, and regularly file compliance reports with the FCC,” the FCC said. The investigation found AT&T’s planned network changes “inadvertently interfered” with 911 call routing, resulting in failed calls by 12,600 people on March 8 last year and 2,600 failed calls on May 1, 2017, the agency said. During the March outage, AT&T failed to “quickly, clearly, and fully notify all affected 911 call centers,” it said. AT&T acted to prevent a repeat incident, a spokesperson said: “Providing access to emergency 911 services is critically important, and to that end we cooperated with the FCC.”

Time isn't a luxury broadcasters have on ATSC 3.0, FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said in remarks to broadcasters at the Midwest Next-Gen TV Summit in Ohio. “If you are a broadcaster sitting on the fence on whether to implement ATSC 3.0, you should be worried that the fence may no longer exist if you take too long to decide,” he said Wednesday, adding that tech companies also are competing for advertisers and consumers. O’Rielly made a similar point at ATSC’s conference last month (see 1805240056). He praised 3.0 capabilities such as targeted ad insertion and mobile television, and the work of broadcasters. “Saying this will only fuel my Internet and Twitter trolls, who suggest that I epitomize regulatory capture, but you have earned the right to be thanked,” he said. O’Rielly praised T-Mobile efforts to aid some broadcasters in the post-incentive auction repacking process. “They have been doing some heavy lifting that has taken problems off the commission’s plate,” O’Rielly said. “Hopefully, others will follow their lead.” O’Rielly said lack of tower crews and other repacking resources could create big problems for the repacking starting in phase three. O’Rielly also touted the draft kidvid NPRM, the result of an effort he's leading (see 1806260067). “As an attempt to bring a balanced, thoughtful reform approach forward, the commission recently made public an effort to breathe additional flexibility into our rules,” O’Rielly said. He understands a small portion of youth lack access to options other than broadcasting, he said. Broadcasters need to weigh in, he said. “My plea to you and to every interested party is to file substantive comments.”