5G fixed wireless access will experience continuing growth in the U.S. and expand globally, panelists said during an Opensignal webinar Thursday. While FWA took off in the U.S. first, led by T-Mobile and Verizon, it’s spreading worldwide.
Contrary to some expectations, a draft order and Further NPRM allowing schools and libraries to use E-rate support for off-premises Wi-Fi hot spots and wireless internet services wasn’t expanded to include fixed wireless access and partnerships with nontraditional providers, based on the text of the draft released Thursday. Commissioners will vote July 18.
House Democrats rang alarm bells Wednesday over the Appropriations Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies (CJS) Subcommittee’s proposal reducing FY 2025 allocations for NTIA and other Commerce Department agencies. The subpanel advanced its FY25 bill on a voice vote Wednesday after Republicans defended the proposed cuts, including a significant slashing of annual funding for the DOJ Antitrust Division. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo fielded repeated questions during a House Innovation Subcommittee hearing Wednesday about Republicans’ claims that NTIA’s requirement that broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program participants offer a low-cost connectivity option constitutes rate regulation.
To fulfill its “broad mandate” under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the FCC in the digital discrimination order on review “adopted rules that prohibit practices with unjustified discriminatory effects on access to broadband service,” plus intentional discrimination, the commission’s brief said Tuesday (docket 24-1179) in the 8th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court.
The century-long congressional impasse on radio performance rights didn’t appear close to changing at a House Judiciary Intellectual Property Subcommittee hearing Wednesday on the proposed American Music Fairness Act. “We are here once again to ask why it is the U.S. joins the likes of North Korea, Iran and Cuba in not recognizing public performance right in radio music broadcast,” said Subcommittee Chair Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. “We need to guard against unintended outcomes,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif. “What impact would this legislation have on the critical role of radio stations in providing emergency broadcasts?”
The FCC moved quickly and effectively to clamp down on a January robocall that created a deepfake of the voice of President Joe Biden urging recipients to skip the New Hampshire primary (see 2402060087). However, preventing similar fakes may prove more difficult, Greg Bohl, chief data officer at Transaction Network Services, warned the FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee Wednesday. CAC is focused on AI this term (see 2404040040).
It appears House Republican leadership isn’t willing to bring the House Commerce Committee’s bipartisan privacy bill to the floor because it lacks the necessary votes to pass, members and sources close to discussions told us Wednesday.
California’s Senate Judiciary Committee voted 9-2 Tuesday to advance a bill that would force tech platforms to pay news publishers for the news content they carry, similar to approaches seen in Australia, Canada and Europe.
The FCC, intervenors and amici who benefit from E-rate funding contend that authorizing Wi-Fi on school buses will advance students’ education, but there’s “powerful and growing evidence to doubt that claim,” petitioners Maurine and Matthew Molak said in their 5th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court reply brief Monday (docket 23-60641).
The 5th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court was "wrong" when it affirmed a district court’s “sweeping” preliminary injunction that barred dozens of White House officials and four federal agencies from coercing social media platforms to moderate their content, the U.S. Supreme Court said in a 6-3 decision Wednesday in Murthy v. Missouri (docket 23-411).