Adell Broadcasting will bring legal action against Nexstar and Mission Broadcasting if Mission doesn’t accept the FCC’s conditions for approving Mission’s proposed $75 million buy of Adell’s WADL Mount Clemens, Michigan (see 2404240070), Adell CEO Kevin Adell told us in an interview Tuesday.
Minnesota won’t craft a law that might put the state's $652 million allocation from NTIA’s broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program in jeopardy, Senate Broadband Committee Chair Aric Putnam (D) pledged shortly after midnight Tuesday. Up late considering a labor budget bill that included an industry-opposed broadband safety proposal, senators voted 35-32 to reject amendments from Sen. Gene Dornink (R) that would have scrapped the worker safety plan.
With the federal ban on TikTok, Congress has taken the "unprecedented" step of enacting a law that “bars every American from participating in a unique online community with more than 1 billion people worldwide,” TikTok and ByteDance said Tuesday in their petition for review (docket 24-1113) in the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit to invalidate the ban.
A Minnesota lawmaker and a labor group pushed back Monday against the telecom industry's opposition to advancing a proposal on broadband workforce safety. The state's Senate planned to weigh the measure as part of a labor omnibus (HF-5242), but senators hadn’t voted by our deadline. The Minnesota Cable Association (MCA), Minnesota Telecom Alliance (MTA) and the Wireless ISP Association (WISPA) warned Gov. Tim Walz (D) that the proposal would discourage carriers from seeking federal broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) and other high-speed internet grants.
Twenty Republican attorneys general support the 20 industry petitioners asking the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to vacate the FCC’s digital discrimination order on grounds it exceeds agency authority and lacks clear congressional intent (see 2404230032). The AGs made their argument in an amicus brief Thursday (docket 24-1179).
CTIA President Meredith Baker said that policymakers must reverse course to change how spectrum is allocated in the U.S., moving away from too much focus on unlicensed and not enough on full-power licensed spectrum. The U.S. has allocated three times as much unlicensed spectrum as licensed, she said during a CTIA 5G Summit Monday. Baker noted the national spectrum strategy's focus on the lower 3 GHz and 7/8 GHz bands. “The studies of these bands have to start immediately and examine all options,” she said.
A measure regulating children’s social media use has sufficient bipartisan support for the Senate Commerce Committee to approve it, ranking member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told us last week.
Vermont’s net neutrality law seems in good shape legally following two significant, late-April decisions by the FCC and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said experts on the statute. ISP groups must decide what to do with their 2018 lawsuit at U.S. District Court of Vermont now that the case can resume following the 2nd Circuit ruling.
The FCC should reign in its Enforcement Bureau to avoid conflicts with recent and expected U.S. Supreme Court decisions, though the current bureau doesn’t “overreach” as frequently as it did under former Chairman Tom Wheeler, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said Thursday during a Wiley panel discussion called “Opportunities to Reform FCC Enforcement." Carr told us, “The jury is still out” on whether the EB under FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel needs reform, he said in an interview after the panel discussion: “We’re not off the rails the way the agency was during the Wheeler tenure."
Heavy competition the cable industry faces from fiber and fixed wireless access (FWA) is moving downscale, with multiple cable operators telling Wall Street in recent days that there's more pressure at the lower end of the market. Some anticipate greater pressure on their internet subscriber numbers due to the looming end of the affordable connectivity program. Moreover, Charter Communications said it's already seeing effects from February's freeze on new ACP enrollments (see 2402010075).