The FCC deactivated the disaster information reporting system for Tropical Storm Nicole, said a public notice Friday.
The FCC plans a virtual field hearing on the impact of Hurricanes Fiona and Ian during the Nov. 17 open meeting, said a news release Wednesday. The meeting will focus on “coordination between the communications and power sectors in response to these disasters” and “provide an opportunity to gather new information and lessons learned so that U.S. networks are better prepared for future storms like Tropical Storm Nicole,” said the release. Thursday’s disaster information reporting system release for Nicole showed 175,903 cable and wireline subscribers without service, and 0.9% of cellsites down in affected counties in Florida Wednesday. The report also showed two FM and 1 AM station down. The Wireless Bureau granted emergency waivers to Federated Wireless, Google and CommScope of the agency’s rules on the Citizens Broadband Radio Service to facilitate communications during the storm. “The FCC is monitoring the storm as it progresses,” said Wednesday’s release.
AT&T protested granting T-Mobile additional mid-band licenses in the 2.5 GHz band because of the carrier’s already huge position in the band. T-Mobile dominated the recent auction, winning 7,156 licenses for $304.3 million, about 90% of the available spectrum (see 2209010060). AT&T filed the protest earlier this week in the FCC’s universal licensing system, asking the agency to reject T-Mobile’s long-form application for the licenses. “T-Mobile already far exceeds the Commission’s spectrum screen in many areas and holds far more spectrum than even T-Mobile thinks it needs,” AT&T said: “Its spectrum holdings are particularly disproportionate in the mid-band frequencies that the Commission has deemed ‘critical’ to any provider’s ‘5G buildout due to its desirable coverage, capacity, and propagation characteristics.’” T-Mobile’s extensive holdings “threaten long-term competition for mobile broadband services, as T-Mobile openly acknowledges in its investor presentations,” AT&T said. Commission orders have “reflected too little attention to T-Mobile’s acknowledged plan to dominate mid-band spectrum to the detriment of competition,” AT&T charged. T-Mobile “was permitted to acquire spectrum-rich Sprint in 2019 and exceed the spectrum screen in hundreds of localities, all without any spectrum divestitures or even a market-by-market analysis of the potential harm to competition,” AT&T said: “Since the merger, T-Mobile has acquired substantial C-Band and 3.45 GHz assets even as it told investors that it did not need that new mid-band spectrum to compete, and it completed those purchases, too, without effective regulatory scrutiny.” The FCC also “rejected proposals by AT&T and others to open the 2.5 GHz band to genuine bidding competition, opting instead for T-Mobile’s preferred approach,” the filing said. T-Mobile didn't comment.
Cost of internet service in the U.S. in October was up 0.5% year over year, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index unadjusted data released Thursday. Residential phone service costs were up 3.4% year over year, and wireless service costs were down 1.4%. Cable and satellite TV service costs were up 0.8%. October prices overall were up 7.7% year over year before seasonal adjustment, BLS said.
APCO officials raised concerns about a draft FCC order on rules to improve delivery of outage information to public safety answering points, set for a commissioner vote next week (see 2210270067). A filing on a meeting with Public Safety Bureau staff wasn't posted by the FCC. CTIA, the Competitive Carriers Association and other groups are also expected to raise industry concerns. “Emergency communications centers (ECCs) should be notified of outages and disruptions that could impact communications with ECCs, even if the outage does not meet the high thresholds that trigger a notification requirement in the existing rules,” APCO said: “The draft order does not address modifying the notification thresholds. The Commission should seek information from service providers that would be helpful for modifying the notification thresholds to better align with public safety considerations and reduce the number of outages going unreported.” APCO notes among other concerns that an earlier NPRM asks about “the extent to which service providers have or could have graphical outage information and how ECCs would use such information,” the group said: “The draft order partially addresses this issue, but only with regard to the provision of geographical information system (GIS) data. This is unnecessarily limiting and fails to consider alternative methods for providing ECCs with visual information about outages. For example, emailed notifications could include an image of the affected area, and service providers could maintain web-based portals for real time network status maps.”
The FCC activated the disaster information reporting system for 34 counties in Florida for Tropical Storm Nicole, said a public notice Wednesday. Reports are due starting Thursday. The alert includes Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties, the state’s three most populated. The agency also issued public notices on emergency contact procedures for licensees that need special temporary authority, priority communications services, and on 24-hour availability of FCC staff. The Public Safety Bureau sent a reminder to entities working to clear debris and repair utilities to avoid damaging communications infrastructure.
The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts launched a public database of federal judges' financial disclosure reports and periodic transaction reports, it said Monday. The reports "will be continuously added as they are prepared for release," it said.
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, back from a whirlwind trip to Taiwan last week (see 2211020037), said the trip was a success. His goal, in part, was to “play a small role in continuing to deepen the partnership and ties between the U.S., particularly coming on the heels of last month’s Communist Party confab in Beijing,” Carr said in an interview Monday. Chinese leader Xi Jinping “continues to saber rattle and put force on the table when it comes to Taiwan,” he said: “In my view, a free and democratic Taiwan is vital to U.S. economic interest and to our national security interests. I think it’s important for all of us to continue to show support.” That support “helps Taiwan show strength and that’s a good thing for stability,” he said. Carr also said he met with officials at the National Communications Commission, the Ministry of Digital Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, after meeting virtually with the country’s regulators earlier in the year. “It’s important to continue to collaborate and share our two countries’ approaches when it comes to cybersecurity and network resiliency, undersea cable issues,” he said. “I focused a lot on those issues when I was there,” he said. Carr said he spent part of one day in Hsinchu, home to Taiwan’s semiconductor industry. More than 90% of more advanced chips are “manufactured right there on the island,” he said. “The role that Taiwan plays in our semiconductor industry right now and our supply chain is irreplaceable,” he said. There probably won’t be another place to get that type of advanced chipset “for probably decades to come, in terms of the breadth and depth and long-term investments necessary,” he said. The $54.2 billion Chips and Science Act, signed into law in August (see 2208090062), will help build manufacturing facilities in the U.S., but “the reality is you can’t replicate the advanced nature of the work that’s in Taiwan outside of Taiwan at this point in time,” he said. As soon as Xi calculates that China’s military capacity is greater than that of Taiwan, plus its allies, the Chinese leader will “probably make a move on Taiwan,” Carr said. “The more we can do to show our collaboration and partnerships with Taiwan, the more likely it is that we achieve cross-[Taiwan] Strait peace,” he said.
T-Mobile is weighing how to respond to a $3.59 million penalty from the California Public Utilities Commission, a spokesperson said Thursday. Commissioners unanimously approved a decision that day saying T-Mobile misled the California Public Utilities Commission about its CDMA transition (see 2211030064). “We continue to completely disagree with the conclusions that the CPUC’s decision reaches and are considering our options for next steps,” the T-Mobile spokesperson said. “We stand by our prior statements to the CPUC. We are so proud of the incredible work our team did to rapidly migrate customers and sunset the legacy Sprint CDMA network -- just as we said we’d do.”
Free Press said the FCC should “investigate all of the factors that contributed to communication outages in Puerto Rico and Florida” after Hurricane Fiona and Hurricane Ian, that made landfall in September. Free Press urged the commission “to investigate whether the lack of communications contributed to the death toll.” It also asked the FCC "to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the current state of telecommunications infrastructure in Puerto Rico to better understand the failures that occurred during this latest storm and other prior storms and emergencies.” Though an FCC report about outages after Hurricane Michael in 2018 “was far from comprehensive, it did fault the carriers and these other parties for their failures to coordinate,” said the Free Press filing, posted Thursday in docket 21-346: “The Commission failed to conduct a similar examination after Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico in 2017 and became one of the deadliest disasters in our nation’s history.”