The FCC Office of Inspector General issued a general warning against Lifeline fraud Tuesday. OIG said a common scam is to manipulate someone’s name or identity to get extra payments. “OIG has seen thousands of examples of ‘female juniors’ among Lifeline enrollments,” the office said. “Another fraudulent practice involves adding an individual’s middle initials to either the first name or last name fields … to create fraudulent enrollments.” Address manipulation is also common, OIG said: “One vacant lot in Detroit was used by a carrier as the home address of nearly two hundred Lifeline subscribers.” Lifeline abuse won’t be tolerated, the warning said: This advisory is “to alert and educate Lifeline stakeholders and the public about some of the techniques used to perpetrate fraud we have learned about during our investigations. OIG ... will continue to use a full-range of tools to expose and combat fraud, waste, and abuse in USF programs.”
The FCC is rechartering its Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council for a new two-year term and seeking members. Nominations are due at the FCC May 8 and the expected first meeting is in June, the FCC said Tuesday. CSRIC's future was initially unclear after Chairman Ajit Pai took over in 2017 and the FCC withdrew a CSRIC report on recommendations for communications sector cybersecurity risk management (see 1702060059). CSRIC has focused on other issues over the past two years. The FCC said the council’s work may include the reliability of communications networks and infrastructure, emergency calling issues, emergency alerting and national security/emergency preparedness communications. “It is no longer enough to be first to 5G, the networks we deploy must also be secure,” Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel tweeted in response: “That's why the @FCC needs to refocus the work” of the CSRIC “on 5G security and the time to do it is now.”
C-Band Alliance (CBA) outside counsel met with an aide to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to discuss the status and timing of the C-band clearing proceeding, according to a docket 18-122 ex parte posting Friday. CBA said it reiterated that its plan protects incumbent band users while also clearing spectrum quickly for 5G.
Dish Network has a history of trying "to take taxpayers for a ride," and "a thorough inquiry" is needed into its progress deploying its planned narrowband IoT network, Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist and Digital Liberty Executive Director Katie McAuliffe wrote Wireless Bureau Chief Donald Stockdale last week (see here). They said Dish is hoarding spectrum intended for 5G, missing construction deadlines and plans to only use a small percentage of that spectrum for IoT and machine-to-machine communication. Dish didn't comment Monday.
Experiences from the 2017 hurricane season pointed to changes needed in how the U.S. prepares, Zenji Nakazawa, public safety aide to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, told a U.S.-Caribbean Resilience Partnership meeting in Miami. “We learned that in addition to fostering community engagement, authorities at all levels should establish pre-staged areas for processing incoming supplies, refueling, backup power, mobile telecommunications vehicles, and relief crews,” Nakazawa said Friday, in remarks posted Monday. Improved coordination is also key, he said: “We learned that coordination between communications providers and electrical and other utilities is critical to ensure restoration efforts. Coordination ensures that both communications and power are brought back into service quickly and efficiently.” The FCC is also looking at what post-disaster restoration and recovery should look like, he said. “Is it a mere ‘rip and replace’ of prior equipment or is it an opportunity for renewed investment to modernize outdated facilities and harden networks?” Nakazawa asked.
The cable industry's shapefiles-centric broadband mapping plan lacks the route for creating more accurate broadband location data, Broadband Coalition members USTelecom, ITTA and the Wireless ISP Association said in a docket 11-10 posting Monday. Shapefiles themselves are data formats and only as good as the data in them, and variability and latitude and longitude coordinates that providers submit in shapefiles could result in unserved areas being misdrawn, they said. Provider shapefile submissions need to follow a common template with consistent geocoding of addresses and locations -- which is why the consortium advocates such a template, the Broadband Serviceable Locations Fabric (see 1903220036). NCTA emailed that its proposed Form 477 process revisions "could provide more accurate information about broadband availability without undue time and expense. While the proposal by the Broadband Mapping Consortium has the potential to generate useful information regarding unserved areas, at this point it is a proof-of-concept that raises significant questions for the Commission about cost, timing, effectiveness, and access to data. The Commission can and should adopt NCTA’s approach now and supplement it with data from Broadband Mapping Consortium if their experiment ultimately proves successful.”
The federal Bureau of Prisons last week tested micro-jamming technology to determine if micro-jamming could prevent wireless communication by inmates using contraband cellphones, DOJ said Friday. The pilot test was conducted at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia, South Carolina, and follows earlier tests at a federal corrections facility in Cumberland, Maryland (see 1801180054). “Contraband cellphones have been used to run criminal enterprises, distribute child pornography, and facilitate the commission of violent crimes -- all while inmates are incarcerated,” said DOJ, noting that only federal agencies, not state or local prisons, can obtain authorization to jam the public airwaves. NTIA authorized the test, which was coordinated with the FCC. NTIA will analyze the data and prepare a report.
Wiley Rein's Kevin Rupy wasn't referring to a need for additional anti-illegal robocall legislation when he told the Senate Communications Subcommittee Thursday there isn't a "single silver bullet" that will fix the problem (see 1904110066) ... Arkansas is the 23rd state to enact small-cells legislation (see 1904110059). Georgia's bill needs gubernatorial OK.
DOJ will hold a May 2-3 public workshop on competition in TV and digital advertising, including on implications for antitrust enforcement and policy. Justice seeks comment through June 15 on the topics covered by the workshop. Antitrust Division Chief Makan Delrahim will open Day 1 at 1:30 p.m., and the event is at Liberty Square Building's Bingaman Auditorium and Lecture Hall, 450 5th St. NW. Academics and executives "from leading companies, including buyers and sellers of advertising inventory" will speak, the department said. "The Division intends to explore the practical considerations that industry participants face and the competitive impact of technological developments such as digital and targeted advertising in media markets." Panelists haven't been disclosed.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., separately said Thursday they plan to talk with President Donald Trump's administration in the coming weeks about infrastructure funding in a bid to revive interest in enacting a comprehensive bill to allocate up to $2 trillion for broadband and other projects. Trump sought in his February State of the Union for Congress to “unite for a great rebuilding of America's crumbling infrastructure” (see 1902060002). In 2018, he called for a bill “that generates at least $1.5 trillion for the new infrastructure investment” that relied heavily on public-private partnerships, though that effort stalled (see 1803290046). The communications sector has been hopeful there will be more appetite for infrastructure legislation this year because Democrats regained the majority in the House in the 2018 election (see 1811130011). Schumer told reporters he and Pelosi will meet with Trump in the coming weeks. They will warn Trump that “if [the administration is] not going to put real money and have real labor and environmental protections” in a final bill, “we're not going to get anywhere,” Schumer said. Legislation needs to provide “at least $1 trillion” in funding, but “I'd like it to be closer to $2 trillion,” Pelosi said at a House Democratic retreat in Leesburg, Virginia. Senate Assistant Democratic Leader Patty Murray of Washington led filing of the Digital Equity Act, which would allocate federal funding for digital inclusion projects. Many tech stakeholders immediately praised it.