President Donald Trump agreed at Tuesday's meeting with top Democrats to pursue $2 trillion in spending on broadband and other infrastructure projects. Democratic leaders later cautioned that any forward momentum will depend on further talks with the administration and congressional Republicans. Democratic leaders first announced plans to meet with Trump earlier this month in a bid to revive interest in enacting a comprehensive bill (see 1904110068). 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 (see 1803290046).
Broadcasters, diversity groups and organizations opposed to media consolidation squared off in many combinations in docket 18-349 Tuesday. Monday night was the deadline for comments on the FCC 2018 quadrennial review.
State legislators advanced bills challenging national policy reversals on ISP privacy and net neutrality. A Maine legislative panel Tuesday cleared LD-946 prohibiting state broadband providers from using, sharing or selling access to state customer data without expressed consent. Rhode Island senators that day passed SB-40 to limit state contracts to ISPs that follow net neutrality principles.
The voluntary approach to privacy, including IoT devices, has failed, and it’s time for government intervention to address this “crisis,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said Tuesday, citing progress on legislation. During a Senate Security Subcommittee hearing, industry officials urged legislators to pass comprehensive privacy legislation. A National Institute of Standards and Technology official noted his agency is developing a federal baseline for core cyber capabilities of IoT devices.
House Communications Subcommittee members broadly agreed during a Tuesday hearing there is significant support for seven bills aimed at combating abusive robocalls, but it's less clear how they would package them for final passage. It's also unclear how they will reconcile those measures with the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence (Traced) Act. HR-2015/S-151 is being targeted for fast-track Senate passage yet wasn't considered at the Tuesday House hearing (see 1904290166).
The FTC is under pressure after Facebook estimated it will lose $3 billion-$5 billion as a result of the FTC’s data privacy investigation (see 1904240064), but a fine in the billion-dollar range would be significant, some experts said in recent interviews. Ex-FTC Chief Privacy Officer Marc Groman noted he had estimated a penalty in the $300 million range when news of Cambridge Analytica initially broke.
DOJ has made no decision on T-Mobile buying Sprint, antitrust chief Makan Delrahim told CNBC Monday, in perhaps his most complete comments yet on the deal, which as of Monday is a year old. Delrahim said there’s no magic number of national carriers to guarantee wireless competition. T-Mobile and Sprint, meanwhile, postponed the deadline for completing the deal from Monday to July 29, said an SEC filing.
There was much enthusiasm for looking at the 4.9 GHz band when a Further NPRM was approved on a 5-0 vote 13 months ago (see 1803220037). Now, FCC and industry officials said they've heard almost nothing since the agency took comments last summer. While 4.9 GHz offers prized mid-band spectrum, it’s one segment that rarely gets attention as the FCC looks at 5G. Last year’s notice was the sixth the agency issued.
A Tuesday anti-robocalls hearing gives the House Communications Subcommittee an opportunity to make a public return to bipartisanship as members delve into a group of seven anti-robocalls bills, lobbyists told us. Stakeholders are monitoring the House Commerce Committee's telecom policy agenda for signs of a pivot in its trajectory. The committee's contentious debate over the Save the Internet Act net neutrality bill (HR-1644) culminated in the measure's passage earlier this month (see 1904230069). The hearing begins 10 a.m. in 2123 Rayburn (see 1904260068).
Intel is still deciding what to do with the rest of its 5G modems business, after announcing it’s exiting 5G smartphone modems for lack of profit potential (see 1904170004), said CEO Bob Swan on a Q1 call Thursday. The stock fell Friday after "underlying trends" worries sparked Intel to cut its 2019 revenue forecast.