The largest auction in the history of high-band spectrum is over with the close of the assignment phase a week ago, with Verizon the biggest bidder, the FCC said Thursday. The auction of 37, 39 and 47 GHz spectrum brought in more than $7.5 billion in net bids. The major wireless carriers dominated. The FCC will pay out $3.1 billion for existing licensees to leave the band, leaving net proceeds of more than $4.4 billion. This was the FCC’s third high-band auction, after earlier sales of 24 and 28 GHz band spectrum.
FCC staffers are being encouraged to work from home starting Friday and have been told to remove perishables from agency refrigerators and take their plants home, Chief of Staff Matthew Berry emailed staff Thursday in a memo obtained by Communications Daily. The agency also released a public notice Thursday banning all visitors from its facilities unless they receive special permission from the Office of Managing Director. It declined to detail what that permission may entail.
FCC Inspector General nominee Chase Johnson faced questions Wednesday during a Senate Commerce Committee nomination hearing. Jon Tester, D-Mont., asked why the FCC has taken no action after a staff investigation of Mobility Fund-II coverage maps found the maps provided by carriers didn't match actual 4G LTE coverage (see 1912040027). During a markup, some bills were OK'd.
If Congress won’t pass Section 230 legislation for combating child exploitation (see 2003090065), the alternative is a liability protection carve-out, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told reporters Wednesday after a committee hearing. He introduced legislation with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., that would alter the Communications Decency Act section. Companies would have to comply with best practices for filtering child abuse content or face lawsuits from victims. The legislation would establish a commission of government officials, industry representatives and experts to certify best business practices.
FCC efforts at cutting costs of small-satellite licensing should help reverse the trend of U.S. operators going elsewhere to seek licensing, Alliance of Commercial, Cube Experimental and Small Satellites Director Tony Azzarelli told us Wednesday at Satellite 2020. He and others said on a panel that smallsat regulation is failing to keep up with market changes. Organizers ended the event a day early, on Wednesday and citing COVID-19 (see 2003110036).
House Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee Chairman Mike Quigley, D-Ill., told us he’s eyeing attaching a rider to the subcommittee’s FY 2021 appropriations bill aimed at allocating proceeds from the FCC’s coming auction of spectrum on the 3.7-4.2 GHz C band. Quigley raised concerns about the FCC’s current C-band auction plan during a Wednesday House Appropriations Financial Services hearing on the commission’s FY 2021 budget request. The C-band plan drew criticism from Senate Appropriations Financial Services Subcommittee Chairman John Kennedy, R-La., during that subpanel’s Tuesday FCC budget hearing (see 2003100022).
The path to closing T-Mobile/Sprint eased Wednesday as a California Public Utilities Commission judge proposed conditional OK. Hours earlier, the state's Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) agreed states wouldn't appeal clearance by U.S. District Court for Southern District of New York. CPUC Administrative Law Judge Karl Bemesderfer’s proposed decision tees up a vote at commissioners' April 16 meeting.
NAB will not "move forward" with the April 18-22 NAB Show at the Las Vegas Convention Center "in the interest of addressing the health and safety concerns of our stakeholders," said CEO Gordon Smith Wednesday afternoon. The decision to cancel came (see 2003110042) after the NAB executive committee voted unanimously by phone earlier Wednesday to scrub the event.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will steer clear of making “pronouncements broadly” about whether shows and conferences should be canceled or postponed during the COVID-19 outbreak, said Nancy Messonnier, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases director. CDC is recommending “consideration of what’s going on in the locale where the event is being held, and also where people are coming from and what the event is and how big it is,” Messonnier told journalists Monday.
Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) and Cory Booker (N.J.) introduced legislation Tuesday that would require dominant companies to prove their exclusionary conduct doesn’t harm competition. Klobuchar, ranking member of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, announced the legislation during a subcommittee hearing (see 2003090037). Yelp Senior Vice President-Public Policy Luther Lowe said he knows dozens and dozens of CEOs who don’t speak publicly about Google’s anticompetitive behavior due to fear of retaliation.