Chairman Ajit Pai plans to further deregulate voice service providers and "examine whether certain pricing and tariffing regulations that the FCC imposed on incumbent phone companies when they held a monopoly on local telephone service still make sense today," he blogged Monday, outlining his agenda for the March 31 commissioners' meeting (see 2003090044). The meeting will also have a vote on robocall/caller ID authentication, as Pai disclosed last week (see 2003060055). Three Media Bureau items also were tentatively scheduled, including related to ATSC 3.0.
The coronavirus is affecting more FCC-related events, with FCBA postponing all of its March gatherings (see 2003090055). An aide to a commissioner may quarantine herself due to possible exposure. For now, NAB's annual show in Las Vegas remains on, it said Monday (see 2003090030).
With public and highway safety groups staking out a hard line, it’s unclear when the FCC will act on new rules for the 5.9 GHz band, industry and commission officials said. Commissioners agreed 5-0 in December to examine revised rules for the band, reallocating 45 MHz for Wi-Fi, with 20 MHz reserved for cellular vehicle to everything and possibly 10 MHz for dedicated short-range communications (see 1912180019). Some observers said with the FCC poised to open the 6 GHz band for Wi-Fi and unlicensed, Chairman Ajit Pai may be less inclined to continue the fight over 5.9 GHz while taking some actions to allow C-V2X. Comments were due at 11:59 p.m. Monday in docket 19-138.
Congress should do its job and legislate privacy, Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., told reporters Thursday, in response to a question about remarks from Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Senate Majority Whip John Thune, R-S.D. The Republicans said Wednesday there’s currently no path forward for privacy talks (see 2003040052).
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who has said the FCC would mandate secure telephone identity revisited standards and signature-based handling of asserted information using tokens (Stir/Shaken) technology if major providers don’t move quickly enough, said Friday the agency plans to vote on that at the March 31 commissioners’ meeting (see 2003060019). Industry officials said the new rules implement at least some provisions in the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence (Traced) Act, signed into law in January (see 1912310028). The exact details will be released when the draft is issued Tuesday. The act directs the commission to require providers to implement Stir/Shaken in their networks within 18 months of enactment.
The 25-year deadline for de-orbiting a satellite after its mission is becoming a central point of contention on how the FCC should incorporate new federal orbital debris mitigation standard practices (ODMSP) into an expected update of its orbital debris rules. Satellite Industry Association Senior Director-Policy Therese Jones said the expectation is the agency will have a draft orbital debris order out in the first half of this year.
State Democrats are pressing forward with net neutrality revivals with hope that last year’s Mozilla decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit alleviated lawmaker concerns that killed bills in previous sessions. The D.C. Circuit cleared a “path to be able to set our own net neutrality rules,” said Connecticut Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff (D). He and other legislators and stakeholders spoke in recent interviews.
Expanded residential telehealth use could support patients and healthcare providers during the U.S. outbreak of COVID-19, providing pre-diagnosis triage and keeping contagious patients away from doctors' offices waiting rooms, stakeholders said in interviews last week. Some said more reliable, affordable and ubiquitous connectivity is needed.
Confirmation of Nevada’s first positive case of COVID-19 Thursday in Clark County (see 2003050069) and a second confirmation Friday in the Reno area didn’t deter major Las Vegas trade show organizers, including NAB, from insisting their events would go on as planned. PBS went a different route, announcing the cancellation of its TechCon summit at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas that would have immediately preceded the NAB Show.
TCL developed the first rollable, extendable smartphone concept, it announced Thursday. The 9mm rollable AMOLED display uses internal motors to extend a 6.75-inch screen to a 7.8-inch display with a button press. When the phone isn’t in use, a motor-driven sliding panel conceals the flexible display, said the company. The announcement was part of a peek into the electronics company’s design efforts with flexible displays that it expected to show at MWC 2020 in Barcelona last month, before coronavirus concerns forced organizers to cancel (see 2002120065).