A bipartisan group of senators warned the FTC not to weaken children’s online privacy protections as it reviews the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. The agency’s “failure now and in recent years to fully enforce COPPA compliance has us concerned that an update at this time could diminish children and parents’ control of their data or otherwise weaken existing privacy protections,” wrote Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass.; Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.; Josh Hawley, R-Mo.; and Marsha Blackburn, R-S.C., Thursday: “Now is not the time to pull back.”
The FCC has to challenge California and other state net neutrality rules, after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s ruling last week, to keep the internet from being shaped by “the lowest common denominator,” said Commissioner Mike O’Rielly on the C-Span’s The Communicators taped hours after the ruling Tuesday. The episode was scheduled to have been shown Saturday. O’Rielly also discussed 5G, media ownership and FCC pre-emption of state and local rules to promote nationwide deployment of broadband infrastructure. “Saying that a particular boundary of a state which may have been decided decades or hundreds of years ago based on geography or some military conflict ... it’s just artificial,” O’Rielly said.
A declaratory ruling prohibiting charging higher 911 fees for VoIP subscribers than for legacy phone services circulated on the 8th floor Wednesday. It would resolve jurisdiction issues over such fees, says the FCC draft Friday on docket 19-44. Also released for the Oct. 25 meeting were a draft cable TV effective competition order for parts of Massachusetts and Hawaii, the 800 MHz rebanding draft order, a draft NPRM for removing broadcast antenna siting rules that don’t appear to have ever been successfully used, a draft order on measuring broadband performance of Connect America Fund recipients and a draft order regarding telecom tariffs (see 1910030061).
Competitors and consumer advocates in interviews hoped Northwest Fiber’s buy of Frontier Communications wireline, video and long-distance operations in four states will lead to better rural broadband. Oregon and Montana intervenors listed grievances with Frontier. They haven’t formally supported or opposed the acquisitions, with regulatory reviews early on. State and federal review timelines stretch into early next year.
In a change experts told us could benefit the C-Band Alliance plan, growing conventional wisdom is the FCC is getting comfortable with a private auction, rather than running one itself. Commissioners approved 5-0 with little discussion at their August meeting (see 1908010011) “experimental” auction of more than 17,000 numbers in the recently opened 833 toll-free code. That could provide additional insights on how well such a sale would work. That auction will be in December, run by toll-free numbering administrator Somos.
MVPDs tacked on fees adding $450 to the average customer’s annual subscription, said a Thursday Consumer Reports analysis of nearly 800 bills from 13 U.S. providers last year.
Online platforms can be ordered to monitor for future sightings of content previously determined to be illegal, the European Court of Justice ruled Thursday in a case that could upend Europe's intermediary liability e-commerce directive. The high court said in Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek v. Facebook that EU members could order hosting companies to remove or block access to information "identical" or "equivalent" to content already declared illegal, including worldwide. Along with platform liability, ECJ raises issues of conflicts of law, free speech and mandatory content monitoring, representatives from the tech industry, digital rights activists, telecom sector and academia told us.
House Consumer Protection Subcommittee Chair Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., hopes for a bipartisan agreement with ranking member Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., on privacy legislation (see 1909060046). If one isn't reached, Schakowsky's prepared to move forward alone. “I’m more and more hopeful that we’re going to have a bipartisan bill, and once we confirm that, we can put out a draft for people to see,” Schakowsky told us last week. “If not, we’re still going to move forward, but I’m hopeful.”
The FCC should take up the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' directive to gather evidence on how broadcast ownership rules affect diversity as part of the agency's pending 2018 quadrennial review order (see 1909250064), said Commissioner Geoffrey Starks Thursday at the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters Fall Broadcast Management Conference. The ruling was the dominant regulatory topic, along with the QR and the state of the radio industry.
FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly renewed calls to prohibit E-rate funds to schools and libraries that receive broadband service from one provider when another has already received USF dollars at the same location. "It's awful enough when the government subsidizes network builds in areas where the private sector can or does provide service, but it's a separate layer of hell when E-rate money goes to an area already being subsidized by the FCC," O'Rielly told an FCBA USF seminar. O'Rielly has corresponded with school superintendents and consortium leaders in Texas and Arizona about their plans to build self-provisioned wide-area networks that would overbuild a local incumbent's fiber facilities. "I have never been presented with credible evidence that E-Rate funded overbuilding has been anything other than wasteful for the USF," he said, citing "copious evidence of bidding matrices designed to favor a particular outcome and schools buying far more bandwidth than they use or need."