The proposal on the FCC's Thursday agenda to update and streamline DBS rules comes as that industry's future is increasingly a question mark. An FCC official told us the vote (see 1909050043) is likely 5-0 and the item is seen is a housekeeping matter completing work of aligning DBS registration rules and procedures with other satellite services.
Attention is turning to the California attorney general’s rulemaking to implement the California Consumer Privacy Act, after lawmakers made minor CCPA tweaks in their session ended this month (see 1909160045). The law takes effect Jan. 1, but enforcement won’t start until the earlier of July or six months after AG Xavier Becerra (D) issues rules. Neither businesses nor consumer privacy groups got everything they wanted, and will be watching the AG rulemaking closely, they said in interviews last week.
Make sure small phone carriers with legitimate spikes in incoming calls don't get swept up in a coming FCC order redefining how phone companies are deemed access stimulators, said representatives of rural LECs and other small LECs in interviews last week and in docket 18-155. Chairman Ajit Pai's draft gets a vote Thursday (see 1909050043). The rules would shift financial responsibility for tariffed tandem switching and transport services away from interexchange carriers to the access-stimulating LEC for terminating traffic.
What 5G will mean for smaller, rural carriers remains unclear. At the Competitive Carriers Association conference last week in Providence, Rhode Island, attendees told us there are more questions than answers. A recurring theme was members will concentrate for now on 4G LTE, which has a long runway ahead.
Broadcasters and industry analysts widely expect a record-breaking amount of political advertising revenue from the 2020 presidential election. Though the pie is bigger than ever, the broadcast share is steadily shrinking. “There’s an ocean of money coming, ” said Kip Cassino, former political ad analyst for Borrell Associates: “But in reality the broadcasters shouldn’t be so happy -- they’ve lost almost all their share advantage” over digital.
The FCC Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee focused on disaster recovery Thursday, hearing an update by a working group preparing reports. The disaster recovery work is the furthest along of any being done by the newly reconfigured BDAC, officials said. “This is not a game,” said Jonathan Adelstein, president of the Wireless Infrastructure Association and vice chair of BDAC’s Disaster Response and Recovery working group. “This is life and death. I think our working group has stepped up to that level of urgency.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., will host a meeting with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Friday, House Commerce Committee ranking member Greg Walden, R-Ore., told us Thursday. Zuckerberg had dinner Wednesday with Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., and other senators, and Thursday meetings with Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., among other visits. Walden told us he plans to attend the meeting with McCarthy and others, saying he favors Congress taking a hard look at Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Tech platforms are in a difficult position being told not to act as editors and publishers and to moderate content, Walden said.
Messaging behind the “nextgenTV” logo CTA picked and will unveil next week for its consumer-facing ATSC 3.0 branding effort (see 1909190048) scored high marks when exposed to online focus groups last spring (see 1905300024). Backers may praise the branding decision as a safe one, consistent with widely accepted industry nomenclature. Critics might argue CTA could have picked a sexier go-to-market name for introducing 3.0 to consumers.
The Senate Appropriations Committee voted 31-0 Thursday to advance to the floor its Financial Services FY 2020 budget bill with report language to pressure the FCC to hold a public auction of spectrum on the 3.7-4.2 GHz C band. The measure, which the Financial Services Subcommittee cleared Tuesday, would allocate $339 million to the FCC and its Office of Inspector General and $312.3 million to the FTC (see 1909170060). The House-passed equivalent (HR-3351) allocated the FCC the same funding level but gave the FTC $349.7 million -- $37 million more than Senate Appropriations proposes (see 1906260081).
Some Senate Indian Affairs Committee members voiced skepticism Wednesday about the extent of FCC efforts to improve outreach to tribal governments to improve those entities' access to spectrum. The hearing focused on GAO's 2018 findings in its committee-sought study on tribal spectrum access. That report found deficiencies in FCC outreach, and the commission said at the time of the study's November report it would follow through on the recommendations (see 1811140069). Senate Indian Affairs members last year criticized what's seen as deficiencies in FCC practices for determining broadband coverage on tribal lands (see 1810030055).