The FCC will give relief to incumbent LECs, granting them forbearance from pricing regulation on lower-speed legacy transport and requirements to sell the transport as unbundled network elements (UNE) to competitive carriers that then use them in their business data services, voting unanimously at its meeting Wednesday on a petition from USTelecom (see 1905130050). The agency issued a draft order in late June in docket 18-141 (see 1906190044). The new order allows CLECs to continue to buy the UNE transport from ILECs for the next six months, and gives them three years (concurrently) to transition away from the transport networks or negotiate new business agreements with the ILECs.
The U.S. is outpacing other countries in the race toward 5G in "the allocation of spectrum" but is playing catch-up in other areas such as fiber deployment, said Commerce Department Deputy Chief of Staff Earl Comstock Wednesday. Comstock spoke on a panel on 5G and supply chains at the annual Bureau of Industry and Security conference (see 1907100013). The spectrum "is not perfect" and the administration is still working to "find the right spectrum in the right spaces," he said. "We have made available to our companies far more than any other country."
A California Senate panel cleared a VoIP deregulation bill at a Wednesday hearing after sponsor Assembly Appropriations Committee Chair Lorena Gonzalez (D) accepted several committee amendments to scale back the controversial measure that's opposed by the California Public Utilities Commission. Two senators voted no. Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee members also supported an amended bill responding to Verizon's throttling traffic of Santa Clara County firefighters during the Mendocino Complex Fire last year.
Commissioners approved bidding procedures for the third high-band auction this year and the largest FCC auction in history based on megahertz to be sold. Discussion during Wednesday's meeting sparked confrontation between Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, who partially dissented, and Chairman Ajit Pai. The auction starts Dec. 10.
The Senate Commerce Committee pulled the Broadband Deployment Accuracy and Technological Availability (Data) Act from consideration before its planned Wednesday markup during a committee executive session. S-1822 is one of several measures seen as potentially influencing the direction of a yet-to-be-released FCC order on collecting more-granular broadband coverage data (see 1907050044). Commissioners are expected to vote on the pending order at their Aug. 1 meeting (see 1906120076).
The FCC voted along party lines Wednesday for partial pre-emption of San Francisco's Article 52 open-access rule, with dissenting Democratic commissioners complaining of regulatory overreach. Geoffrey Starks called the declaratory ruling “not sound law and not good policy." Jessica Rosenworcel said it's "an affront to our long history" of local control. The Republicans and Starks, meanwhile, backed the related NPRM asking about other ways the FCC could boost broadband deployment in multi-tenant environments (MTE), though Mike O'Rielly said he did so with reservations.
The FCC voted 3-2 along party lines Wednesday to approve a kidvid order that was little changed from the draft version released last month, as expected (see 1907090069). Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Geoffrey Starks condemned the order. “There is nothing in this item that would prevent a broadcaster from reducing the amount of regularly scheduled, 30-minute core programming aired on its primary stream to zero,” Starks said.
Requiring Lifeline providers to use a federal database to check if consumers are eligible for government-subsidized, carrier-provided phone and broadband services is causing more concerns from states, as they lose the ability to run their own checks. NARUC members will vote at their July 21- 24 meeting on asking the FCC to halt activation of the national verifier (NV) in any more states this year, and separately on recommending the agency not cap the overall USF. NV rollout prompted concerns subscribers are being dropped from carriers' customer rolls over difficultly verifying eligibility even though they may indeed be eligible (see 1907080009).
The FCC approved revised rules for the 2.5 GHz educational broadband service band over partial dissents at the commissioners' meeting Wednesday by Jessica Rosenworcel and Geoffrey Starks. The biggest change from the draft order was that instead of single 100 and 16 MHz licenses, the FCC will offer two 50 MHz licenses. The order also contains language (see 1907030043) sought by Commissioner Brendan Carr addressing licenses held by national nonprofits. Rosenworcel and Starks dissented to all of the order except provisions preserving a filing window for tribal entities seeking new EBS licenses.
Tech companies should be required to follow industry-written best business practices for protecting children’s online safety to “earn” Section 230 liability protections, said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. That portion of the Communications Decency Act gives websites immunity from liability for the third-party content they host. Congress has chipped away at that immunity, including with anti-sex trafficking legislation passed in 2018 (see 1806290044).