The FCC should prevent government dollars from funding broadband buildout in areas with a provider offering 10 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps up, recommended the Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment in the final vote at the last meeting of its current charter Monday. The group will be rechartered (see 1906110048). The “2.0” version is expected to begin meeting by the fall, said the committee's Designated Federal Officer, Jamila Bess Johnson, in an interview. The agency is “well into the process of rechartering and soliciting new members,” said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in a videotaped message.
The “same concerns” that led the Trump administration to remove smartwatches and fitness trackers from the List 3 Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports in September “continue to apply” with the proposed fourth tranche, commented Fitbit in docket USTR-2019-0004. Imposing 25 percent tariffs would cause Fitbit “significant and unavoidable economic harm," it commented, dated Monday and posted Thursday.
Weather and disaster monitoring interests voiced more worries about terrestrial wireless use of the 1675-1680 MHz band, in filings late last week in FCC docket 19-116. Friday was the deadline for comment on proposed allocation and service rules for the band (see 1905210011). Weather interests oppose Ligado's terrestrial low-power service plans for the band and its alternatives for delivering NOAA weather satellite data (see 1704130023).
ISP stakeholders want predictable rules on how industry can collect and use consumer data. "We need federal privacy regulation," said FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson Thursday. "We can't deal with a patchwork. We need one law." Attorney and AT&T veteran Robert Quinn at Wilkinson Barker, agreed. "If you don't have a federal law, you're going to have 45 state laws." If the issue isn't addressed, he told the Phoenix Center, "that's a fail for the federal government."
Often, conflicts with localities about small-cell deployment aesthetic issues are a proxy for the underlying concern, which is RF safety, some said at Friday's FCC Technological Advisory Council meeting, its first for 2019. Local opposition is often framed in terms of densification issues, but "the elephant in the room" is RF exposure, said Dale Hatfield, executive fellow at Silicon Flatirons.
The FCC is expected to take comments this summer on an NPRM on E-rate modernization that would make permanent a 5-year-old budget approach to funding internal broadband connectivity technology, such as Wi-Fi routers. The draft on circulation addresses so-called category 2 funding, officials said. It's expected to follow recommendations from a February Wireline Bureau report recommending the agency renew its approach for equal distribution of funding (see 1902110056). That tack replaced a "two-in-five" budget method that allowed anchor institutions to apply for the category 2 funding two of every five years.
Approving T-Mobile buying Sprint is “one of the most critical steps the FCC can take” to promote mid-band 5G, Chairman Ajit Pai said Friday at the New York State Wireless Association conference. Earlier, wireless officials complained here in New York City that some cities continue to resist 5G despite FCC and state pre-emptions.
The USTelecom-led pilot broadband mapping effort in Missouri and Virginia should be done next month and then scale up to some other states this fall, with a national georeferenced broadband serviceable location fabric complete sometime next year, said CostQuest CEO Jim Stegeman in a webinar update Thursday. The BSLF effort, which involves trying to map all the various homes and other locations where broadband service at least could go and separating them from other locations, started three months ago. The national effort, if started today, would take about 12 months, he said.
An interoperable video calling (IVC) advisory committee to the North American Numbering Council couldn't reach consensus between a plan to implement a telephone number database or to use a technology platform-based approach, said working group co-chair Matthew Gerst, vice president-regulatory affairs at CTIA. "We're asking for an extension of our charter." The group issued preliminary recommendations to the FCC in a report and a roundtable discussion at the agency's headquarters Thursday. The group was tasked with determining how to best facilitate point-to-point video calls using 10-digit phone numbers across video service boundaries.
Kentucky Lifeline subscribers may be decreasing partly due to the FCC and Universal Service Administrative Co.’s Lifeline national verifier rollout, said a group of RLECs and CLECs. They commented Wednesday in docket 2016-00059 at the Kentucky Public Service Commission about possible changes to state Lifeline support. Kentucky should expand state Lifeline support to include mobile service, revisiting a 2017 decision to limit it to landline carriers with declining enrollments, wireless companies said.