Kidvid rules are either an anachronism with significant First Amendment problems or a small price for broadcasters to pay in exchange for the "money-making machine" that's a broadcast license. Those were the opposing viewpoints at a Media Institute lunch Tuesday with former Commissioner Robert McDowell, now at Cooley, debating Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy's Gigi Sohn, a former FCC chairman's aide. The only common ground was that Congress is unlikely to get involved.
Congress has a constitutional duty to ensure antitrust law is working properly within the digital economy, said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., and House Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline, D-R.I., during a hearing Tuesday (see 1906100029). It was the first in a series of tech competition investigation hearings, which ranking member Doug Collins, R-Ga., said he “firmly” supports. Collins said any potential legislation from the probe “should be consistent with keeping the free market free.” Companies “that offer new innovations, better solutions and more consumer benefit at lower prices often become big -- to the benefit of society,” he said.
The C-Band Alliance (CBA) is proposing a sealed-bid combinatorial second-price auction process for clearing 180 MHz of the 3.7-4.2 GHz band. The auction design -- now being discussed with the FCC -- is the last of the major components of its band-clearing plan put before the commission, the CBA told us Tuesday. That follows its transition (see 1904090067) and band plan.
Lawmakers expressed confidence Tuesday about prospects for Congress to pass anti-robocalls legislation this year. Three House Commerce Committee leaders said during a USTelecom event an agreement on a compromise bill may be very near. House Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone, D-N.J., and ranking member Greg Walden, R-Ore., have been negotiating on a bill that combines elements from the Stopping Bad Robocalls Act (HR-946) and six other measures the Communications Subcommittee examined in April (see 1904300212).
Plaintiffs made initial arguments at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear challenges to the FCC’s wireless infrastructure changes that were aimed at speeding build out of small cells and 5G. Court watchers said what the 9th Circuit will do is difficult to predict, though it may prove unfriendly to President Donald Trump’s FCC.
PHILADELPHIA -- Judges for the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hearing oral argument for Prometheus IV Tuesday aggressively questioned the FCC's lack of data on the impact on diversity of its ownership rules. They seemed skeptical of agency arguments that it wasn't required to gather additional information to justify rolling back ownership regulations. “Where the data ends, that's where the commission's judgment begins,” argued FCC Associate General Counsel Jacob Lewis Tuesday in support of the FCC's 2010 and 2014 quadrennial review orders and subsequent order on reconsideration. Since eliminating the rules served the public interest, the agency didn't need to know the impacts of those decisions on diversity, he said.
T-Mobile's buy of Sprint faces an antitrust lawsuit from New York, eight other states and the District of Columbia. Democratic attorneys general sued Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, ahead of decisions by the FCC, DOJ and California Public Utilities Commission. Because "the effect of T- Mobile’s merger with Sprint 'may be substantially to lessen competition,' the Court should permanently enjoin the merger," the lawsuit said. States contacted DOJ and carriers, and “negotiations are ongoing,” said New York AG Letitia James (D) at a livestreamed news conference.
FCC-proposed 2019 regulatory fee hikes aren't transparent and the agency didn't provide enough information about them to form a basis for substantive comments, said satellite carriers, 50 state broadcaster associations and Incompas in comments posted through Monday in docket 19-105 by Friday's comment deadline. Similar criticisms were raised by NAB and other broadcasters in earlier comments (see 1906070063).
Despite calls for carriers to provide robocall-blocking tools for free, it would be a bad outcome if every carrier opted for the same, cheap option instead of employing a variety of them, said Patrick Halley, USTelecom senior vice president-advocacy and regulatory affairs, at an FCBA robocalls CLE Monday. "Carriers face legitimate costs." He said noted secure handling of asserted information using tokens (Shaken) and secure telephone identity revisited (Stir) implementation will be expensive for some carriers. Call-blocking tools' costs came up repeatedly at last week's FCC commissioners' meeting (see 1906060056). And Commissioner Geoffrey Starks on Monday wrote 14 providers seeking details on their plans to offer free, default call blocking services to consumers (see 1906100025).
The Senate Banking Committee is looking for bipartisan consensus on data privacy issues, but and not yet considering its own bill (see 1905070066), ranking member Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, told us. Members will discuss data privacy during a hearing Tuesday with a GAO official and a privacy expert. The House Antitrust Subcommittee plans a hearing that day on big tech’s impact on journalism (see 1906060065).