The FCC will continue to make key systems available to the public, even as staff are sent home starting mid-day Thursday, said a detailed announcement (see 1901020043). Many, including staff, feared systems would be taken offline as they were in 2013 (see 1812280021). Staff held an all-hands meeting Wednesday afternoon to be briefed on the details before release of the public notice, agency and industry officials said.
Democrats' capture of control of the House hasn't made the potential outcome of the looming Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization debate any easier to predict, lawmakers and lobbyists said in interviews. Media policy stakeholders said before the election that uncertainty about which party would have the House majority in the 116th Congress made it harder to forecast the direction of recertification discussions (see 1804030061 and 1810230051). STELA is expected to be a top 2019 telecom policy priority for the House and Senate Commerce committees (see 1812060050). The Judiciary committees also are expected to play an active role in deciding whether and how to reauthorize the law.
Political stars look aligned to pass a Colorado net neutrality bill in 2019, after Democrats gained a power trifecta in November’s election and flipped the attorney general’s office (see 1811070043), Democratic state lawmakers formulating such legislation told us. Incoming Attorney General Phil Weiser (D) stands ready to defend such a Colorado law, he said in another interview. Also, the Democrats said they want to increase support for broadband through additional funding and changes to state law.
The FCC’s first high-band spectrum auction, for the 28 GHz band, had $690 million in provisionally winning bids when it closed for the holidays. It was still unclear whether it will reopen Thursday, an issue expected to be addressed in the FCC’s Wednesday shutdown public notice. Industry analysts said the numbers so far, though far lower than some previous spectrum auctions, aren’t surprising. The AWS-3 auction ended in 2015 at a record $44.9 billion and the 600 MHz TV incentive auction two years later at $20 billion.
Broadcasters Aren't Depending on FCC Repacking Outreach; Public Television Seeking to Handle for All
FCC consumer education efforts about the repacking and channel rescanning are focused on local markets, but broadcasters aren’t depending on the agency to get the word out, and public TV stations are looking to take on consumer outreach for all, said FCC and industry officials in interviews.
The FCC will investigate the nationwide CenturyLink outage that disrupted 911 service for many Americans, Chairman Ajit Pai said Friday. At our deadline, the carrier was still working to resolve the multistate outage that began Thursday (see 1812270050). The National Emergency Number Association (NENA) said the outage shows urgent need to fully deploy next-generation 911. NARUC and state consumer advocates applauded FCC action.
Many in the communications policy world have battle scars from the last prolonged federal shutdown, 16 days in 2013 when former Commissioner Mignon Clyburn was acting chairwoman. Then, the FCC, unlike some other federal agencies, largely shuttered its website, leading to widespread complaints. The FCC has been funded for the first days of this closure, but that ends Wednesday. The agency isn’t saying at this point if it will take its electronic comment filing and other licensing systems offline, with a public notice planned for Wednesday. The expectation among industry and FCC officials is that the 28 GHz auction won't reopen Thursday as planned and the website will be largely shuttered.
Text-to-911 adoption is growing, but more work lies ahead, with many state-and-territory deployments not stretching across the entire jurisdiction, emergency number officials told us last week. “We’re absolutely headed in the right direction,” but funding is necessary as well as "many, many 911 centers" and "we need to try to accelerate that,” said NG-911 Institute Executive Director Patrick Halley in an interview. Ahead of most, Maine and Massachusetts completed statewide text-to-911 rollouts this month.
The FTC has funding to operate through 11:59 p.m. EST Friday, a spokesperson said Thursday. The agency previously said it would operate through at least mid-day Friday if there were a lapse in funding (see 1812210048). The agency’s latest contingency plan shows it operating at about 23 percent in a shutdown. Employees working Friday can complete shutdown responsibilities before the end of the work day, the spokesperson said.
The Office of the U.S Trade Representative issued its first list of product exclusions from the 25 percent Trade Act Section 301 tariffs on Chinese imports, granting full or partial exemptions for nearly two dozen 10-digit Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheadings, said a notice posted Friday at the agency’s website. The exclusions apply retroactively to July 6, the date the first tranche of tariffs took effect, and will remain in effect until one year after the USTR’s notice is published in the Federal Register.