The Lifeline national verifier is operational in Utah and five other “soft launch” states, the FCC announced Monday. Universal Service Administrative Co. got Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) accreditation Friday, said USAC Communications Director Jaymie Gustafson in a Monday interview. The reveal surprised observers, coming less than a week after the USAC official told a Utah Public Service Commission workshop the release date was unknown. Growing delay brought scrutiny from states and others (see 1806070022), as has an FCC proposal to cut Lifeline support to resellers (see 1806150048).
The FCC is seen leaning toward an order that would set a 50 percent national ownership cap but may no longer be shooting for a July commissioners’ meeting agenda that's also expected to include an NPRM on relaxing kids' video rules, broadcast lawyers and executives said in interviews Monday (see 1806140055). Several said the agency may need more time to settle on a final ownership cap number and arrive at a final cap order, and one suggested the agency may no longer be seeking to beat the expected ruling against the UHF discount by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. If an FCC order on the cap is held until the agency’s August meeting, it's still likely to beat the expected court verdict, attorneys said. The July agenda is expected to be released Thursday.
SHANGHAI -- Hopes to expand CES Asia annually materialized for CTA, we found at CES Asia last week. It covered 20 tech categories in five halls of the 17-building Shanghai New International Expo Centre, compared with one-and-a-half halls at the inaugural event in 2015. Exhibitor count this year is 500 vs. some 200 in 2015, and exhibitor space was 50,000 gross square meters, vs. 20,000, said CTA.
TVs were the big winner Friday when the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative eliminated them from its final list of Chinese imports earmarked for Trade Act Section 301 tariffs of 25 percent. Other sectors didn’t fare so well, including those that import Chinese printer parts, thermostats and computer equipment used in artificial intelligence and blockchain technology. China vowed to retaliate "immediately."
Rhode Island lawmakers might consider ending 911 fee diversion next year, Rhode Island House Finance Vice Chairman Kenneth Marshall (D) told us Friday. Seeking a more immediate fix, FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly and state Rep. Robert Lancia (R) slammed a proposed Rhode Island budget that renames rather than restricts the state 911 fund. “The citizens of your state deserve more than just a name change,” said O’Rielly in a Friday letter to Gov. Gina Raimondo (D) and Rhode Island House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello (D). Raimondo earlier supported legislators ending diversion (see 1803200052).
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said net neutrality "passion and heat" obscure "common ground" for upholding a free and open internet that stimulates broadband network investment, consumer choice and digital opportunity. The right solution is for Congress and stakeholders to hammer out legislation on consensus policies targeting internet blocking, throttling and anti-competitive arrangements, and then move on, he said Thursday evening in Q&A at the Cato Institute. State and local internet regulation is a "recipe for chaos," he said.
The 3.7-4.2 GHz band will play a role in deployment of 5G, speakers agreed Friday at a New America event, but they jousted over whether the C-band could be cleared in only some geographic areas and complained about lack of clarity and technical details on the two main plans for terrestrial access to the band. Top priority must be preventing harm to incumbent users, and there needs to be far more detail about the Broadband Access Coalition (BAC) and Intelsat/SES/Intel proposals before an evaluation can start, said American Cable Association (ACA) Senior Vice President-Government Affairs Ross Lieberman.
Groups that typically would be expected to rally behind FCC nominee Geoffrey Starks have remained mostly quiet in the weeks since President Donald Trump sent the nomination to the Senate (see 1806010072 and 1806040067). That appears to reflect concerns the groups cited soon after Starks emerged in March (see 1803090040) as the likely nominee: with almost no track record and little else to go on, self-described public interest groups and others are reluctant to say too much about the nomination. Starks’ lack of a record is widely viewed as one of his selling points and an important reason the Senate is likely to easily confirm him, communications lawyers and others told us. The Senate Commerce Committee set Starks' confirmation hearing for Wednesday in what's perceived to be a bid to fast-track approval (see 1806120047 and 1806130096).
All lawmakers at Thursday's House Digital Commerce Subcommittee hearing on advertising industry digital data gathering practices agreed problems need to be addressed. There was a partisan divide in tone and tenor of lawmakers' questions to executives and consumer advocates, whose testimony mirrored written remarks (see 1806130074). Lawmakers from both parties frequently referenced the ongoing debate on the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica privacy breach issues (see 1806130057).
Many urged the FCC to limit business-oriented caller exposure to Telephone Consumer Protection Act liability, after partial court reversal of a 2015 commission decision targeting unwanted robocalls (see 1803160053). Financial and other corporate interests, including some telecom groups, said the commission should narrow its key definition of "automatic telephone dialing systems" (ATDS) subject to TCPA wireless restrictions and give parties more protection when making inadvertent calls to reassigned numbers. Consumer groups, class-action parties and a few others resisted such pleadings, which they said would further open the floodgates to unwanted robocalls. Comments were included in docket 18-152 on a public notice inviting input on the remand and other TCPA interpretations (see 1805150014).