FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said the April 12 commissioners’ meeting will focus on 5G for a second straight month. It includes the public notice for the auction of the 37, 39 and 47 GHz bands and a plan for sharing the 37 GHz band between industry and DOD. 5G is “the next big thing in wireless,” Pai blogged. He plans votes on nixing a rural telco USF rate floor and granting part of a USTelecom forbearance petition seeking ILEC relief from certain structural-separation and reporting duties. And there's a media modernization item, among others in the pipeline (see 1903210072).
Universal Service Administrative Co. is working to enhance its Lifeline national verifier (NV) of consumer eligibility, said Michelle Garber, USAC vice president-Lifeline, noting some changes will take time or could require more FCC direction. She acknowledged the NV's lack of greater access to government databases, particularly in less-populated rural states, increased initial verification failure rates, but said access to a key Medicaid national database is coming. "I don't think it's a question of if that'll happen; it's a question of when," she told us recently. "I feel like it'll happen this year."
The FCC approved 5-0 an order allocating the first bands above 95 GHz for Wi-Fi and other unlicensed use. Commissioners Geoffrey Starks and Jessica Rosenworcel voted for the order but raised questions, as expected (see 1903130057). The "spectrum horizons" order provides unlicensed use of 21.2 GHz of spectrum in four band segments and would permit experimental use on any frequency from 95 GHz to 3 THz.
California's net neutrality law is "a consequence" of FCC deregulation, said ex-commission Chairman Tom Wheeler on C-SPAN: "If the federal government has stepped aside, and the agency responsible for America’s networks says, 'No, we don’t have this responsibility any more for internet networks,' and we are a federal system, then why should we be surprised if the states step up?" Under President Donald Trump, "those networks regulated by the FCC have gotten everything they want. And they turn around and they say, ‘Oh my goodness, there’s a void there, we need some kind of rules.’ So they turn around and they go to Congress and say, ‘We’ve got to pre-empt what California has done,'" Wheeler added. ISPs are discovering the truth of what Adam Smith wrote that markets can't work without rules, Wheeler told The Communicators, put online Friday and televised this week. "They had uniform set of rules on open internet … on privacy that got overturned in the Trump administration." Monday, the Internet Association and USTelecom didn't comment and the commission and NCTA declined to comment. Wheeler criticized the FCC on cybersecurity under Chairman Ajit Pai. "If the most important network is probably going to be the wireless network, now in shorthand described as 5G," Wheeler asked, "what are we doing now to get in front of the threats that we know are coming?" The agency under Wheeler sought to require standards for spectrum the agency is making available for fifth-generation wireless be able to prevent such attacks, and sought technical feedback from experts, he recalled. "When the Trump FCC came in, they shut down both of these activities." He said the examination of what 5G gear can be bought is "important," such as whether equipment can come from Chinese companies. "The first step in rebalancing between the people and the powerful begins with oversight of the dominant network" via net neutrality, Wheeler blogged Friday for the Brookings Institution. "The second step comes with the establishment of rules for those who ride on the internet." The Trump FTC, which declined comment Monday, "has made noises, but has yet to step up to this challenge," wrote Wheeler, a Brookings visiting fellow. "Today’s internet barons behave just as the industrial barons in [then-President Teddy] Roosevelt’s day."
The rollout of a Lifeline national verifier (NV) continues to spark concerns that many eligible low-income consumers will be thwarted from signing up for the program or de-enrolled if already subscribing, though there are signs of progress. The Universal Service Administrative Co., charged by the FCC with implementing the NV, lacks application programming interfaces (APIs) for providers and electronic access to many key government databases. That undermines automated verification of consumer eligibility, and manual processes are cumbersome, stakeholders told us.
Frontier Communications faces a second Minnesota investigation in response to complaints by consumers and workers in a state Commerce Department report finding that the carrier possibly violated at least 35 laws and rules (see 1901240025). The Minnesota Office of Attorney General is probing possible consumer fraud in parallel to a Public Utilities Commission’s service-quality investigation, OAG commented this week at the PUC. Responding at length to the Commerce report of about 1,000 complaining consumers, the telco claimed fewer than 450 Minnesota customers had major service problems last year.
A major Conference Preparatory Meeting (CPM) for the 2019 World Radiocommunication Conference ended Thursday (see 1902280070). Reports out of Geneva are the U.S. is struggling to find its way, industry and government officials said. The U.S. had planned to accredit its delegation, but the partial federal government shutdown made that impossible, industry officials said.
T-Mobile Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray and others from the carrier met FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr on the carrier’s proposed buy of Sprint. The executives discussed the likely effect of the combination over the next two years, said a filing posted Thursday in docket 18-197. "In each year capacity increases of the merged firm would exceed the combined standalones, throughput increases of the merged firm would exceed the standalones, and the expected net present value of consumer welfare would also increase,” T-Mobile said: “The T-Mobile representatives additionally summarized their discussion with the Transaction Team regarding porting data versus other switching data.” Communications Workers of America said three union members from T-Mobile met Commissioner Geoffrey Starks and had meetings with aides to Commissioners Mike O’Rielly and Jessica Rosenworcel. They delivered a petition signed by 818 wireless workers, which “expresses the workers’ concerns that the proposed merger … will result in the loss of many American jobs, cuts in wages and commissions, and a corresponding reduction in service quality.” The FCC noted it received requests from four more state attorney general offices seeking access to confidential numbering resource utilization and forecast reports and local number portability data related to their investigations into the transaction. It said they are similar to earlier requests by AG offices in New York and nine other states (see 1808300031 and 1810220052). The federal commission wants to give carriers an opportunity to contact the AG offices in Colorado, Iowa, Maryland and Massachusetts "or to take any other action they may deem appropriate if they have concerns or oppose disclosure," said a public notice Thursday, noting comments or objections shouldn't be sent to the FCC.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and other lawmakers highlighted a range of communications policy issues they see as affecting broadcasters, including the FCC's 2018 quadrennial review proceeding on media ownership rules, during a Tuesday NAB conference. But none offered clear insight into their thinking on a major focus of broadcasters' 2019 policy interest -- the debate over Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization (see 1812280025). 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 be active in deciding whether and how to reauthorize the law.
The FCC Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council meets March 8 at 1 p.m. EST, says a notice for Tuesday's Federal Register. The meeting in the Commission Meeting Room at FCC headquarters will be the last under CSRIC’s current charter.