Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Communications Subcommittee ranking member John Thune, R-S.D., pressed the FCC Thursday for a detailed accounting of its distribution of money to four broadband programs enacted via the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and COVID-19 aid measures. Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., meanwhile, led refiling of the Funding Affordable Internet with Reliable (Fair) Contributions Act.
Inmate calling services providers and consumer advocacy organizations welcomed a draft NPRM and order the FCC will consider during the commissioners' open meeting Thursday that would begin implementation of the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act of 2022. Advocates sought some clarifying language in the final item, and ICS providers sought additional language in the draft on how the agency should establish just and reasonable rates.
Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Communications Subcommittee ranking member John Thune, R-S.D., pressed the FCC in a letter we obtained ahead of its planned sending Thursday morning for a detailed accounting of its distribution of money to four broadband programs enacted via the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and COVID-19 aid measures. Thune in December began his own review of all federal broadband programs’ oversight of funding disbursals. Cruz has joined Thune in raising concerns about some of these programs since taking over as lead Commerce Republican in January.
FCC commissioners are expected to approve a robotexting order and Further NPRM, scheduled for a vote Thursday, though with a few tweaks addressing issues raised by CTIA and others, FCC and industry officials said. Commissioners OK'd a second wireless item, incorporating into agency rules four new and updated standards for equipment testing. That item, which was deleted from the agenda for the meeting, hasn’t been controversial.
A Friday House Communications Subcommittee hearing intended to jump-start negotiations on a comprehensive spectrum legislative package touched on some of those policy issues, but subpanel members used it as a bully pulpit to blast the Senate for failing to prevent the FCC’s frequency auction authority from expiring Thursday, as expected (see 2303090074). The House gaveled out Friday for a recess scheduled to end March 22. Senate leaders and Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., who disagreed about dueling bills to renew the commission’s mandate (see 2303080081), expect to return to negotiations this week.
The FCC’s administrative law judge isn’t obligated to resolve the Standard/Tegna transaction’s proceeding (see 2303070081) before the deal’s May 22 breakup date, and the broadcasters haven’t shown the case should be kicked back to the full FCC, said response filings posted Friday in docket 22-162 from the FCC Enforcement Bureau and two sectors of the Communications Workers of America. “The Media Bureau afforded the Applicants extra time and extra opportunity to establish that they were entitled to relief,” said the joint filing from the CWA's NewsGuild and National Association of Broadcast Engineers and Technicians. It isn’t the unions’ “or the Media Bureau’s fault that the Applicants’ sales agreement is about to expire,” the filing said. “This is entirely the parties’ doing.”
Eugene, Ore., Mayor Lucy Vinis (D) and Springfield, Ore., Mayor Sean VanGordon (R) and other city officials spoke with staff for FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel about RF safety and other issues. “Local governments often face questions and requests for action” on RF “from their residents, and given that the Communications Act assigns primary responsibility in this area to the Commission, we believe the Commission should shoulder more of the burden of explaining its rules to the public and also informing the public they should look to the Commission and Congress if they are unhappy with the Commission’s rules or with federal preemption of local authority to regulate RF emissions,” said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 19-226. They also discussed the FCC’s affordable connectivity program and “expressed concern about the program’s forthcoming funding cliff,” the filing said.
The National Hispanic Media Coalition and Free Press (FP) offer dueling guidelines to the White House for selecting a new FCC nominee to replace ex-pick Gigi Sohn, amid continued fallout from the former candidate’s Tuesday announcement she asked President Joe Biden to withdraw her from consideration (see [Ref 2303070082]). Sohn’s supporters continued to lay blame Wednesday on opponents whose treatment of her during an often fractious and acrid year-plus confirmation process led to the withdrawal.
Minnesota lawmakers weighed bills Tuesday to release more cash for broadband and create a tax exemption for fiber broadband. In Florida, electric cooperatives raised concerns a bill to apply pole attachment rules to co-ops would make it harder for them to bring broadband to hard-to-serve areas.
Uncertainty about the prospects for congressional leaders to break a Senate impasse on the length of a new short-term extension of the FCC’s spectrum auction authority led lawmakers and industry officials to renew warnings, during a Tuesday Incompas event and in interviews, about the potential consequences if Capitol Hill allows the commission’s current mandate to expire as scheduled Thursday. Senators have been grappling with whether to accept a House-passed bill that would renew the FCC’s remit through May 19 (HR-1108) to give lawmakers more time to negotiate a broader spectrum legislative package (see 2302240066). Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., implied Monday there wasn’t a deal then (see 2303060071).