The FCC adopted a new seal, before its planned move to new headquarters near Union Station in Washington said a public notice Thursday. The seal, depicting an eagle positioned behind a shield decorated with a satellite, microwave and broadcast dishes and a cellular tower facing strung communications wires, was chosen through an agencywide contest that began in November. The winning design, by Umasankar Arumugam, was voted on in December and announced internally in January, an agency spokesperson told us. Arumugam’s LinkedIn profile lists him as a director for IT company NCI Information Systems, which mentions analytic work for the FCC on its website. Arumugam didn’t comment. The seal has four stars as a call-back to FCC predecessor the Federal Radio Commission and 18 stars representing the agency's bureaus and offices, the PN said. Because of the move and need to create new seals for the new building regardless, the overall cost “was minimized as much as can be,” a spokesperson said. The FCC said it will begin officially using the new seal after the move, which is delayed by COVID-19 concerns (see 2004130057). The U.S. Institute of Heraldry, which provides heraldic services to federal agencies and the military, didn’t comment. American College of Heraldry Executive Director David Wooten said the seal leans “toward the logo end of the spectrum.” The "logic behind the FCC’s new seal is certainly clear, though it would not necessarily qualify as heraldry,” Wooten said.
With COVID-19 disproportionately affecting minority and disadvantaged communities, the FCC Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment's working groups adjusted their focus to grapple with the pandemic, according to work plans presented Tuesday at the group’s teleconferenced first meeting under its new charter. Along with reacting to the virus, the committee’s working groups laid out plans for workshops and events aimed at increasing diversity among communications companies. “When the country catches a cold, the most vulnerable catch the flu,” said Brookings Institution Fellow Nicol Turner-Lee and Diversity in Tech WG chair.
The FCC Consumer Advisory Committee approved recommendations to the agency by its Truth-in-Billing (TIB) Working Group. CAC was also warned that scam robocalls are evolving under COVID-19 and consumers need to be vigilant. Members met virtually Monday.
The FCC is seeking to better assess emergency communications reliability by adding data fields to the network outage reporting and 911 reliability certification systems, the Public Safety Bureau said. On an FCBA CLE webinar, also Monday, T-Mobile officials raised some related cautions. North Carolina, meanwhile, hasn’t faced major challenges with emergency-call delivery amid the coronavirus but can't “let our guard down,” the state’s 911 Board Executive Director Pokey Harris said in a Thursday interview.
Industry, policymakers and consumer advocates are seeking new ways to expand Lifeline enrollment and benefits in response to the public health and economic crisis, we're told. Some advocates are pursuing emergency funding to provide a more robust residential broadband Lifeline benefit to meet the demands of working and learning at home. Stay-at-home orders put restraints on Lifeline promotion and enrollment.
States have authority to require 72 hours of backup power at wireless cellsites, the Greenlining Institute replied Thursday in docket R.18-03-011 at the California Public Utilities Commission. It disagreed with T-Mobile, which said it’s illegal for CPUC to regulate wireless carriers (see 2004060061). Greenlining cited Communications Act Section 332.
Commissioners are expected Thursday to approve 5-0 an order and Further NPRM allowing unlicensed sharing throughout 6 GHz, FCC and industry officials said in interviews last week. A few tweaks are anticipated, but no material changes, despite widespread concerns raised by many groups about harmful interference from indoor devices that don’t use automated frequency control (AFC). Chairman Ajit Pai said agency engineers fully vetted the technology and believe sharing doesn’t pose a risk to the huge number of incumbents across the 1,200 megahertz (see 2004060062).
T-Mobile/Sprint got its final OK, as California Public Utilities Commissioners voted 5-0 Thursday for a revised proposal that reasserted the agency’s authority to review the deal and adjusted some conditions (see 2004150058). The Utility Reform Network (TURN) said it's disappointed the CPUC didn’t punish carriers for closing their deal two weeks before the scheduled vote.
It took White House proxy support and concerns about commercial spectrum being essentially claimed by federal agencies to break the years-old logjam of Ligado's proposed terrestrial use of L-band spectrum with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's decision to circulate a draft approval order (see 2004160019), we were told Thursday. Swift action could be next, with multiple commissioners' offices expecting to vote on it this week. An array of primarily aerospace interests urged the FCC to close and dismiss the proceeding.
The FTC created an agency-wide pandemic response team and a pandemic-specific plan to address evolving COVID-19 issues, according to documents we obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Chairman Joe Simons declined to share the plan's annex with Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., calling it “nonpublic” in a March 13 letter to the Senate Commerce Committee ranking member. Federal guidance on COVID-19 hasn’t "always kept up with the most pressing concerns expressed by FTC staff,” Simons wrote. He recommended a “timely and consolidated” source or site for federal agencies to plan for and “adapt to quickly changing circumstances.”