Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with the top stories for Nov. 2-6 in case you missed them. You can find any article by searching on the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
USF contribution reform could still be a long way off, said FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly and former Chair Mignon Clyburn at NARUC’s virtual annual conference Tuesday. O’Rielly, co-chair of the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service, slammed that body as dysfunctional. Earlier in the day, state officials cited the COVID-19 pandemic as they urged national broadband action.
Joe Biden's presidential transition team for the FCC is starting to take shape, but it's early on given most national news organizations declared his win Saturday. President Donald Trump hasn’t conceded. A few names are emerging for the landing team, and a final list isn't likely until after Thanksgiving, stakeholders said in interviews. Team leaders from former President Barack Obama's interregnum 12 years ago said cooperation from the outgoing administration is critical.
The Bureau of Industry and Security had planned to submit several export control proposals for the 2020 Wassenaar Arrangement but will have to wait another year due to disruptions caused by COVID-19 (see 2004290044). Matt Borman, the Commerce Department's deputy assistant secretary for export administration, said Wassenaar has been unable to meet this year and could not gather recommendations for dual-use controls from member states.
The European Union is increasingly losing out in technology competition with the U.S. and China, technology and trade experts said during a Nov. 6 event hosted by Chatham House. While they suggested more EU cooperation with the U.S., they also said Europe needs a different approach to technology regulation to keep from falling further behind.
The Bureau of Industry and Security is considering export controls on certain “software” that can be exploited to develop biological weapons (see 2010010003) and requested feedback from industry about the impact of the controls, the agency said in a Nov. 5 notice. The controls would target software “for the operation of nucleic acid assemblers and synthesizers” that can design and build “functional genetic elements from digital sequence data.” The controls would fall under BIS’s emerging technology effort, and comments are due Dec. 21.
T-Mobile agreed to pay $200 million to settle an FCC Enforcement Bureau investigation of waste, fraud and abuse connected with Sprint receiving Lifeline subsidies for 885,000 subscribers who weren’t using the service, said an order and consent decree Wednesday (see 2011040016). T-Mobile bought Sprint earlier this year. The payment “is the largest fixed-amount settlement the Commission has ever secured to resolve an investigation,” said an FCC news release. “While we inherited this issue with our merger, we are glad that it is now resolved,” T-Mobile emailed.
Emergency dispatchers in the nation's capital appear to be struggling with properly sending ambulances to scenes where help is needed, radio traffic we observed via OpenMHZ showed Tuesday. In routing ambulances to a motor vehicle accident and to a separate report of an apartment building fire, there appeared to have been delays of about five minutes each. This all occurred around 2 p.m. EST. A 911 dispatcher was told by ambulance staff, five minutes after the apparent dispatch of rescue personnel, that "we have not been dispatched. It doesn’t say anything." The ambulance employee suggested to the 911 center operator that "you can resend it, and then we can be on our way." That then occurred. In the response to the fire report, an ambulance sent there said it was instead on a different call and couldn't go to the new scene. There have been technological problems at the city's 911 center after a possible tech or equipment upgrade or update (see our Oct. 30 report here). "8 days after the disastrous upgrade & 1 week after the great meltdown DC 911 still can't keep track of what ambulances are available," tweeted local emergency communications expert Dave Statter. "This is delaying 911 help. Many @dcfireems units are still having tablet issues." We observed similar as well. Washington, D.C.'s Office of Unified Communications, which runs the 911 center, didn't comment last week or Tuesday. For more information on any technical or equipment issues occurring in recent days at OUC, we filed a Freedom of Information Act request Tuesday. Local police continue to say they are unaffected by any issues. Representatives for D.C. Fire and EMS, city council Judiciary and Public Safety Committee Chair Charles Allen (D), and interim Deputy Mayor-Public Safety and Justice Roger Mitchell didn't comment Tuesday.
Punishing state 911 fee diverters could worsen funding problems for the emergency call system and might be ineffective, commented local and public safety groups this week in docket 20-291. Penalizing local governments for states’ decisions is “much like sending your daughter to bed without dinner because your son took a cookie from the jar without permission,” the National Association of State 911 Administrators (NASNA) responded to the FCC notice of inquiry. “The two siblings are related, but the response is not.”
Local and state governments concerned about FCC compound expansion rules, approved 3-2 last week (see 2010270043), got concessions in the final version that was posted Tuesday. That's based on our comparison with the draft. The agency didn’t change the order to address concerns about the expansion's size relative to the tower site or about how big was the added 5G gear.