fcc

Federal anti-trust staff want to block T-Mobile-Sprint merger, report says

23 May 2019 by Steve Blum
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Despite Monday’s raucous cheerleading from republican members of the Federal Communications Commission, the federal justice department is moving toward blocking T-Mobile’s proposed takeover of Sprint. According to a Reuters report, a staff review has concluded that allowing the two companies to combine, thereby reducing the competitive landscape from four nationwide mobile carriers to three, would do too much damage to the telecoms marketplace…

The U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust division staff has recommended the agency block T-Mobile US Inc’s $26 billion acquisition of smaller rival Sprint Corp, according to two sources familiar with the matter…

The final decision on whether to allow two of the four nationwide wireless carriers to merge now lies with political appointees at the department, headed by antitrust division chief Makan Delrahim…

One critic of the deal, Gene Kimmelman, president of Public Knowledge, the nonprofit public interest group, said top brass in the Justice Department’s antitrust division do not generally overrule the staff but they occasionally do.

… More

Pai jumps in on T-Mobile’s side, CPUC and federal justice department not cheering Sprint deal yet

21 May 2019 by Steve Blum
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Tmobile san francisco 18may2019

T-Mobile threw a hail mary pass to Federal Communications Commission chair Ajit Pai yesterday, hoping to move its proposed merger with Sprint over the regulatory approval line. Pai caught it and started running, but could be tackled short of the end zone by the justice department. And the California Public Utilities Commission’s review is still a whole ’nother ball game.

Yesterday morning began with Pai announcing that new promises from T-Mobile about divesting a down market subsidiary – Boost Mobile – and expanding rural wireless coverage led him to “believe that this transaction is in the public interest and intend to recommend to my colleagues that the FCC approve it”.… More

FCC doesn’t swallow broadband map spam, but still does an availability victory dance

7 May 2019 by Steve Blum
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Carmen miranda 625

The Federal Communications Commission re-did its annual analysis of broadband availability in the U.S., after a broadband advocacy group and Microsoft separately called bullshit on the first version. But it’s not backing away from its claim that “significant progress has been made in closing the digital divide in America”.

Free Press is the broadband advocacy group that spotted a truckload of map spam when the FCC pushed out a press release in February, claiming broadband “is being deployed on a reasonable and timely basis”.… More

Court says appeal of FCC local pole ownership preemption will continue

25 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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Tmobile small cell riverside

The ninth circuit federal appeals court ruled that challenges to last year’s Federal Communications Commission’s wireless and wireline preemption orders will move forward. The FCC will have to deliver its administrative record to the court next month, and the initial exchange of arguments from both sides will begin in June and run through September, according to an earlier ruling that two appellate justices confirmed yesterday.

Local challenges to FCC streetlight preemption order move ahead

22 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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Charlottesville streetlights

A federal appeals court commissioner has, for now, set a schedule that sorts out the various challenges to last year’s Federal Communications Commission decisions that preempted local ownership of streetlights and similar infrastructure, and put tight restrictions on how local governments manage public right of ways. Last week Peter Shaw, a commissioner for the ninth circuit federal appeals court in San Francisco, met with attorneys for local agencies and associations that are challenging various aspects of the order, and with lawyers for mobile carriers that are pretending to be upset with the FCC’s decisions, but are actually jumping in on its side.… More

Pai promises $20 billion for rural broadband, but offers little hope for meaningful change

17 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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It makes for good headlines for a slow Friday at the white house, but so far that’s about all that’s resulted from a $20 billion pledge to support rural broadband development. Federal Communications Commission chair Ajit Pai joined president Donald Trump to hype 5G plans and spectrum auctions, and tossed in a new rural broadband initiative at the end.

Sorta.

Pai’s “Rural Digital Opportunity Fund” is just the next reboot of the long standing Connect America Fund (CAF) subsidy program, that similarly poured billions of dollars into rural broadband projects, according to a story by Jon Brodkin in Ars Technica…

The new program will be part of the Universal Service Fund (USF), and it will be similar to an existing USF program that began during the Obama administration.

… More

U.S. house passes net neutrality bill but leaves the devil in the details and its fate to the senate

11 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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El diablo

A network neutrality bill cleared the democrat-controlled U.S. house of representatives yesterday and is on its way to the U.S. senate, where republican leader Mitch McConnell has been widely quoted as saying it’s “dead on arrival”. The vote in the house was “mostly along party lines”, with only republican – Bill Posey (R – Florida) – joining democrats, according to The Hill.

The text of the bill hasn’t been posted yet. The first draft simply reinstated the Obama-era net neutrality rules and blocked the Federal Communications Commission from making any changes.… More

Net neutrality bill with financial consequences passes Colorado legislature

10 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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Colorado is about to have a network neutrality law that has teeth and a chance of surviving federal court challenges. Senate bill 78, which was just passed by the Colorado legislature, says that Internet service providers that don’t abide by net neutrality principles can’t get state broadband deployment subsidies, and might even have to return money previously awarded if they’re caught violating those rules in the future.

It’s a partisan issue. All republicans in both the Colorado house and senate voted against it; all democrats voted for it.… More

Big broadband’s permission for, collection and use of customer info gets a federal review

5 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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The privacy practices of four major broadband service providers and one big disruptor are getting a hard look from the Federal Trade Commission. Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Google Fiber were given 45 days to produce detailed information about their business practices and subscribers, with particular emphasis on how they collect information about customers, whether it’s done with genuine permission, and what they do with it.

The information demanded by the FTC includes statistics on how many people actually read privacy policies, along with what promises to be a tall stack of those policies – every single one that’s been written by the companies, including copies that might be “different from the original because of notations on the copy”.… More

FCC takes aim at city planners, HOAs, landlords with new wireless preemptions

2 April 2019 by Steve Blum
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Wireless broadband hub

More federal preemptions of property ownership and local oversight of permits for wireless facilities are on the way. The Federal Communications Commission is scheduled to vote later this month on starting the process of rewriting its interpretation of federal law regarding home antennas.

The rule in question is inelegantly known as OTARD – over the air reception devices. The law behind the rules was originally intended to allow homeowners and renters to install small satellite dishes for, say, DirecTv or DISH.… More