fcc

Cities pile onto appeal of FCC pole preemption decision, AT&T doubles down on greedy

29 October 2018 by Steve Blum
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Cities and counties across the western U.S. are challenging the Federal Communications Commission’s ruling that preempts local ownership of street lights, traffic signals and other assets located in the public right of way.

AT&T and Sprint, on the other hand, appealed the FCC’s decision, claiming it didn’t go far enough. Links to the petitions are below.

League of Cities organisations from Arizona, California and Oregon, along with the cities of Seattle and Tacoma, and King County in Washington filed a challenge in the ninth circuit court, which is the San Francisco-based federal appellate court that handles cases from the west coast and some mountain states.… More

Cities challenge FCC’s wireless big foot, AT&T tells court it isn’t big enough

28 October 2018 by Steve Blum
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Cities and counties in western states, and their lobbying organisations, asked the federal appeals court in San Francisco to block a ruling by the Federal Communications Commission that would take away most local authority over small cells and other wireless facility permits, and preempt ownership of municipal assets, such as streetlight poles, in the public right of way. Links to all the documents filed last week are here. 

AT&T and Sprint also challenged the FCC’s decision, because, they say, it didn’t go far enough.… More

Real people want neutrality, bots not so much Stanford study shows

28 October 2018 by Steve Blum
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The comments submitted to the Federal Communications Commission in 2017 by real people were overwhelmingly in favor of keeping network neutrality rules in place. A study by Ryan Singel at Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society analysed the 22 million comments submitted via the FCC’s online portal – the one that crashed in 2014 after John Oliver explained what it all meant – and found that most filings were robo-comments submitted by online bots, or were otherwise duplicate, boilerplate auto-postings.… More

California’s net neutrality law won’t take effect in January, if it ever does

27 October 2018 by Steve Blum
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It will be a long time before California’s new network neutrality law will be enforced, if it ever is. California attorney general Xavier Becerra cut a deal yesterday with the Trump administration and lobbyists who front for a long list of telecoms companies, including AT&T, Charter Communications, Comcast and Frontier Communications. In return for their pledge not to pursue their court case against the law, Becerra agreed not to enforce the new law until a separate legal challenge to the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to repeal its own net neutrality rules has worked its way through the system and, after that, until the Sacramento court hearing the case against senate bill 822 decides whether or not to block it.… More

California net neutrality law on hold, Becerra signs “agreement not to enforce senate bill 822”

26 October 2018 by Steve Blum
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In a deal reached with the federal justice department and lobbyists for major telecoms companies, California attorney general Xavier Becerra agreed not to enforce senate bill 822 when it takes effect on 1 January 2019. In return, the telecoms companies and the Trump administration will push the pause button on their challenges to the law in a Sacramento federal court.

The plan is to wait until a federal appeals court in the District of Columbia rules on whether the Federal Communications Commission acted properly when it repealed net neutrality rules last year.… More

California attorney general might put net neutrality law on hold

25 October 2018 by Steve Blum
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California’s new network neutrality law might not go into effect as planned in January. Politico is reporting that California attorney general Xavier Becerra is considering making a deal with the Trump administration and lobbyists for AT&T, Charter Communications, Comcast, Frontier Communications and other monopoly model telecoms companies….

Sources familiar with the negotiations say government officials and representatives from USTelecom, CTIA, NCTA and the American Cable Association would propose delaying litigation over the state’s law while the D.C.

… More

FCC wants to open 1,200 MHz of spectrum to unlicensed users, and that’s a lot

25 October 2018 by Steve Blum
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The Federal Communications Commission is considering a radical overhaul of the way licensed spectrum is managed, and shared with unlicensed users. Besides upping the stakes for wireless Internet service providers this week, the FCC began considering a plan to open up a massive 1,200 MHz slice of spectrum in the 6 GHz range to WiFi, Internet of things (IoT) and other new and unlicensed uses.

It’s a lot of bandwidth. The 2.4 GHz band originally used for WiFi is only 83 MHz wide, and the newer 5 GHz band is 150 MHz.… More

Small WISPs handed a tougher business case by FCC spectrum decision

24 October 2018 by Steve Blum
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The Federal Communications Commission sided with big, national mobile carriers over small, local wireless Internet service providers (WISPs) yesterday. Whether that’s a good thing or not depends on where you think the market for wireless broadband service is heading.

The issue was use of the 3.5 GHz band (3550 MHz to 3700 MHz), which is frequently used for wireless broadband service – fixed and mobile – internationally, and is particularly sought after for 5G deployments.… More

Big cable, telcos try to block Vermont’s net neutrality purchasing rules

23 October 2018 by Steve Blum
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Charter Communications, Comcast, AT&T and other big, monopoly model broadband providers are taking the State of Vermont to federal court, accusing it of flouting the Federal Communications Commission’s keen desire to remove any limits on their behavior. Vermont legislators passed a law earlier this year that prohibits state and local agencies from buying broadband service from companies that don’t abide by the network neutrality principles adopted by a democratic majority FCC in 2015 and overturned last year as republicans took over control of the agency.… More

California’s net neutrality law needs a little bit of help from its tech friends

22 October 2018 by Steve Blum
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Only one group jumped in as a friend of the court – an amicus curiae – to help the federal justice department, and lobbyists for AT&T, Comcast, Charter Communications and Frontier Communications in their quest to kill California’s new network neutrality law. One point made – that California’s Internet law won’t stop at the Nevada line – can only be answered with technical expertise.

The friend was, of course, another group of lobbyists, which rather grandly calls itself the Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America.… More