FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has announced the appointment of members to serve on the Task Force for Reviewing the Connectivity and Technology Needs of Precision Agriculture in the United States. The Task Force will hold its first meeting on Monday, December 9, 2019, at 9:30am. Nominations for membership on one of the Task Force’s four working groups should be submitted to the FCC no later than December 3, 2019.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office has issued a report on its investigation of potential fraud risk in the FCC’s universal service high-cost program that supports rate-of-return carriers. Among other things, the GAO report recommends that the FCC assess the A-CAM support mechanism to determine the extent to which it produces reliable cost estimates and consider making its use mandatory all for rate-of-return carriers.
In July 2019, OneWeb reported the tests of six of its LEO satellites – download speeds of 400 Mbps with latency under 40 milliseconds, which enabled the fastest real-time video streaming in Full HD from Space. OneWeb plans to blanket the entire world with unsubsidized competitive broadband service.
This article contains recent news about broadband funding: FCC Universal Service Programs, Federal Funding, and State Funding.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has provided three awards under its ReConnect Pilot Program, totaling $16,399,401 in broadband funding in three states.
Two rural communications companies have filed a class action lawsuit, individually and on behalf of a class of similarly situated companies, against T-Mobile USA, Inc., Inteliquent, Inc., and 10 Doe Defendants. The Plaintiffs are seeking relief for injuries sustained from T-Mobile’s violations of the FCC’s rural call completion rules. The claims in the lawsuit are largely based on an April 2018 Consent Decree between T-Mobile and the FCC, in which T-Mobile admitted that it violated the FCC’s rules by inserting false ring tones into calls made to rural areas and failing to police the conduct of its intermediate providers.
Here is an update on important news from November 2019.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has circulated a draft Report and Order that would prohibit companies from using Universal Service Fund money to purchase equipment or services from any company that poses a national security threat. The draft Report and Order initially blacklists two Chinese companies – Huawei and ZTE Corporation – as national security threats. The FCC will vote on the item at its November 19th open meeting.
The state members of the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service have submitted a Recommended Decision that proposes changing the existing contribution mechanism for federal universal service programs. Among other things, the state members want the FCC to assess broadband revenue and move to connections-based assessment on residential services
A U.S. Magistrate Judge has issued a decision in Warner Bros. Records Inc. v. Charter Communications, Inc., recommending the District Court deny Charter’s motion to dismiss the record company Plaintiffs’ claims for vicarious infringement. The Magistrate concluded the Plaintiffs have plausibly alleged the infringement of their content is a draw to Charter’s broadband subscribers, and demonstrated a causal relationship between the infringing activity and financial benefit received by Charter.
