John Eggerton

The House Small Business Committee took its turn at running Big Tech through another Hill gauntlet at a hearing titled "A Fair Playing Field? Investigating Big Tech’s Impact on Small Business." Committee Chairwoman Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) started the hearing by praising Amazon and Google for agreeing to send witnesses, and pointing to the two empty chairs for no-shows Facebook and Apple.

The House Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Communications and Technology advanced nine bills in a markup session Nov 14. Eight of the bills moved with little controversey:

The House Antitrust Subcommittee heard from two major players in the government's review of Big Tech and whether the antitrust laws have kept up with their exponential growth, but not before the legislators had staked out their own positions. Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline (D-RI) pulled no punches, saying that the extreme concentration of online platforms may have some benefits, but they were clearly using their power to set market terms that enrich themselves and make it impossible to compete. He also commented on Google and Fitbit.

The Federal Communications Commission has upheld an AT&T complaint against a number of TV station groups for failure to negotiate retransmission consent in good faith, a move pay-TV operators are hoping adds fuel to their argument for renewal of the satellite compulsory license law that includes that good faith mandate. The FCC didn't fine the stations, but left that big stick in sight, saying it reserved the right to take future enforcement actions, including potential fines or forfeitures (likely levied if the stations did not negotiate in good faith going forward). The complaints wer

The Federal Communications Commission is seeking full-court review of a three-judge panel decision vacating its broadcast media ownership deregulation decision. The FCC filed a petition for review, arguing that the three-judge panel decision imposed burdens beyond those allowed in the Administrative Procedure Act, second-guessed the FCC to the point that it undermined congressional intent, and breaks with higher-court and sister-court pr

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) has introduced a clean renewal of the STELAR Act with yet another name, the Satellite Television Access Reauthorization (STAR) Act. STELAR, and if it passes, STAR, provides for a compulsory license allowing satellite operators--Dish and DirecTV--to import distant network affiliated TV station signals to markets that lack them.

As part of his just-announced "Partnership with Rural Communities," Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer has proposed a massive rural broadband connectivity program that includes $135 billion in investment and "protecting" municipal and co-op broadband networks. "The modern economy is a knowledge economy," Steyer's plan points out. "Full participation in commerce depends on reliable, fast, affordable access to the Internet.

Federal Communications Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel looked to throw a scare into the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee about the country's 5G-readiness. That came at a hearing on the national security risks, supply chain security, an promise of 5G.

House Communications Subcommittee members appeared to be clearly favoring a Federal Communications Commission-led public auction of C-Band spectrum rather a private sale.

The US Supreme court has declined to overturn two lower court rulings that MN was preempted from regulating Charter Communications’s interconnected voice-over-internet protocol telephone service because the courts were convinced the operator had made the case for why it was an information service, not a telecommunications service, even though the Federal Communications Commission has yet to classify interconnected VoIP either way. That sounds like it would buttress the FCC’s assertion it can pre-empt state efforts to reregulate internet access, which the agency has definitely classified as