The FCC’s Thanksgiving Menu: 5G, Rural Broadband, and Stopping Unwanted Robocalls

What will wake America up from its Thanksgiving day food coma? Here's the Federal Communications Commission’s December 2018 open meeting agenda:

1. An order that would enable the FCC to move forward with an auction of the Upper 37 GHz, 39 GHz, and 47 GHz bands by the end of 2019. 
2. We’re making the Universal Service Fund a more efficient, effective way of distributing funding to close the digital divide by: First, we’re working to promote efficiency by moving away from simply telling rate-of-return carriers what their allowable costs and return on investment will be and toward setting broad goals for deployment and rewarding companies for being efficient in meeting those goals (what’s called an “incentive-based” model). Specifically, we’re offering rate-of-return carriers another opportunity to opt in to model-based support, which would give them a guaranteed revenue stream for a decade in exchange for meeting specified buildout requirements. Second, we’re ensuring support is sufficient by offering additional funding to carriers that currently receive model-based support and who agree to meet increased buildout requirements. We’re also increasing funding for carriers who do not receive model-based support. Third, we’re recognizing that rural Americans need and deserved high-quality services by increasing the target speeds for subsidized deployments from 10/1 Mbps to 25/3 Mbps. And fourth, we’re making the program more predictable by setting a new long-term budget for rate-of-return carriers who choose not to opt in to model-based support and ending arbitrary funding cuts.
3. The FCC will vote on new rules to establish a single, comprehensive database that will contain reassigned number information from each provider that obtains phone numbers for use in America — specifically, North American Numbering Plan (NANP) US geographic numbers. The database will enable any caller to verify whether a telephone number has been reassigned before calling that number. These rules would reduce the number of unwanted calls consumers receive and enable businesses to make sure they are not wasting your — or their — time.
4. A Declaratory Ruling that would instead classify wireless messaging as an “information service.” Aside from being a more legally sound approach, this decision would keep the floodgates to a torrent of spam texts closed, remove regulatory uncertainty, and empower providers to continue finding innovative ways to protect consumers from unwanted text messages.
5. The 2018 Quadrennial Review, as it’s called, will begin with a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking which seeks public input on the relevant rules, such as the Local Radio Ownership Rule, as well as several diversity-related proposals.
6. An order to eliminate certain rules that require broadcast licensees to maintain and display copies of their licenses and other related materials in specific locations, such as at their transmitter sites. Now that licensing information is readily accessible online through the FCC’s databases, these rules are redundant and obsolete.
7. The Communications Marketplace Report places essential information about mobile wireless, video, audio, wireline broadband, voice telephony, satellite, broadband deployment, and international broadband all in one place.