Broadcasting&Cable

Big Tech Gets Small Business Committee Vetting

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.

House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology Advances 9 Bills

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:

FCC Challenges Court's Smackdown

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

FCC Commissioner Rosenworcel to Senate: US Lacks Comprehensive 5G Plan

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.

Supreme Court Raises Red Flags on Pre-emption

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

Sohn: FCC Authority is Key to Compromise Net Neutrality Bill

Gigi Sohn, former adviser to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, supports legislation to clarify the FCC's authority over broadband, but that unless that bill returns oversight of the market to the FCC, that is not likely to happen. She said the fight over such legislation will hinge on whether the FCC is going to oversee the market.