Federal Communications Commission

The Federal Communications Commission took a major step toward comprehensively reforming rates and charges for the inmate calling services (ICS) within its jurisdiction. The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit has twice rejected and remanded the FCC’s past efforts to address rates and charges for ICS. Recognizing the need of incarcerated individuals and their families to stay connected, the FCC Aug 6 responded to the court’s remands and made several proposals to ensure just and reasonable rates and charges for these services, as required by the Communications Act.

On Aug 4, Federal Communications Commissioner Geoffrey Starks sent letters to AT&T and Verizon inquiring about the aggregation and monetization of sensitive consumer data that is generated for advertising placement purposes. Recent reports indicate that this data is being used to track Americans’ locations to protests and places of worship.

The following items have been adopted by the Federal Communications Commission and deleted from the list of items scheduled for consideration at the Thursday, Aug 6, 2020, Open Meeting.

Common Antenna Siting Rules (MB Docket No. 19-282); Modernization of Media Regulation Initiative (MB Docket No. 17-105): The FCC will consider a Report and Order that would eliminate the common antenna siting rules for FM and TV broadcaster applicants and licensees.

The Federal Communications Commission's Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau will invite public input on the Petition for Rulemaking recently filed by the Department of Commerce regarding Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. Longstanding rules require the agency to put such petitions out for public comment ‘promptly,’ and we will follow that requirement here. I strongly disagree with those who demand that we ignore the law and deny the public and all stakeholders the opportunity to weigh in on this important issue. We should welcome vigorous debate—not foreclose it.

The Federal Communications Commission released an updated version of its FCC Speed Test app to evaluate how well customers' mobile broadband connections are performing. This app, available from the Apple App Store and Google Play, has been updated to work the with latest versions of the iOS and Android operating systems. Like its predecessor, the updated app allows users to test their cellular and Wi-Fi network performance for download and upload speed, latency, jitter, and packet loss.