Harold Feld

There are a few specific areas the Federal Communications Commission may focus on the potential and responsibility for AI in spectrum and communications networks generally:

Rarely does Congress speak as definitively and clearly as it did with Section 1754: ordering the Federal Communications Commission, within 2 years to enact regulations to “eliminate” existing digital discrimination on the basis of “income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion, or national origin” and to prevent it from recurring in the future. The FCC should interpret this instruction for what it is: a rebuke of the last 25 years of failed policies and “light touch” regulation under the apparent delusion that for the first time in 90 years “the market” would bring universal service to all

Congress enacted Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to permit interactive computer services to exercise editorial discretion when publishing third-party content, without facing liability. This case seeks to hold YouTube liable for publishing objectionable third-party content. Section 230 does not allow this. Petitioners try to work around this clear statutory prohibition by characterizing their theory of liability in different terms.

Public Knowledge wrote to the Federal Communications Commission urging them to reconsider calls by the aviation community for rule changes related to C-band deployments. The November 22 letter states that as a consequence of systemic discrimination and historic patterns of red-lining, many of the neighborhoods closest to airports (and therefore within the “buffer zones” around the airports subject to potential mitigation measures) are low-income and/or majority non-white communities.

Many telecommunications companies are reviving the idea of having content companies pay for last-mile network connections because of the profit it would generate. South Korea serves as a useful predictor of how the bad consequences of this idea play out in real-time. Back in 2016, South Korea adopted a new interconnection rule based on a long-standing telco compensation rule called “sending party network pays” (SPNP).

The “future of spectrum is sharing.” Basically, the airwaves are now so crowded that the old model of “clear and auction” federal spectrum is unsustainable for a society as connected as ours. With Wi-Fi 7 coming up, we will need channel sizes of 320 MHz of contiguous spectrum to get the benefits. Despite doomsday predictions from incumbents that any change in existing spectrum rules would cause massive destructive interference with valuable existing services, the Federal Communication Commission's engineers successfully evaluated the evidence and created rules that brought us new wireless s

For most people, the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency was about environmental policy and what the Environmental Protection Agency can still do to cut carbon emissions. For a smaller subset, mostly lawyers, W. VA v. EPA was an important (but confusing) administrative law case what we will spend a bunch of time arguing about how to apply to agencies generally.

Republicans who think there is no downside to dragging Federal Communications Commission nominee Gigi Sohn [Senior Fellow and Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society]’s confirmation out interminably to block Title II — especially those who voted in favor of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 (IIJA) and are looking for that broadband money to begin flowing to their states — may wish to think again. Why?

Public Knowledge submitted comments to the Federal Communications Commission on May 16, in response to the FCC's Notice of Inquiry regarding digital discrimination rules in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. "Digital discrimination is not just unjust towards individuals, but can hold back entire communities and prevent the nation from living up to its potential," states Public Knowledge in its filing. "Thankfully, the Commission now has not merely the legal authority, but an affirmative obligation, to end digital discrimination.

For those of us in Telecom land, the annual season of Spectrum Wars holds an attraction like no other. 2022 is shaping up to be a major spectacular, with lots of old plotlines coming back (like 5.9 GHz), sleeper issues (like 12 GHz), and an unexpected new dramatic plotline around the Federal Communications Commission’s overall auction authority — and More!