Public Notice

The Federal Communications Commission authorized over $20 million in funding over ten years to expand rural broadband in Minnesota and Pennsylvania. Viasat will serve rural locations in Pennsylvania with $19,945,120 in FCC support, and Tribal provider Fond du Lac Communications, Inc. will receive $55,011 to provide gigabit fixed broadband to serve small, isolated communities in Tribal areas in Minnesota. The funding represents the 14th wave of support from the successful 2018 Connect America Fund Phase II auction.

By this Public Notice, the Federal Communications Commission announces the anticipated renewal of its Disability Advisory Committee and solicits applications for membership on the Committee, subject to renewal of the Committee’s charter. Applications for membership are due by 11:59 P.M. EST on August 13, 2020. The mission of the Committee is to make recommendations to the FCC regarding disability issues specified by the FCC.

The Federal Communications Commission will hold an Open Meeting on Thursday, July 16, 2020. Due to the current COVID-19 pandemic and related agency telework and headquarters access policies, this meeting will be in a wholly electronic format and will be open to the public on the Internet via live feed from the FCC’s web page and on the FCC’s YouTube channel.

By this Public Notice, the Federal Communications Commission announces the anticipated renewal of the Consumer Advisory Committee and solicits nominations for membership on the Committee, subject to anticipated renewal of the Committee’s charter on or before October 20, 2020. Nominations for membership are due on August 7, 2020. The Committee’s mission is to make recommendations to the FCC regarding topics of particular interest to consumers, to be specified by the FCC, and to facilitate consumers’ participation in proceedings before the FCC.

The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission issued new Vertical Merger Guidelines that outline how the federal antitrust agencies evaluate the likely competitive impact of mergers and whether those mergers comply with US antitrust law.

The Federal Communications Commission’s Wireline Competition Bureau directed the Universal Service Administrative Company, which administers the FCC’s Rural Health Care Program, to carry forward up to $197.98 million in unused funds from prior funding years to the extent necessary to satisfy funding year 2020 demand for the Program. The Rural Health Care Program funding cap for funding year 2020 is $604.76 million.

The Federal Communications Commission's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau formally designated two companies—Huawei Technologies Company (Huawei) and ZTE Corporation (ZTE), as well as their parents, affiliates, and subsidiaries—as covered companies for purposes of the agency’s November 2019 ban on the use of universal service support to purchase equipment or services from companies posing a national security threat.

The Federal Communications Commission has been working throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure that critical communications infrastructure projects continue to proceed at a time when so many Americans are relying on high-speed Internet services. On June 25, the FCC announced a process that has been developed in coordination with the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation that will further expedite the process for reviewing those infrastructure builds.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau will no longer accept new applications for funding from the COVID-19 Telehealth Program. Based on the applications received to date, demand for funding exceeds available Program funds and, as a result, the public interest is not served by imposing burdens on health care providers who may prepare new
applications that cannot be funded under the current appropriation. 

On June 15, 2020, T-Mobile suffered a substantial outage that prevented customers from making calls, receiving calls, and in some cases, sending text messages over T-Mobile’s Voice-over LTE (VoLTE) network. According to social media reports, the outage also affected 911 calling for T-Mobile customers. T-Mobile explained in a public statement that this outage was caused by “a leased fiber circuit failure from a third party provider in the Southeast.”  When this circuit overloaded, according to T-Mobile, it “resulted in an IP traffic storm that spread from the Southeast to create significant