Agenda

On April 29, 2018, T-Mobile US and Sprint announced that the companies would merge. In the telecom world, an announcement like this always means at least one thing: a really long engagement. After the companies come to a merger agreement, regulators get a chance to review the deal.

[Press release] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the following items are tentatively on the agenda for the July Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Thursday, July 12, 2018:

As long as Federal Communications Commission nominee Geoffrey Starks is able to supply his post-confirmation hearing paperwork quickly, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) wants to include Starks' nomination on a June 27 markup and then move it on the floor paired with the nomination of current FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr for a second term. "I think the FCC [nominations] should move quickly," said Chairman Thune. Starks enjoyed a drama-free confirmation hearing June 20.

Apparently, Walt Disney Co. is close to winning US antitrust approval for its $71 billion deal for 21st Century Fox Inc.’s entertainment assets, creating a potentially insurmountable hurdle for a rival bid from Comcast. The Justice Department is set to approve the deal in as soon as two weeks, according to an unnamed source. Disney has agreed to sell some assets to address competition problems stemming from the tie-up. 

Federal Communications Commission nominee Geoffrey Starks got a thorough vetting by the Senate Commerce Committee June 20, including a charge from Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD), who said the "hyperpartisanship of the last commission must come to an end" and called on Starks to "seek opportunities for common ground." Chairman Thune suggested the model for that was the current FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and his "spirit of openness, transparency and collaboration" that he encouraged Starks to embrace.

The White House is in the early stages of determining what a federal approach to online data privacy should look like. The preliminary conversations show that the White House wants a voice in the contentious domestic and global debate about how to protect consumer privacy online. Gail Slater, special assistant to President Donald Trump for tech, telecom and cyber policy at the White House National Economic Council, has met with industry groups to discuss possible ways to put in place guardrails for the use of personal data, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

The Federal Trade Commission, the Trump administration’s privacy, competition and consumer protection cops, plans to embark on a cross-country listening tour to gauge how academics and average Web users believe the US government should address digital-age challenges, from the rise of artificial intelligence to the data-collection mishaps that have plagued companies like Facebook. The effort was announced by new FTC Chairman Joe Simons and includes 15 or more public sessions in a series of cities that have yet to be announced.

Aleksandr Kogan, the academic researcher who harvested personal data from Facebook for a political consultancy firm said that the idea the data was useful in swaying voters’ decisions was “science fiction.”