Emergency Communications

Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA-18), a senior member of the House Communications and Technology Subcommittee, wrote to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to express her high concerns that the FCC is ignoring its court-mandated obligation to protect public safety in its latest net neutrality repeal order and called on the Chairman to drop the proposal from next week’s open meeting agenda. “California is experiencing the most horrific wildfire season in history, and I’m deeply concerned that the FCC is ignoring its mandate to protect public safety as required by statute and by a federal

The causes and impact of a nationwide T-Mobile outage that occurred in June, along with actions that can help prevent similar outages in the future. On June 15, 2020, T-Mobile experienced an outage on its wireless networks that lasted over twelve hours, disrupting calling and texting services nationwide, including 911 service, as well as access to data service in some areas. The FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau estimates that at least 41% of all calls on T-Mobile’s network failed during the outage, including at least 23,621 failed calls to 911.

Recently the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled that the Federal Communications Commission doesn’t have to delay opening up the 6 Gigahertz spectrum band for unlicensed Wi-Fi. The court’s decision was in response to a request from public safety and utility organizations, as well as other groups such as AT&T, to grant a stay to the FCC order to open up the 6GHz band.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the items below are tentatively on the agenda for the October Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Tuesday, October 27, 2020:

After Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced an Oct 27 vote to reaffirm the 2017 repeal of net neutrality, Joshua Stager, senior counsel at New America’s Open Technology Institute said: “This is an October surprise that nobody wanted except for AT&T and Comcast lobbyists. A federal court ruled that the FCC was 'unhinged from reality' when it repealed net neutrality in 2017, and yesterday's announcement shows that Chairman Pai's perspective remains unhinged.

I can say for sure that the agenda for the Commission’s October meeting will be filled with treats for consumers and innovators. 

The Federal Communications Commission adopted rules permitting expanded use of 50 megahertz of mid-band spectrum in the 4.9 GHz (4940-4990 MHz) band that is currently underused. Under the new rules, states are allowed to lease this spectrum to third parties to boost wireless broadband, improve critical infrastructure monitoring, and facilitate public safety use cases.

The House approved legislation that would repeal a law requiring the Federal Communications Commission to auction public-safety T-Band spectrum and would seek to prohibit the practice of state and local governments using revenue from 911 fees for purposes other than 911. Language in the “Don’t Break Up the T-Band Act” (HR 451) would abolish a mandate that the FCC auction T-Band airwaves—pockets of spectrum from 470 MHz to 512 MHz used to support public-safety LMR systems in 11 metropolitan markets—in a bidding procedure that would begin early in 2021. In addition to repealing the T-Band auc

The Federal Communications Commission will hold an Open Meeting on the subjects listed below on Wednesday, Sept 30, 2020:

Internet connectivity remains a weak link for the disaster-wracked US territory Puerto Rico, and some experts fear a new tranche of Federal Communications Commission subsidies set aside just for the island might not help the people most in need of a broadband connection. Puerto Rico is locked out of most federal funding available to US states to help expand internet service.