Emergency Communications

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has appointed members to serve on the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC) Disaster Response and Recovery Working Group:

In joint letters Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Christopher Krebs encouraged the nation's governors to provide necessary access and resources to the communications workers helping to keep Americans connected during the COVID-19 pandemic. The FCC and CISA recommend the governors:

We're all obviously aware of the unprecedented National Emergency President Donald Trump declared on March 13, 2020 and the shelter-at-home orders many have lived under in the last few months. Telework, telehealth, and distance education have all boomed during this time, testing residential broadband networks like never before. Back in the early weeks of the crisis, assessments based on data from broadband providers themselves and third-party internet traffic monitors led one policymaker to declare that surges in Internet traffic are well within the capacity of U.S.

The Mozilla court remanded to the Federal Communications Commission for further consideration the impact of the Restoring Internet Freedom Order on broadband providers’ ability to obtain pole attachments.

In Mozilla v FCC, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reviewed the Federal Communications Commission’s 2018 “Restoring Internet Freedom” Order, in which it reclassified broadband internet access service (“BIAS”) as an “information service” and attempted to preempt state laws addressing net neutrality.

The record shows extensive opposition to the Federal Communications Commission’s 2017 Restoring Internet Freedom Order and the grave danger it poses to public safety and public health, particularly during the COVID-19 crisis. Public health and public safety officials detail in the record how both officials and the public writ large rely on mass-market retail broadband internet access services (BIAS).

Public interest commenters, including public safety officials, overwhelmingly agreed with Free Press’s assessment that the Federal Communications Commission’s misguided repeal of Net Neutrality and its authority over broadband internet access service (“BIAS”) harms the Lifeline program, pole attachment regulation, and public safety. These commenters also overwhelmingly agreed that the best remedy for such harms would be for the Commission to once again correctly classify broadband as a Title II service protected by strong open internet rules.

T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert launched Connecting Heroes, the Un-carrier’s 10-year commitment to provide free service and 5G access to first responder agencies — all public and non-profit state and local fire, police and EMS departments — saving them up to $7 billion. Plus, the Un-carrier continues to build out its industry-leading 5G network at a furious pace. T-Mobile’s 5G network is now 8 times bigger than AT&T’s and 28 THOUSAND times bigger than Verizon’s.

The Federal Communications Commission's Net Neutrality remand proceeding, INCOMPAS highlights several important points:

On April 24, 2020, Senators Kamala Harris (D-CA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) wrote to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai about how multiple local governments from California and New York asked for, yet were denied, a further 60-day extension of the comment period over the DC Circuit Court of Appeals remand in the FCC's net neutrality repeal (Mozilla Corp. v. FCC). The senators asked the FCC to reconsider this position and further extend the comment period given the crisis created by the COVID-19 worldwide pandemic.