Federal Communications Commission

I write to bring to your attention West Virginia v. EPA, a recent Supreme Court decision that clarified the limitations of certain agency action. Given the Biden administration’s track record, we are compelled to underscore the implications of West Virginia v.

The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which represents 800 Federal Communications Commission employees, has come out in support of the nomination of Gigi Sohn [Senior Fellow and Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society] for the long-vacant fifth seat — and third Democrat — on the Commission. In a letter to Sen Maria Cantwell (D-WA), NTEU said it was concerned about the continued vacancy and that Sohn was a highly qualified nominee whose nomination should be moved out of committee for a floor vote. “NTEU believes that Ms.

In response to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Federal Communications Commission has waived certain Lifeline program rules in twelve previous Orders to provide necessary relief for low-income households. The FCC finds good cause exists to continue to waive the Lifeline recertification and reverification requirements for those Lifeline subscribers residing on Tribal lands through January 31, 2023.

On Monday, September 26, Benton Institute for Broadband & Society Director of Research and Fellowships Dr. Revati Prasad hosted an online panel discussion, From the Ground Up: Broadband Mapping By and for Communities, on how communities and states are collecting data on local broadband availability as the Federal Communications Commission rolls out the Broadband Data Collection (BDC) program.

The Federal Communications Commission adopted rules to bring relief to incarcerated people with communication disabilities by easing the obstacles they face in communicating with family, loved ones, and other sources of support.

The Federal Communications Commission updated its Emergency Alert System rules so that alerts delivered over television and radio are more informative and easier to understand by the public, particularly people with disabilities. The Emergency Alert System, which is used by government agencies to send alerts and warnings to the public over television and radio, is comprised of both a legacy system and an Internet-based system, with the latter offering superior messaging capabilities.

For states, broadband mapping is the hot topic in the quest to identify unserved and underserved areas. Collecting accurate, detailed information on who has, and more importantly, who doesn’t have a broadband connection will be essential in securing the maximum amount of Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program funding. North Carolina and Georgia have been proactive in collecting broadband coverage data and making it available to the public but have taken different approaches on how they have built their maps.

Stopgap funding legislation designed to prevent a federal-government shutdown includes language extending the Federal Communication Commission's spectrum-auction authority into December, although the impact on potential funding for next-generation 911 (NG911) deployments remains unclear. Currently, the FCC’s authority to conduct auctions of the radio spectrum—bidding events that have provided airwaves to wireless communications and generated hundreds of billions of dollars for the US Treasury—is set to expire on Friday, Sept. 30.

Tarana is expected to supply gigabit fixed wireless for at least one or two of the biggest winning Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) bidders; one of which is Nextlink. Tarana's new hardware will be able to use spectrum in the 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands, as well as new software that supports what the company calls G1x2 mode. That mode enables the new hardware or the previous version of the hardware to use up to 160 MHz of spectrum. The previous version of Tarana’s offering worked only in the 5 GHz band and could use only 80 MHz of spectrum.

In August 2022, the Federal Communications Commission denied the SpaceX (Starlink) bid to receive $885 million over ten years through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF). The FCC went on to say in the order that there were several technical reasons for the Starlink rejection. Starlink appealed the FCC ruling. Current federal grant rules don’t allow federal subsidies to be given to any area that is slated to get another federal broadband subsidy. This has meant that the RDOF areas have been off-limits to other federal grants since the end of 2020.