Federal Communications Commission

Many stakeholders were shocked when it came to light that over a third of $9.2 billion in winning bids in the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund broadband program were rejected after the Federal Communications Commission reviewed winning bidders’ long-form applications. And the tally of RDOF defaults isn’t complete yet. A Benton Institute analysis found that bids associated with nearly $112.8 million in additional RDOF funding are in default. The additional defaults represent nearly 1.9 million locations that had been expected to receive service.

Amid a raging debate over the value of the 3.5GHz CBRS band, Lumen Technologies has apparently decided it's no longer interested in holding those spectrum licenses.

It’s becoming clear that there is going to a never-ending battle over mid-band spectrum. In late 2024, AT&T asked the Federal Communications Commission to allow for full-power use of CBRS spectrum.

The Constitution vests all executive power in the President and charges him with faithfully executing the laws.  Since it would be impossible for the President to single-handedly perform all the executive business of the Federal Government, the Constitution also provides for subordinate officers to assist the President in his executive duties.  In the exercise of their often-considerable authority, these executive branch officials remain subject to the President’s ongoing supervision and control. The President in turn is regularly elected by and accountable to the American people.

The Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSC) is encouraging eligible organizations to apply for grant funding to improve the availability and affordability of telecommunications services to Wisconsin residents. The grant funding opportunities include the Nonprofit Access Grant Program and the Lifeline Outreach Grant Program. Both grant programs are funded by the Universal Service Fund to help Wisconsinites access essential telecommunications services. 

The Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) is a program created by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) under former Chairmen Ajit Pai during the first Trump administration. The program was designed with two goals: 1) to extend broadband networks into unserved rural areas while 2) expending the fewest number of federal dollars possible. To accomplish this, RDOF used a “reverse auction” to select winning applicants (ISPs) that requested the least amount of federal funding to deploy broadband in eligible rural areas.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration recently issued a directive encouraging states to get internet service providers (ISPs) to remove locations from Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment grant applications that can’t be served by broadband.

NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, NPR and KCBS radio all have one thing in common: They’re under scrutiny from the Federal Communications Commission, which is now being led by Brendan Carr, a Republican who has praised President Donald Trump as a leader in combating bias in the media. NBCUniversal and its parent company, Comcast, were the latest media companies to receive word of an investigation by the FCC.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult for administrative agencies like the Federal Communications Commission to undertake substantial new initiatives, since doing so inevitably results in multi-year court cases that are increasingly ruling against the agency. We saw this in 2024 in the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which has been widely interpreted to mean an end to the Chevron deference.

We just spent a few years agonizing over the Federal Communications Committee broadband maps. The reasons we’ve cared is easy to understand. The FCC maps were first used to allocate Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment funding to states. States that spent a lot of time to clean up the maps seem to have gotten a better share of the BEAD funding. We’ll soon be at the end of the BEAD map challenges, and that makes me wonder if anybody will ever care about the FCC maps after this. I’m positive that when BEAD is over, the FCC and everybody else will lose interest in the broadband maps.