Telecommunication

SensTom Cotton (R-AR) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), along with Sens Marco Rubio (R-FL), Mark Warner (D-VA), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Mitt Romney (R-UT), introduced legislation to reinforce the Trump administration's efforts to prevent the Chinese-owned telecommunication company Huawei from threatening America's national security. The Defending America's 5G Future Act would codify President Donald Trump's recent Executive Order and would prohibit the removal of Huawei from the Commerce Department Entity List without an act of Congress.

“We must move aggressively to help consumers combat scam robocalls that use and abuse caller ID spoofing, and that’s why we held today’s summit. The summit was productive, and we received generally encouraging signs that companies are headed toward full implementation of the SHAKEN/STIR caller ID authentication framework. I was pleased to hear from voice service providers, vendors, consumer advocates, and others about the successes to date and the challenges that remain.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the items below are tentatively on the agenda for the Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Aug 1, 2019:

Establishing the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund – The FCC will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that would propose to adopt a two-phase reverse auction framework for the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, committing $20.4 billion in high-cost universal service support to bring high-speed broadband service to millions of unserved Americans.

This April, I joined President Donald Trump at a White House event, where I announced my plans to create the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, a modernized approach for connecting the hardest-to-serve corners of our country. Today, I’m circulating a proposal to formally establish this program. If adopted, the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund will mark the Federal Communications Commission’s single biggest step yet to close the rural digital divide and will connect millions more rural homes and small businesses to high-speed broadband networks.

In light of increasing competition in the marketplace for transport services, the Federal Communications Commission largely eliminated pricing regulation of lower-speed, legacy transport offered by price cap incumbent carriers as part of their commercially available business data services (BDS) or as unbundled network elements. The FCC continued its push to eliminate needless and burdensome regulation and incentivize investment in modern networks by adopting a two-part item that provides the following regulatory relief for price cap carriers’ transport services and facilities:

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the FCC will vote at its Aug meeting on rules to help ensure that people who call 911 from multi-line telephone systems which commonly serve hotels, office buildings, and college campuses—can reach 911 and be quickly located by first responders. The Chairman has circulated draft rules that would implement two recently enacted laws to improve emergency calling, the Kari’s Law Act of 2017 and RAY BAUM’S Act of 2018, and extend 911 location requirements to additional calling platforms. 

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai proposed adoption of new rules banning malicious caller ID spoofing of text messages and international calls.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has circulated a proposal to grant USTelecom what is described as two narrow portions of its request for forbearance from applying some copper-era Telecommunications Act voice service support regulations to an increasingly fiber world. But it does not retire broadband-related obligations after USTelecom withdrew that ask July 1.

President Donald Trump’s decision to allow US companies to continue selling to Huawei followed an extensive lobbying campaign by the US semiconductor industry that argued the ban could hurt America’s economic and national security. In multiple high-level meetings and a letter to the Commerce Department, the companies argued for targeted action against Huawei instead of the blanket ban the Trump administration imposed in May.