Communications Daily is tracking the lawsuits below involving appeals of FCC actions.
The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) isn't likely to make much headway with the 119th Congress absent a major revamp, tech policy panelists said Wednesday at a Congressional Internet Caucus event, which also featured some panelists disagreeing on the FCC's role in cybersecurity enforcement.
CTA CEO Gary Shapiro warned Wednesday of a potential “brain drain” in the federal government should the Donald Trump administration continue its assault on the bureaucracy. The Joe Biden administration lacked enough officials who understood how business works, and Trump's don’t understand government, Shapiro said during a Broadband Breakfast webinar. Unions that represent federal employees, including at the FCC, slammed the latest Trump actions.
T-Mobile is continuing its industry-leading growth, adding 903,000 net postpaid phone customers in Q4 and 3.1 million for the year, the carrier said Wednesday. In addition, it had its lowest average postpaid phone churn ever, at 0.86% throughout 2024. The company is targeting public safety agencies with T-Priority based on 5G network slicing, T-Mobile executives highlighted on a call with analysts.
EchoStar, the Rural Wireless Association (RWA), Communications Workers of America and other parties countered arguments that T-Mobile and UScellular made as the two battled opponents of their proposed deal (see 2501100036). The companies announced in May an agreement where T-Mobile will buy “substantially all” of the smaller carrier’s wireless operations, including some of its spectrum, in a deal valued at about $4.4 billion, including $2 billion in assumed debt (see 2405280047).
The White House OMB rescinded its stayed memo that called for a freeze on most federal grants and loans, bowing to mounting criticism of the plan’s breadth even after it partially walked it back Tuesday (see 2501280051). The now-rescinded freeze would have paused NTIA’s disbursal of $42.5 billion from the BEAD program and other Commerce Department initiatives, commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick acknowledged during his Senate Commerce Committee confirmation hearing Wednesday.
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and other leaders acknowledged in recent interviews that long-standing DOD objections to repurposing the 3.1-3.45 GHz band and other military-controlled frequencies remain an impediment to GOP hopes of using an upcoming budget reconciliation package to move on spectrum legislation (see 2501070069). Lawmakers and lobbyists said DOD concerns could prevent Congress from including anything beyond a simple restoration of the FCC’s lapsed auction authority in a reconciliation package, an outcome that would fall short of wireless industry wishes for a refilled spectrum pipeline.
A White House executive order on diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) programs could lead to telecom companies abandoning such efforts, causing a rollback of progress on diversity, said industry executives and public interest attorneys during a FCBA panel discussion Tuesday. There is “fear and chaos” in “lots of corridors and hallways of corporate America” over the DEI executive order and anticipation of future White House action in that vein, said Clint Odom, T-Mobile vice president-strategic alliances and external affairs and a former FCC aide. “The world seems to be lining up between the companies that are doing DEI and the companies that are retreating from it.”
If the U.S. Supreme Court uses the FCC USF case as a route for establishing a judicial test about the nondelegation of power, that test should consider the nature of the power being delegated, legal academics say. A Federalist Society panel discussion about the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ 9-7 en banc decision invalidating part of the USF program and subsequent SCOTUS appeal (see 2411220050) saw speakers discussing how courts have looked at Congress' delegation of its powers to other branches or agencies and the high court's available options.
Securus urged the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to transfer to the 5th Circuit the company’s challenge of the FCC’s July order implementing the Martha Wright-Reed Act of 2022, which reduces call rates for people in prisons while establishing interim rate caps for video calls (see 2407180039). Securus and various states disagreed sharply with public interest groups about whether the rates set were too low or potentially too high.