Partnerships between mobile carriers and satellite companies now cover 2 billion subscribers worldwide, including in developing markets, said Tim Hatt, head-research and consulting at GSMA Intelligence, Monday during a Mobile World Live webinar. The footprint is “wide and it's deep, and we’re only going to see more of these [agreements] coming online,” he said. About 6%-7% of the world’s population still lives in areas not served by terrestrial wireless, including in high-income countries, Hatt said. Satellite operators have served ships for more than 20 years, but the cost has always been high, he said. But they are “really coming down,” which makes service “a lot more accessible,” he said. Satellite IoT is seeing growth for logistics, as well as in cars, precision agriculture, mining, oil and gas production and in other areas where connections are hard to reach through terrestrial networks, he said. Carriers see potential growth in revenue and “that underscores a lot of the commercial deal making we’re seeing taking place,” he said. Hatt predicted that the most common deals will be based on satellite operators providing backhaul and front-haul connectivity and mobile carriers controlling “the customer relationship,” though other business models are emerging. The “hype” about non-terrestrial service in the wireless industry “is becoming more and more real,” said Anirban Chakraborty, Comtech chief technology officer. The drive to standardization of satellite service as part of 5G through the 3rd Generation Partnership Project is important because it provides a common technology platform, he said. “There are technical challenges, regulatory challenges,” he said. Ubiquity of service has long been one of the biggest concerns for everyone in the telecom industry, Chakraborty said.

An FCC order establishing rules to prevent digital discrimination takes effect March 22, said a notice for Monday's Federal Register (see 2311150040). Commissioners adopted the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act-mandated rules in a 3-2 vote during the agency's November meeting.

Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday that NBC and CNN are “crooked, they’re dishonest and, frankly, they should have their licenses or whatever they have taken away” because the networks didn’t carry his victory speech after the Iowa caucuses for the 2024 Republican presidential election. The networks covered the speeches of other Republican presidential hopefuls from Iowa. The FCC didn’t comment, but the agency doesn’t issue licenses to cable channels or networks. “I was surprised that those networks didn’t carry Trump’s victory speech, but their right to choose to carry it or not is within their editorial discretion protected by the First Amendment,” said Free State Foundation President Randolph May. A station repeatedly refusing to carry a candidate’s speeches while treating other candidates differently could raise an issue of whether the FCC’s reasonable access rules were violated, May said. "The FCC is an independent agency for a reason. It never could and never should bow to such ridiculous threats from a would-be executive,” said Matt Wood, Free Press vice president-policy. “Of course, even his saber-rattling here is dangerous, and designed to chill freedom of the press and editorial discretion.” Last year, Trump promised NBCU’s parent Comcast would be scrutinized for “treason” if he becomes president again (see 2309290042). Trump made similar comments against media companies many times during his presidency. Trump’s FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said then that the agency lacks the authority to rescind broadcast licenses based on their content (see 1809040051). Comcast, CNN parent Warner Bros. Discovery, NAB, NCTA and all five FCC commissioners didn’t comment Wednesday.

Commerce Department and DOD officials will brief House Commerce Committee members Thursday on the findings of a Pentagon study about how commercial 5G use of the 3.1-3.45 GHz band would affect incumbent military systems, as expected (see 2312280044), Communications Subcommittee Chairman Bob Latta, R-Ohio, told us Wednesday. Panel Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., and others were pressing for more details about the DOD report as they determine whether its findings justify ruling out an auction of the frequency (see 2311290001). House Commerce advanced its Spectrum Auction Reauthorization Act (HR-3565) in May with language mandating an auction with an eye to using revenue to pay for other telecom projects (see 2305240069). Rodgers pressed Diane Rinaldo, Open RAN Policy Coalition executive director, during a Wednesday House Communications hearing (see 2401170078) on how the FCC’s lapsed spectrum auction authority, which House Commerce wants to restore via HR-3565, would bolster U.S. development of open radio access networks (ORANs). “If you want more ORAN, you need more spectrum,” said Rinaldo, a former acting NTIA administrator. “My members need consistency. They need an understanding of how their business is going to roll out the next couple of years. Coming to a standstill hurts us all and hurts future innovation.”

ACA Connects has again updated its broadband equity, access and deployment framework (see 2307180030), incorporating updated broadband map data. ACA Connects said Wednesday the data indicates 6.4 million unserved and underserved locations will be eligible for BEAD funding, and that fiber should reach at least 71% of eligible locations.

More than 200 artists, including authors Neil Gaiman and Cory Doctorow and singer/songwriters Tom Morello and Kimya Dawson, signed an open letter backing the FCC's pending net neutrality proceeding. "Net neutrality protections ensure that we get to decide what we do online, without interference from companies we pay to get online, like Verizon and Comcast," they said in the letter, which organizers Fight for the Future and Demand Progress released Tuesday. "That means they can’t block, throttle, favor or try to extract payments from online services."

Two FCC commissioners say social media companies' embrace of U.S. Supreme Court precedent is misplaced when it comes to their arguments in the challenges before SCOTUS of Texas and Florida social media laws (see 2309290020) that such platforms have a First Amendment right to censor users' speech. Writing last week in the Yale Journal on Regulation, Commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington said SCOTUS has never held that the First Amendment gives dominant companies like big social media "a freewheeling right to censor others’ speech." Pointing to such SCOTUS precedent as its Turner decision, requiring cable systems to carry broadcast TV channels, the Republican commissioners said the high court has allowed the government to apply anti-discrimination requirements to corporations in ways consistent with the First Amendment. The commissioners said social media regulations like Texas' House Bill 20 "are easily distinguished" from regulations struck down on First Amendment grounds in decisions such as Tornillo, which involved a Florida law requiring newspapers to run partisan editorial content. "Indeed, HB20 touches none of the First Amendment third rails that were at play in those cases," they said. When considering such issues as market power and the degree to which the regulated entity makes individualized decisions about speech rather than being a common carrier of speech, "it is clear that the government can, in the appropriate case, apply anti-discrimination rules to social media platforms," they said. "Texas’s HB20 is one of those cases."

As the FCC works on rules governing supplemental coverage from space, the agency needs to be sure efforts to provide direct-to-handset service aren't meanwhile delayed, according to T-Mobile. A docket 23-65 filing Friday recapped SCS discussions between company representative and Wireless and Space Bureau staffers. T-Mobile said SCS rules should be based on the idea the service supplements terrestrial coverage, and thus there's no need to modify the terrestrial spectrum allocation that will support SCS. It said making terrestrial operators obtain a license covering subscribers' devices for when those devices are receiving service from satellites is impractical. T-Mobile said there's no regulatory purpose for requiring blanket earth station authorization for mobile handsets and such an authorization would be difficult to enforce. If the commission opts to require a mobile handset authorization, the satellite operator and not the terrestrial licensee should have to obtain that authorization through its satellite license or get a separate user authorization, T-Mobile said.

NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson sounded a warning about AI during remarks at CES Thursday. Davidson said nearly every booth at the conference hypes AI and claims that the products offered leverage it, he said. “We’re here today because of the growing power of technology in all of our lives -- that power, along with its inherent risks, has really been the animating force in my career,” he said. Humanity can build technologies that will be a force for good, he said: “It also has the power to build tools to monitor our population, divide our societies, weaken the vulnerable or even destroy life itself.” The global discussion around AI and machine learning is the best example of policymakers looking closely at technology's impact, he said. Responsible AI will “bring enormous benefits" and “transform every corner of our economy,” Davidson said. Yet policymakers must address the “very serious and real risks” that AI already presents, he said. Those include concerns about safety, security, privacy, bias, risks from disinformation and the effect on the labor market, he said. As a result, “there is a strong sense of urgency today across the Biden administration and among governments around the world,” he said. Davidson called President Joe Biden’s executive order (see 2310300056) “the most significant government action to date on AI.” Last year, NTIA launched an accountability initiative and will soon release the results, he said. The department is also looking at AI openness and the benefits and risks different AI models pose, he said.

The FCC took its first official steps Thursday to wind down the affordable connectivity program. A Wireline Bureau order in docket 21-450 gives providers guidance on notifying enrolled households about the impact of the program ending, advertising and outreach, claims submissions and "participation during a possible partially funded month." The bureau said it will announce ACP's final date about 60 days prior to the end of the program's last fully funded month. "To facilitate the efficient wind-down of the ACP, we strongly encourage providers to submit any remaining outstanding claims for reimbursement or revisions prior to February 1," the order said. The bureau will freeze new enrollments Feb. 8, which it said will help it "more accurately project funding exhaustion by increasing certainty in program commitments." ACP "connected millions upon millions of households to broadband services," FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said. "[D]isconnecting millions of families from their jobs, schools, markets, and information is not the solution," she added. Commissioner Anna Gomez said she was "dismayed that the commission finds itself with no choice but to initiate the wind down process," but "I remain hopeful that this program will continue to be funded."