Telecommunication

At the end of July 2023, the Federal Communications Commission proposed a $20 million penalty against Q Link and Hello Mobile for not complying with the Customer Propriety Network Information (CPNI). The FCC concluded that the two companies violated the CPNI rules when they failed to protect confidential user data. The companies both had security flaws in their apps that allowed outside access to customer account information. There are stringent privacy rules in place at the FCC for voice providers, but nothing similar for broadband.

The Federal Communication Commission used FCC Form 477 to collect subscribership information from providers of voice telephone services – incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs), competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs), and mobile voice providers – since December 1999. The FCC has required interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (“interconnected VoIP”) service providers to report subscribership information since December 2008. Also, starting with the data reported for 2014, FCC Form 477 has been modified to distinguish “over-the-top” (colloquially, “bring your own broadband”) inte

Over the past 26 years, the Universal Service Fund — a federal subsidy pool collected monthly from American telephone customers — has spent close to $9 billion a year to give Americans better phone and internet connections, wiring rural communities in Arkansas, inner-city neighborhoods in Chicago, and public libraries and schools across the country. Now it faces the biggest crisis of its existence, and Congress appears paralyzed in the effort to fix it.

Who still has landline telephones? The Washington Post's Andrew Van Dam found the answer in the National Health Interview Survey that is conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics. Over the years, the survey has shown a correlation between having a landline and overall health. According to the survey, people who cut the cord and only use cell phones are more likely to engage in risky behavior.

The Federal Communications Commission's Office of Economics and Analytics (OEA) and the Wireline Competition Bureau (WCB) initiated the urban rate survey for 2024. The information collected in this survey will be used to develop voice and broadband reasonable comparability benchmarks that will be in place in 2024. The FCC will be collecting the rates offered by a random sample of providers of fixed services identified using December 2022 data filed in the FCC Broadband Data Collection (BDC) tool.

In May 2023, the House Commerce Committee marked up nineteen pieces of telecommunications-related legislation.  One bill in particular, the American Broadband Deployment Act of 2023 (H.R. 3557), represents what I’m seeing as a new trend of actions taken by big internet service providers (ISP) to preempt the authority of local governments.  H.R. 3557 would preempt a host of current rights of local governments to manage public rights-of-way for telecom infrastructure.

Cell towers and other telecommunications  equipment have been destroyed in the wildfires burning on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Similarly, the electric grid suffered outages, and telecom equipment also relies on the grid. The lack of telecom service has made things worse for people calling for help and evacuation. Justen Burdette, CEO of Mobi, a Hawaiian wireless provider said, “The devastation in Lāhainā is just incomprehensible. So many folks have lost their homes, their small businesses—but to lose an entire community?

As global economies race to curb climate change, the telecommunications industry is positioned to make a substantial difference.

The Vermont Department of Public Service is seeking input from the public regarding the telecommunications facilities siting process (as established under 30 V.S.A. §248a). The goal is to conduct a study that ensures that the siting process is done in a manner that is transparent, fair, and responsive to the needs of the community, while also considering the development and expansion of telecommunications infrastructure in the state.

Nearly 500 days had passed since President Joe Biden first picked Gigi Sohn [Senior Fellow and Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society] to become the third Democrat to the nation’s top telecommunications regulator, and she was nowhere closer to confirmation than when her name was first announced in October 2021.