December 2020

Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Will Put Gigabit Fixed Wireless to the Test

David Sumi is vice president of marketing for Siklu, a fixed wireless equipment manufacturer that was part of a group of manufacturers that convinced the Federal Communications Commission to allow Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) fixed wireless bids for the gigabit tier. According to Sumi, there have been a lot of advances in fixed wireless recently. He described two Siklu offerings that could be used for gigabit fixed wireless deployments and noted that other manufacturers have similar offerings.

FCC Clarifies Connect America Fund Performance Measures

In 2018, the Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau, the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, and the Office of Engineering and Technology (collectively, the Bureaus) adopted performance requirements establishing a uniform framework for measuring speed and latency performance for recipients of high-cost support to serve fixed locations. Later, the Bureaus addressed certain issues regarding testing to be conducted by high-latency bidders in the Connect America Fund (CAF) Phase II auction.

FCC Denies Permanent Waiver for WWOR/New York Post Combination, Instead Grants Temporary Waiver

The Federal Communications Commission's Media Bureau denied a permanent waiver request of the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule sought by Fox Corp regarding the continued common ownership of WWOR-TV, Secaucus, New Jersey, and the New York Post. Instead, the Bureau granted a temporary waiver to preserve the status quo while the fate of the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule is resolved. Absent a waiver, the current rule prohibits common ownership of a daily newspaper and a broadcast station serving the same geographic market, in this case, New York (NY).