Behold the Ides of March: March 2019 FCC Meeting Agenda

On March 15, we’ll aim to make progress on many of the issues core to the Federal Communications Commission’s mission: promoting US leadership on 5G, closing the digital divide, advancing public safety, modernizing our media rules, helping rural consumers, and more.

• The FCC monthly meeting will lead off with an initiative that will unleash new wireless services and technologies in frequencies above 95 GHz — what we’ve called the Spectrum Horizons Opens a New Window. In addition to spectrum north of 95 GHz, we’re also continuing to study ways to make more efficient use of spectrum in the 900 MHz range. I’m proposing to make a segment of the 900 MHz band available for broadband, which will improve the user experience. To satisfy the MOBILE NOW statutory requirement, I’ve circulated a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that seeks comment on possible changes to our partitioning, disaggregation, and spectrum leasing rules that could encourage more secondary market transactions and expand spectrum access in underserved rural areas. 
• To better equip first responders to do their jobs, we’ll be voting on a proposal to establish a vertical, or z-axis, location accuracy metric of 3 meters for wireless 911 calls. 
• On the media front, keen observers know that the FCC is in the midst of the 600 MHz band repack, in which hundreds of television stations are in the process of changing their transmission frequencies to make space for wireless services following our incentive auction. The Commission will vote on a Report and Order which will establish rules for the disbursement of this funding. Our March meeting will also feature the latest order to come out of our media modernization initiative. 
• The Commission will vote on establishing service quality standards for intermediate providers — that is, “middlemen” carriers that take the call from the originating carrier and send it toward the terminating carrier — to help ensure that any calls they handle actually reach their intended destination.