House-Passed FCC Appropriations Bill Unwinds Some Pai-Backed Decisions

The House has passed an omnibus appropriations bill, the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, and it funds the Federal Communications Commission. But it will almost certainly need major tweaking if Senate Republicans are expected to approve it, partially due to three amendments related to FCC policy.

• One amendment by Rep Mark Pocan (D-WI) blocks the FCC's proposed changes to the Universal Service Fund (such as capping the USF budget).
• An amendment by Rep Katie Porter (D-CA) would affect the FCC’s recent policy efforts on "improving competitive broadband access to multi-tenant environments". The amendment blocks the FCC's plans to pre-empt a San Francisco ordinance on mandatory sharing of in-home broadband wiring that the FCC says undermines the “quality” of broadband service. The Open Technology Institute describes the amendment as a way to block the FCC's action on preempting local laws and anticompetitive practices that "create hyper-local broadband monopolies in apartment buildings and deny tenants a choice of broadband provider."
• An amendment by Rep Lori Trahan (D-CA) would compel the FCC to provide Congress with an update into the results of its investigation into the sale by wireless carriers of geolocation data to third-party aggregators, including a bounty hunter.