Daily Digest 11/8/2017 (Redl Confirmed)

Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA) wants the Federal Communications Commission to tap into more state and local government input on broadband deployment, suggesting the FCC’s goal now is to serve industry and tie the hands of those local governments. That came in a letter Rep Eshoo sent to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and the other commissioners Nov 7. Rep Eshoo wants to see more state and local officials on the FCC's Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC). She has 14 other signatories on the letter, including House Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Mike Doyle (D-PA).  BDAC is expected to come up with two "model codes," one for cities and the other for states, those codes being guidelines for how to streamline broadband deployment while balancing the interests of government with the demands for better, faster and cheaper broadband.

In Pennsylvania, there is a renewed push by state officials to capture $140 million in federal subsidies for rural broadband, a windfall that could go to another state after Verizon declined it two years ago. The Federal Communications Commission plans to distribute the rejected funds through an upcoming nationwide auction, a move that state officials are trying to head off through public advocacy and a pending FCC petition. "We are deeply concerned that the loss of this funding will widen the gap between Pennsylvania communities and businesses that have access to higher broadband speeds, and those without — not just between rural areas and larger cities, but also, in many cases, between neighbors in the same counties," said Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner David Sweet. About 800,000 Pennsylvania residents lack access to high-speed internet, most of them in more remote areas of the state, according to the FCC.

The Coalition to Save Local Media, which is the coalition to block the Sinclair-Tribune merger, has added six new members, according to organizers, including a big union and leased access advocates. Those new members are the United Church of Christ (UCC), NABET-CWA (representing some 10,000 broadcast employees), the Parents Television Council, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Herndon-Reston Indivisible, and the Leased Access Programmers Association. "The proposed Sinclair-Tribune merger would result in job cuts at dozens of stations across the country and would harm the ability of local stations to broadcast information vital to their communities in a responsible and unbiased manner," said NABET-CWA President Charlie Braico. "This merger is not in the interest of broadcast industry employees and is not in the interest of the American people."

[Commentary] The AT&T-Time Waner $85 billion deal dwarfs even the massive Comcast-NBCUniversal merger. And so do its implications: AT&T’s subscriber base is more than four times the size of Comcast’s at the time it purchased NBCUniversal. Any day now, the Department of Justice will announce whether this mega-merger will be permitted.

The FBI has confiscated the phone of the gunman who opened fire at a Texas church Nov 5 but is unable to access it for the ongoing investigation.  FBI Special Agent Christopher Combs, who is leading the investigation, told reporters that the bureau had flown the device to Quantico (VA) Nov 6 and that agents have been reviewing the phone but have not been able to get into it.  “It actually highlights an issue that you’ve all heard about before with advance of the phones and the technology and the encryption, law enforcement, whether it’s at the state, local or the federal level, is increasingly not able to get into these phones,” Combs said. “I can assure you that we are working very hard to get into the phone and that will continue until we find an answer. I don’t know how long that is going to be,” Combs said. “It could be tomorrow, it could be a week, it could be a month.” 

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, fresh off a two-day fact-finding trip to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, talks with B&C Washington Bureau Chief John Eggerton about what he saw, including devastation unlike any of the preceding hurricanes, the need for more Universal Service Fund money, the value of creative thinking about communications solutions, and the lack of an FCC field office that could have helped before and after the storm, he suggests.

The Senate confirmed David Redl as head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the Trump Administration's chief telecom advisor. NTIA also oversees government spectrum holders in much the way the Federal Communications Commission oversees private ones. Redl was nominated by President Donald Trump back in May. Redl is the former chief counsel of the House Commerce Committee's Communications Subcommittee. Redl had been chief counsel of the subcommittee 2013, before that serving as counsel to the full committee. Before joining the committee, Redl was director of regulatory affairs for CTIA-The Wireless Association, where he focused on spectrum policy and wireless broadband.