Telecommunication

At the Federal Communications Commission, we’re celebrating 250 years of American independence by charting a course to ensure America’s leadership well into the future. With a packed agenda for our July 22 Open Meeting, we’re announcing a big new spectrum auction, supercharging our Space Bureau efforts, protecting consumers, and strengthening our national security. First up, we will vote on an order that adopts rules for the auction of 160 MHz of prime, mid-band spectrum in the Upper C-Band.

The Illinois Office of Broadband (IOB) announced its new Illinois Broadband Permit Map, a leading resource on infrastructure deployment in Illinois. This map shares data on various permitting entities and other features that are helpful in determining where and which permits are necessary for broadband construction.

Copper network retirement in California has taken another litigious turn. In a suit against the Federal Communications Commission, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is asking the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a federal court in San Francisco, to determine that the FCC's new rules aimed at expediting copper network shutdowns constitutes an overreach that violates federal law and conflicts with notice-and-comment rulemaking requirements.

As western North Carolina continues recovering from the devastation left by Helene, state and regional leaders are focusing on one of the storm's most significant challenges: the near-total collapse of communications infrastructure. During a virtual recovery update hosted by Grow NC, officials discussed ongoing recovery efforts and what is being done to prevent another communications blackout if a future disaster strikes.

California state regulators say AT&T lied to the Federal Communications Commission in an attempt to shut off its old copper phone network without providing an adequate replacement. “AT&T asserts that California seeks to prohibit or hinder wireline carriers from discontinuing copper facilities and investing in fiber,” said a June 15 filing by the state of California and the California Public Utilities Commission. “Indeed, AT&T has been making this argument for years.

AT&T filed several petitions at the Federal Communications Commission asking the FCC to override regulations from the State of California. The State is forcing AT&T to maintain copper networks until such time that AT&T can offer the same services to customers using some alternate technology. The FCC reacted by issuing two requests for public comments related to the AT&T petitions.

The Federal Communications Commission’s Wireline Competition Bureau reminded states that regulate pole attachments of their obligation, pursuant to section 224 of the Communications Act of 1934, to issue and make effective rules and regulations implementing their regulatory authority over pole attachments, and further emphasized that these states must actually regulate the rates, terms, and conditions of pole attachments and have established procedures for resolving pole access complaints. The pole attachment process is a key factor in ensuring Americans benefit from the increased broadband

The Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) submitted the contribution base amount to be used for the third quarter of calendar year 2026 (3Q2026). Upon approval of the universal service support mechanisms quarterly funding requirements, projected administrative costs, and the contribution base, the Federal Communications Commission will establish a quarterly contribution factor and a circularity factor. USAC will then bill contributors monthly for their individual obligations based on the approved contribution factor. The total projected collected interstate and international end-u

There are a lot of unanswered questions about AI and telecommunications, but one thing is for certain—AI is going to change networks. For starters, inferencing traffic behaves differently. As a new Cisco report tells us, AI data flows are not at all like the "human-paced, bursty video streams" networks are currently optimized for.

The NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission in response to the commission’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking aimed at changing rules to accelerate the transition to all-IP networks. The filing raises three points regarding the impact of the change in rules on rural local exchange carriers.