Telecommunication

The Federal Communications Commission began subsidizing home phone lines in 1985 to provide “the opportunities and security that phone service brings” to people who cannot afford it, according to the FCC’s website. The Lifeline program started including cellphone plans in 2005. Currently, subscribers receive $9.25 per month to put toward a discounted cellphone plan designed by provider companies. For some, that means a cap of 250 voice minutes and 2 GB of mobile data.

It’s fair to say that a Council on Foreign Relations appearance by the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is out of the ordinary. But these are extraordinary times. We’re at a pivotal moment in the evolution of communications technology. Across America and around the world, private companies have begun rolling out the next generation of wireless technology—commonly known as 5G. For all the opportunities that 5G will unlock, it will also create new challenges. Chief among these is the main subject of my remarks: network security.

Thank you to the US Chamber of Commerce and to the Competitive Carriers Association for organizing this gathering today. This gathering represents the core of the “all of government” approach to address 5G security concerns.

Dayslong power outages in California are revealing an inconvenient fact about modern phones: When the electricity goes out, so do they. Power shutdowns in the state meant to prevent further fire risk have cut power to some cell towers, as well as to cable providers that sell home voice services along with television programming and internet access.

AT&T is planning to spend just $20 billion on capital investment in 2020, down from $23 billion in 2019. The company is under pressure from investors to control spending, in part because its TV business is tanking and because of AT&T's giant debt load stemming from the purchases of DirecTV and Time Warner. AT&T increased capital investment between 2018 and 2019, but its 2020 outlook would push the company's spending to lower than its 2018

Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) said that he was “pleased to see the [Federal Communications Commission] address the threat to network security posed by vendors such as Huawei and ZTE,” calling it a “critical first step.” But Vice Chairman Warner also said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai should have acted sooner and he "urged" the Trump administration to “work with Congress to pass legislation to help rural carriers remove legacy equipment and to harden the U.S. telecommunications supply chain." "There is a lot of work left to be done,” Warner added.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the items below are tentatively on the agenda for the Open FCC Meeting scheduled for Tuesday, Nov 19, 2019:

Telecom providers expect to save millions of dollars thanks to a new Texas state law that cuts fees. But a coalition of nearly 50 TX cities, who will be on the losing end of that revenue, worry those discounts won’t be passed on to their residents. So they’re suing. For years, telecom providers paid two separate fees to run cable and phone lines through city-owned strips of land, know as rights-of-way. Companies were required to pay both fees, even if it took only one line to deliver the two services.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai presented his colleagues with a two-part proposal that would help safeguard the nation’s communications networks. The FCC will vote on this proposal at its Nov 19 meeting.

The US Supreme court has declined to overturn two lower court rulings that MN was preempted from regulating Charter Communications’s interconnected voice-over-internet protocol telephone service because the courts were convinced the operator had made the case for why it was an information service, not a telecommunications service, even though the Federal Communications Commission has yet to classify interconnected VoIP either way. That sounds like it would buttress the FCC’s assertion it can pre-empt state efforts to reregulate internet access, which the agency has definitely classified as