Wireless Telecommunications

The attorneys general from 16 states and the District of Columbia sent a letter to the Federal Communications urging the agency to request additional information from Verizon about its planned TracFone Wireless acquisition. “The potential for Verizon to pursue additional profits by reducing the access and/or quality of Lifeline services could shut out millions of low-income Americans from adequate communications services,” they wrote.

A new SpaceX filing outlines plans for Starlink to offer phone service, emergency backup for voice calls, and cheaper plans for people with low incomes through the government's Lifeline program. The details are in Starlink's petition to the Federal Communications Commission for designation as an Eligible Telecommunications Carrier (ETC) under the Communications Act. SpaceX said it needs that legal designation in some of the states where it won government funding to deploy broadband in unserved areas.

T-Mobile and Shenandoah Telecommunications Company (Shentel) settled their dispute over the purchase price of Shentel’s wireless assets, with the final price coming in at $1.95 billion. Shentel was a Sprint affiliate since 1995 and was still using the Sprint brand post-merger. Shentel had about 1.1 million subscribers as of June 30, 2020. Shentel also offers cable and wireline services. T-Mobile and Shentel expect the transaction will close in the second quarter 2021 after satisfying customary closing conditions and obtaining required regulatory approvals.  

Three institutional and strategic problems that President Joe Biden’s Federal Communications Commission will have to resolve:

The Federal Communications Commission has entered into an agreement with the National Science Foundation and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to support NSF’s Spectrum Innovation Initiative.

AT&T has agreed to a $12 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit over its throttling of "unlimited" mobile data plans. As usual, refunds to individual customers amount to a fraction of what the customers paid for the hobbled service. The paltry nature of expected per-person payments was explained by plaintiffs in a filing that asked the US District Court for the Northern District of California to approve the settlement.

As wireless providers move towards using data instead of voice calls, the Texas Universal Service Fund (TUSF), which is responsible for offsetting the high cost of connecting Texans across the state, has reduced payments received by rural telephone providers by 66 percent.  In response to this decrease, rural telephone providers, which are now facing financial uncertainty, filed a suit in Travis County District Court against the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC), which oversees the fund.  The lawsuit requests that the PUC fully provide previously approved funds to rural telephone cus

Apple CEO Tim Cook gave a speech explaining his company’s upcoming privacy changes, which will ban apps from sharing iPhone user behavior with third parties unless users give explicit consent. And he made plain that these new policies were designed at least in part with Facebook in mind.

Federal Communications Commission Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced that the items below are tentatively on the agenda for the February Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Wednesday, February 17, 2021: