After a drawn-out Senate battle last year which resulted in no confirmation, President Joe Biden has once again nominated Gigi Sohn for the fifth FCC Commissioner seat. Sohn, a former top FCC adviser, is also the co-founder of Public Knowledge, a non-profit advocating for copyright, telecommunications, and internet policies. If confirmed, Sohn would fill out...… Continue Reading
Amidst the polarization in Washington, there remains one thing nearly everyone agrees on; no one likes robocalls. Last month, the House passed the Stopping Bad Robocalls Act, which directs the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC” or “Commission”) to take several steps to curb robocallers and adopts stiffer penalties for robocallers (particularly robocallers who intentionally violate the...… Continue Reading
On June 7, 2019, the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC” or the “Commission”) released a Report and Order (“R&O”) revising the Commission’s rules under which independent programmers may lease cable TV channels to retransmit their programming (“Leased Access Rules”). Leased Access has rarely been used, due to concerns by both cable operators and programmers, and the...… Continue Reading
Mark your calendars because the time has come: as of June 11 the FCC announced yesterday that its Open Internet rules (better known as “net neutrality”) will cease and new FCC rules governing the Internet will take effect. This was the latest in a series of procedural milestones in the net neutrality debate. In a...… Continue Reading
Radio spectrum and real estate have a lot in common. They’re not making any more of either; and for both, location really does matter. “Location,” for spectrum, means frequency. Much as different real estate locations best serve different purposes, different technological applications work best in different frequency ranges. Like prime downtown addresses, though, all the...… Continue Reading
On Friday, March 23 President Trump signed a $1.3 trillion appropriations bill that will mean some significant changes to the broadcasting community. The 2,232-page omnibus bill not only includes an additional $1 billion for spectrum repack on top of the already $1.75 billion already allocated, but also changes how broadcasters are treated in terms of...… Continue Reading