The FCC has an auction process to sell spectrum to businesses. The FCC also is charged with promoting competition. So there’s a credit available to small businesses who play in the auction. But this week, the FCC has had to tell one behemoth that small means small, and that no amount of pretending otherwise will actually change that. [More]
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FCC Proposes Rules To Reduce TV Blackouts, Potentially (But Probably Not) Lower Prices
By 8.14.15
The FCC has proposed a kind of arcane-sounding rule change that on the surface might not seem to affect consumers very much. But if all goes well, the rule will prove to be the kind of upstream change that prevents all the you-know-what from flowing on downhill to everyone else, and makes one of the most annoying things about cable TV into ancient history. [More]
Verizon Stops Throttling Data For Unlimited Wireless Data Plans, Doesn’t Tell Anyone
By 8.14.15
For four years, Verizon has been throttling 3G data speeds for its few remaining “unlimited” data plan holders who dared try to take advantage of having access to supposedly unlimited data on their wireless devices. But earlier this summer, the nation’s largest wireless carrier quietly put an end to this supposed “network management,” but only because it has done such a good job of driving customers away from their unlimited plans. [More]
“Travel Club” Telemarketer Fined $2.96M For Robocalling Consumers
By 8.11.15
Whenever we tell readers that it’s important for them to file complaints when they receive illegal robocalls, some inevitably respond that they believe it’s pointless and nothing ever comes of their gripe. But today, the FCC announced a nearly $3 million fine against a robocalling telemarketer following complaints from consumers who took the time to speak up. [More]
The FCC Wants To Know How Mobile Data, Broadband Caps, And High Prices Shape Broadband Access
By 8.7.15
It’s the FCC’s job to determine if broadband internet service is reaching enough people, quickly enough and competitively enough. To make that determination, every year they issue a report looking at the current state of broadband and how it’s changed. But broadband isn’t about wires anymore; it’s about wireless data and how quickly that moves (or doesn’t), too. And so the commission is considering a big change to their standards for the next go-around — one that would take a hard look at your cell service, too. [More]
FCC Adopts Rule Saying Your Phone Company Actually Has To Tell You Before They Kill Your Copper Landline
By 8.6.15
The age of copper is over. Or at least, the nation’s biggest telephone legacy landline carriers really want it to be. And the FCC is okay with that — as long as companies stick to a few new consumer protection rules that the commission voted on today. [More]
Court Will Hear Arguments Against Net Neutrality In December
By 8.4.15
Though the telecom and cable industry was unable to prevent new net neutrality rules from kicking in earlier this summer, the legal battle over the FCC’s authority to regulate broadband continues. A federal appeals court has agreed to hear arguments in the matter later this year. [More]
Company Caught Switching Customers’ Phone Service Without Permission
By 7.30.15
So your phone company calls you and says there’s a new plan that can save your on your phone bill, or maybe to let you know that you’re being overcharged for your current service. So you go ahead and switch to the more sensible plan, only to find out weeks later that you’ve actually been switched over to a new service provider you’ve never heard of — and to a plan that costs more than your old one. This was a reality for dozens of people who complained to the FCC about a Michigan-based company that now faces a potential $2.4 million fine. [More]
AT&T: $100M Fine For Throttling Unlimited Data Users Is “Unlawful,” “Coercive,” “Indefensible”
By 7.28.15
In June, the FCC proposed a potentially $100 million fine against AT&T for allegedly failing to disclose to its “unlimited” data plan subscribers the extent to which their data access could be throttled if they used too much of it in any given month. The company recently responded to the allegations, and let’s just say that AT&T isn’t exactly thrilled. [More]
It’s Official: FCC Gives Blessing To Marriage Of AT&T, DirecTV
By 7.24.15
After the announcement earlier this week that the FCC commissioners were reviewing and set to vote on deal that would grant regulatory approval to the merger of AT&T and DirecTV, the agency made it official this afternoon by giving its conditional blessing to this $49 billion marriage. [More]
45 Attorneys General Agree: Phone Companies Should Give Consumers Ability To Block Robocalls
By 7.22.15
While the FCC tries to allow consumers to take a more active role in which calls they do or don’t receive, a group of 45 state attorneys general (well, 44 states and the AG for the District of Columbia) are calling on the phone companies to just stop dilly dallying and start offering call-blocking services already. [More]
USDA Providing $85M In Grants & Loans To Support Rural Broadband
By 7.21.15
The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture might not be the first federal agency that pops into your head when thinking about broaband Internet connectivity, but this week the USDA announced a total of $85 million in loans and grants that it hopes will help farmers and other rural Americans bridge the digital divide. [More]
T-Mobile On The Hook For $17.5M After Nationwide 9-1-1 Outage
By 7.17.15
How important is it that telephone companies provide constant access to 9-1-1 service? Americans make an average of more than 27,000 of these emergency calls an hour, so when a nationwide wireless provider is unable to connect its users to 9-1-1 for even a few hours, they can be on the hook for millions of dollars. [More]
FCC Proposal: Phone Companies Need To Offer Backup Power, Actually Notify You If They Kill Off Your Copper-Wire Landline
By 7.10.15
FCC chairman Tom Wheeler is introducing a new proposal to the commission today that would attempt to protect consumers’ interests while advancing the transition away from plain old copper-wire service and onto IP data networks. [More]
AT&T Claims 11.7M People Could Get Gigabit Fiber If DirecTV Merger Approved
By 7.6.15
AT&T and DirecTV are still hoping their mega-merger is on track for approval. While they wait, the FCC has been asking them to clarify some of their earlier statements about why this deal is a good idea for the public. And buried in those new answers is the nugget that post-merger, AT&T plans to bring fiber networks to almost 12 million customers… kind of. [More]
FCC, TracFone Reach Settlement: Provider Will Now Unlock Customers Phones’ Like They Said They Would
By 7.2.15
Unlocking your phone is legal, and the wireless industry agreed months ago to a set of conditions that went into effect earlier this year that allow consumers to do just that. Those companies all promised the FCC that they had a plan. And when you tell a federal agency that you have a plan, you probably actually should, and ought to follow it, too. One company didn’t, and that has landed them in some hot water with the commission. [More]
PayPal Tweaking User Agreement To Remove Mandatory Robocalls
By 6.29.15
PayPal’s new user agreement — the one that gives the company even more latitude to make obnoxious prerecorded marketing calls to “any telephone number that you have provided us or that we have otherwise obtained” — is set to kick in this week, but following an FCC warning that this policy might be in violation of federal law, and a letter from multiple senators asking PayPal to rethink its new terms, the company has agreed to make changes that “clear up any confusion.” [More]
FCC Chair Tom Wheeler Promises No “Utility Style Regulation” Of Broadband
By 6.26.15
Two weeks ago, a federal appeals court denied the telecom and cable industry’s request to prevent the FCC’s new Open Internet Order (aka net neutrality) from going into effect, but the legal challenge to neutrality continues, with opponents claiming it will quell investment and result in stifling regulations. Today, FCC Chair Tom Wheeler spoke out publicly on these concerns. [More]
