The U.S. accused Huawei of conspiring to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. DOJ said Thursday afternoon that "a superseding indictment was returned yesterday in federal court in Brooklyn, New York."
After a few years of some stakeholders seeking one, a field hearing will be held in Puerto Rico that involves the FCC. A commissioner, not the agency itself, will host it, we were told.
The annual Mobile World Congress was canceled due to the coronavirus. Many companies had pulled out, as we previously reported.
The judge who heard states' case about whether T-Mobile can buy Sprint won't block the deal.
The FTC ordered Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft to provide information about acquisitions they made since 2010 that weren't reported to that agency or DOJ under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act. The FTC Act Section 6(b) orders "will help the FTC deepen its understanding of large technology firms’ acquisition activity, including how these firms report their transactions to the federal antitrust agencies, and whether large tech companies are making potentially anticompetitive acquisitions of nascent or potential competitors that fall below HSR filing thresholds," the agency said Tuesday.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's $9.7 billion C-band clearing plan has support from fellow Republican commissioners. That means the order has the votes needed to be approved at or before the Feb. 28 commissioners' meeting.
A public auction of 280 MHz of C-band spectrum is targeted to start Dec. 8, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said Thursday at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Relocation costs for incumbents -- an estimated $3 billion to $5 billion -- will be covered by auction winners, he said. He said satellite operators then should be eligible for up to $9.7 billion in accelerated relocation payments for clearing the lower 100 MHz in 46 of top 50 partial economic areas by September 2021, and remaining 180 MHz by September 2023.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai circulated Wednesday an NPRM for a Feb. 28 commissioners' vote. It "would allow white space devices to reach users at greater distances, thus enabling improved broadband coverage," the agency announced this morning. "Because white space device operations must protect other authorized services from interference, Chairman Pai is also proposing to increase the minimum required separation distances for white space devices operating at higher power."
President Donald Trump said during his State of the Union speech he’s “committed to ensuring that every citizen can have access to high-speed internet, including and especially in rural America.” Tuesday night was the first time Trump mentioned broadband connectivity as a priority in the annual address, having not cited it during calls to pass infrastructure legislation in 2018 and 2019.
Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel criticized the FCC Friday for taking “so long” to reach its finding today that “one or more wireless carriers apparently violated federal law” in their location-tracking practices, including the sale of customer location-tracking data allegedly accessed by bounty hunters. Chairman Ajit Pai wrote House Commerce Committee Democrats Friday to inform them the agency had concluded its year-plus investigation into the claims. The carriers didn’t immediately comment.