The FCC's FY 2020 regulatory fees order, adopted in August (see 2008310056), is effective Wednesday, and the fees are due Friday, says Wednesday's Federal Register.

Statutory limits on state and federal authority stop the FCC and NARUC “from squarely addressing unjust and unreasonable intrastate rates” for inmate calling services, the federal agency and state commissioners’ association said in a Tuesday letter to the National Governors Association. “Until there is Congressional or state legislative action, neither the FCC nor state commissions can cap the excessive intrastate rates that lie beyond our authority,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and NARUC President Brandon Presley wrote NGA Chair Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y., and Vice Chair Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark. NGA “received the letter today and have been sharing it with governors’ offices,” a spokesperson emailed. FCC and NARUC efforts “are complicated by a patchwork of authority over rates and charges,” with FCC authority limited to interstate and international rates and some state regulators lacking jurisdiction over intrastate rates, Pai and Presley wrote. “We understand that in most, if not all, cases where a state commission does have jurisdiction, rates have been set at just and reasonable levels.” The FCC says “intrastate rates for debit or prepaid calls substantially exceed existing interstate rates in 45 states,” sometimes by up to seven times, while 27 states allow first-minute intrastate charges up to 26 times higher than for an interstate call, they said. “This situation is unacceptable, especially as the overwhelming majority of calls from incarcerated individuals -- roughly 80% -- are billed as intrastate.” Pai and Presley attached a list of facilities that charged intrastate rates above interstate caps last year. “Prompt and meaningful action on intrastate rates is critical to ensuring that incarcerated individuals and their loved ones can maintain vital connections during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.” Presley will propose a resolution at NARUC’s November meeting (see 2007240045).

The FCC deactivated the disaster information reporting system for Hurricane Sally, the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau said Monday. Its Monday DIRS status report said 1.5% of cellsites in affected areas of Alabama and 0.4% in Florida were out, two FM radio stations were off-air and one AM sent programming to another outlet.

The FTC and DOJ Antitrust Division are looking at possible changes to Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act implementation, FTC said Monday, announcing an NPRM and Advance NPRM to be published in the Federal Register. It said the NPRM suggests proposed transaction filers disclose more information about their associates and exempting the acquisition of 10% or less of an issuer's voting securities. The ANPRM seeks information on such topics as the size of the transaction and routes for avoiding the HSR Act requirements. The FTC said the vote to publish the ANPRM was 5-0. The NPRM vote was 3-2, with Commissioners Rohit Chopra and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter dissenting. Chopra said the exemptions provisions are concerning because the FTC "will completely lose visibility into a large set of transactions involving non-controlling stakes." Slaughter said the expanded de minimis exemption is a "broadening of the black box of unseen transactions," and the proposed changes could have unforeseen effects on corporate governance. DOJ antitrust chief Makan Delrahim said he backs creating an exemption for certain de minimis investments of 10% or less "to address the regulatory burdens of an overbroad HSR requirement for certain minority investments that do not raise competition concerns.” DOJ said the agency was particularly interested in feedback on the NPRM on removing the director/officer and vendor/vendee carve-outs.

The FCC should view mobile and fixed broadband as “distinct offerings,” the Wireless ISP Association commented on the FCC's upcoming broadband progress report. “Demand for broadband connectivity has dramatically increased and shifted to fixed residential environments to accommodate remote learning and work-from-home uses and applications during the" pandemic, WISPA said. The annual Communications Act Section 706 proceeding “comes during an unprecedented time in history that has exposed the vast gulf in access to telecommunications service,” said New America’s Open Technology Institute and Access Now. Increase speed benchmarks, the groups said: The benchmark should “account for current needs and technological advancement. Service that is 25 Mbps in download speed and 3 Mbps in upload speed is insufficient for online applications used today.” Identify "the remaining gaps in deployment, recognize the substantial progress broadband providers and their partners have made in connecting Americans to broadband (especially low-income families and students), and develop strategies for closing those gaps quickly,” NCTA commented. The 25/3 connection benchmark “still satisfies the statutory definition of advanced telecommunications capability,” the group said. Comments were due Friday in docket 20-269.

EU's general data protection regulation seems to be entrenching big tech companies that were much the target of the legislation, while costing billions of dollars in compliance, FTC Commissioner Noah Phillips said on C-SPAN's The Communicators, to have been televised this weekend. He said proposals to expand it and the California Consumer Privacy Act, which is taking effect now, indicate weaknesses in the ability of those laws to address privacy issues. He said congressional work on federal privacy legislation needs to focus first on what problems need addressing and then on details such as whether there should be state law preemption or a private right of action. However, much of the Capitol Hill debate seems to be focusing on those details first, he said. Phillips confirmed his agency is doing an antitrust investigation into Facebook but didn't elaborate, and he didn't comment when asked about any possible TikTok investigation. He said he intends to serve out the remaining three years of his term regardless of how the November election goes. He said there's no chilling effect on FTC commissioners by FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly's renomination being pulled by the White House seemingly for his stance on social media regulation. "We operate as a bipartisan agency," Phillips said. NTIA said Friday the FCC has the legal authority to regulate social media, and the First Amendment backs it doing so (see 2009180054).

The FCC fully considered the California Public Utilities Commission’s request to delay its rollout of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Phase I (see 2001140028) but decided not to grant it because "it presented no concrete plan on the way forward,” Chairman Ajit Pai said in letters to Rep. Anna Eshoo and three other California Democratic members of the House Communications Subcommittee, released Friday. Eshoo and Communications Vice Chair Doris Matsui, Tony Cardenas and Jerry McNerney wrote Pai in January seeking an explanation of the FCC’s rejection of the delay. The CPUC “offered no budget, no methodology for determining where subsidies would be directed, no criteria for provider eligibility, no timeline for distribution of funding and deployment, no auction design -- in short, no partnership for the FCC to join,” Pai said. “Their suggestion, if accommodated, would cause significant delay and confusion in the entire program, as the Commission created separate mechanisms and state-specific rules for each state, instead of connecting millions of unserved Americans to broadband networks as quickly as possible. It would cause still further delay to ensure that each state's unique proposed [RDOF] mechanism for awarding support operated consistently with the Commission's decision to allocate support using market-based mechanisms.”

The FCC deactivated the disaster information reporting system for Louisiana and Mississippi, in connection with Hurricane Sally, said public notices Wednesday and Thursday. The system remains active for nine counties in Alabama and four in Florida. Thursday’s DIRS report, including the since-deactivated Mississippi region, listed 156,147 cable and wireline subscribers in the affected areas as out of service, and 17.1% of cellsites are offline. One Florida public safety answering point is rerouting calls, one AM station and three FMs are off-air, another AM is sending programming to another station and no TV stations are down.

The FCC corrected the reply comments deadline for the NPRM on proposed changes to the agency's ex parte rules (see 2009020006). Replies are due Oct. 19, not Nov. 2, said Thursday's Federal Register.

The FCC is briefly reopening the window for C-band earth station operators to correct their registrations and add existing antennas collocated with existing register antennas. Don't expect it to open again because it's "unlikely [the agency] will be in a position to grant any such waiver requests filed after Sept. 25," the Wireless and International bureaus said in a public notice in Thursday's Daily Digest. The action responds to an NAB/NCTA ask (see 2008120055). The bureaus said waiver requests need to specify whether they involve antennas located within 150 meters of an incumbent earth station; seek a waiver for no more than 25 additional antennas per registrant at any given site; and seek interference protection only and disavow any claim to reimbursement for antennas subject of the waiver request.