Shelbi Lien

FCC’s Supply Chain Data Collection All Universal Service Fund (USF) recipients that were eligible telecommunications carriers (ETCs) as of December 31, 2019, must respond to the mandatory Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Supply Chain Data Collection (Data Collection) due no later than April 22, 2020. Other USF and service providers that are not ETCs are also … Read more

Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) & Copyright Infringement On December 19, 2019, a jury awarded Sony $1 billion in damages against Cox Communications after ruling that Cox failed to protect its network against copyright infringement by the ISP’s subscribers. Generally, ISPs are allowed safe harbor under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). However, an earlier … Read more

Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) is now Commercially Available On January 27, 2020, the FCC released its Public Notice, DA 20-110, in which the FCC has announced the completion of initial Commercial Deployment (ICD) phase and the approval of the Spectrum Access System (SAS) services of CommScope, Federated Wireless, Google, and Sony for Commercial Operations. … Read more

FCC Adds Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) to January Agenda On January 8th, 2020, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a News Release announcing the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), which would provide $20.4 billion in high-cost universal service support over 10 years, has been added to the January 30th Open Commission meeting. The Report … Read more

Bureau Establishes an Eligible Locations Adjustment Process (ELAP) On November 12, 2019, the Wireline Competition Bureau (WCB) released an order creating a voluntary process to review the defined deployment obligations (locations and associated support) on a state-by-state basis when the total number of actual locations in the eligible areas is less than the number of … Read more

Lifeline New Low-Income Program Rules The Lifeline program was originally established in 1985 to ensure that low -income consumers had access to affordable, landline telephone service. Today, the Lifeline program provides qualifying low-income consumers discounts on voice or broadband Internet access service, as well as in a bundled service. Currently, qualifying low-income consumers receive a … Read more

Disaster Recovery Planning From blizzards and flooding to wildfires and hurricanes, 2019 has been a year of weather extremes across the United States. Each season brings new challenges and new opportunities. One challenge we hope you have not had to deal with is the occurrence of a natural disaster in your area. We want to … Read more

Court Upholds Majority of Restoring Internet Freedom Order On October 1, 2019, in the case of Mozilla Corporation v. Federal Communications Commission et al., the U.S. Court of Appeals (“the Court”) confirmed a majority of the FCC rule changes included in the 2017 Restoring Internet Freedom Order (“RIF Order”) which overturned the prior FCC’s 2015 … Read more