The FCC issued a cease and desist letter to Avid Telecom Wednesday, saying the company "apparently originated multiple illegal telemarketing robocall campaigns" for health insurance. The letter noted Avid's response to the Industry Traceback Group claimed its customer who initiated the calls had prior consent, but the customer "failed to make adequate disclosures to obtain consent." The investigation "builds off of the work of state Attorneys General who recently filed a lawsuit against Avid Telecom," which found that the company "sent or transmitted more than 7.5 billion calls" to numbers on the Do Not Call Registry.
Country of origin cases
Meta exposed its artificial intelligence technology to risks of spam, fraud, malware and privacy abuse by allowing unrestrained release of its Large Language Model Meta AI (LLaMA) program, wrote Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Tuesday.
Industry, state officials and advocacy organizations welcomed FCC proposals aimed at closing a loophole in robocall rules and addressing Stir/Shaken caller ID authentication, in comments posted Tuesday in docket 17-97 (see 2303160061). Most commenters agreed the commission should allow use of third-party authentication solutions without minimal restrictions.
President Joe Biden signed the Fiscal Responsibility Act debt limit measure Saturday, enacting language that rescinds “unobligated” COVID-19 emergency funding for the FCC and Agriculture Department Rural Utilities Service’s Distance Learning, Telemedicine and Broadband Program enacted as part of the 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (see 2305300071). The Cares Act originally allocated $200 million in emergency funding to the FCC and $25 million for the RUS program (see 2003270058). The Senate passed the Fiscal Responsibility Act 63-36 Thursday night; the House approved it earlier in the week (see 2306010080).
The FCC appears headed for approval Thursday of a draft NPRM on facilitating the launch of next-generation 911 with relatively few changes (see 2305180069), industry officials said. APCO asked for added language and NTCA raised small carrier concerns, but otherwise a docket on the NPRM has been quiet since the draft item was circulated two weeks ago. Comments were filed last week in docket 21-479.
Verizon needs another year to migrate TracFone California customers to its network due to inaction by affected users, Verizon said in a Friday letter to the California Public Utilities Commission. In 2021, the CPUC approved Verizon’s TracFone buy with a condition that it migrate all TraceFone customers to Verizon’s network by Nov. 22 this year. Verizon seeks an extension to Nov. 22, 2024, “to align with federal regulatory obligations and to continue its efforts to persuade TracFone’s California-based customers to migrate through customer-friendly incentives in light of widespread customer inaction despite Verizon and TracFone’s robust outreach to affected customers.” The FCC’s merger approval allowed three-years minimum for customer migration, Verizon said. Saying it can’t force anyone, the carrier said it’s doing everything it can to move customers. “Despite robust outreach and generous incentives, a large number of customers have not migrated,” it said. “These customers have been contacted on a nearly weekly cadence, with some customers having received over 50 communications to date.” The carrier later in the letter described the number of unmoved customers as a “large percentage of the original universe of TracFone customers on non-Verizon networks.” If customers don’t move by the current deadline, Verizon would continue to provide service for the time being but cease to communicate migration offers, it said. “Such customers, assuming they do not switch service providers of their own volition, will remain in this status until TracFone ceases to provide service over the third-party network used to serve the customers.” Verizon would inform customers before they lose service, it said. The carrier asked the CPUC to extend the deadline by June 22.
California digital equity and data broker bills passed in their origin chambers Wednesday. The Assembly voted 48-18 for AB-41, which aims to tighten digital equity requirements in the state’s video franchise law (see 2304200044). The Senate voted 32-8 for SB-362, which would allow consumers to delete data brokers collected on them. The bill would also transfer a data broker registry to the California Privacy Protection Agency from the state Justice Department. “We are one step closer to finally giving consumers the power to control who accesses their most sensitive personal information,” said the data bill’s author, Sen. Josh Becker (D). The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse applauded Senate passage in the same news release.
The Senate appeared likely to begin votes as soon as Thursday night on the House-passed Fiscal Responsibility Act debt limit measure (HR-3746), which includes language that would rescind “unobligated” COVID-19 emergency funding for the FCC and Agriculture Department Rural Utilities Service’s Distance Learning, Telemedicine and Broadband Program enacted as part of the 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (see 2305300071). The Cares Act originally allocated $200 million in emergency funding to the FCC and $25 million for the RUS program (see 2003270058). The House passed HR-3746 314-117 Wednesday.
Verizon asked the FCC to extend until Dec. 31 the deadline for providers to implement do-not-originate blocking and Stir/Shaken signatures to unsigned calls from foreign service providers, in a letter posted Thursday in docket 17-59. The carrier filed a petition in December seeking the extension, noting there are "special circumstances confirming the appropriateness of extending the compliance deadline (see 2302020073). Verizon said it found after a "recent week-long study" that "not a single call traversing the legacy gateway infrastructure carried a 'calling party' number on the Industry Traceback Group’s DNO list" and "virtually no illegal robocalls traverse this legacy infrastructure."
The growing cadence of commercial space launches is facing a bottleneck from lack of available launch sites, space launch experts told us. A plethora of launch providers is operating or developing launch capability, but facilities “are where we started to get the hiccups," said space lawyer Bryce Kennedy, Association of Commercial Space Professionals president.