FCC Gives Later Deadline for Filings, Moves January Open Meeting Time

The FCC is moving back Thursday's open meeting and giving extra time for most filings. In a notice Wednesday, it cited the weather-related closing of FCC offices Friday afternoon through Tuesday (see 1601250058) and said all filings that were due Jan. 22 through Jan. 27 are now due Thursday. Network Outage Reporting System notifications (see 1601250058) and reports and filings subject to statutory deadlines, however, are excepted from the deadline changes, the FCC said. In a separate notice Wednesday, the agency said Thursday's January open meeting still is a go, as was expected (see 1601260063). It will start at 1 p.m. in the Commission Meeting Room instead of the standard 10:30 a.m. The FCC also pointed to the recent winter storm, in an unopposed motion filed Wednesday in U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit asking that the filing deadline for its brief due Thursday in the appeal of its 2015 effective competition order be moved to Feb. 2. "The prolonged closure of the government has seriously disrupted the efforts of FCC counsel to prepare the brief," the agency said in its motion, which also asks that the intervenor for respondents' brief deadline be moved to Feb. 16, the petitioners' reply brief deadline moved to March 8, and final briefs now be due March 29. NAB, NATOA and Minnesota's Northern Dakota County Cable Communications Commission sued the FCC in August, asking the D.C. Circuit to reject the June effective competition order (see 1508280033).