The FCC will host a private celebration of the agency’s 90th anniversary Tuesday, an agency spokesperson confirmed. The event will involve staff and guests but is closed to the public and media, the spokesperson said. The agency was formed June 19, 1934.

The Agriculture Department’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) disregarded its own ReConnect program regulations when it awarded nearly $70 million in federal grants in the fourth round of funding last year to two phone companies, Interior and Mukluk, to deploy broadband services for individuals and businesses in Alaska’s Nome census area, alleged two native villages in a preliminary injunction motion Friday (docket 3:24-cv-00100) in U.S. District Court for Alaska. Unalakleet and Elim are federally recognized tribes that contend that Interior and Mukluk didn’t obtain resolutions of tribal consent from them or any other tribes within the Nome census area, as RUS’ “clear and unambiguous” ReConnect program regulations require, said their complaint. ReConnect furnishes loans and grants to cover the costs of construction, improvement or acquisition of facilities and equipment needed to provide broadband service in eligible rural areas. In disregarding its own regulations, RUS “acted arbitrarily and capriciously in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act,” alleged the complaint. As a direct result of RUS’ violation of the APA, tribes such as Unalakleet and Elim have been irreparably harmed, it said. The issuance of awards in “contravention” of RUS regulations mandating tribal consent itself irreparably harms tribal “sovereignty,” because the right to approve or reject proposals over tribal lands can’t be restored by the payment of money, it said. Despite obtaining nearly $70 million in ReConnect funding, Interior and Mukluk haven’t begun construction and aren’t serving the Nome census area, it said. Because ReConnect regulations say that RUS won’t fund more than one project that serves any one given geographic area, the issuance of any award, even improper, has the effect of precluding tribal lands “from obtaining the benefit of any future awards from RUS,” it said. Tribes such as Unalakleet and Elim “have been forced to accept non-existent services from providers to which they did not consent and have been prevented from receiving services from providers to which they do consent,” said the complaint. RUS’ improper funding awards also compromise the rights of tribes “to benefit from alternative federal funding administered by agencies other than USDA,” such as NTIA’s broadband equity, access and deployment program, “causing additional irreparable harm,” it said. Unalakleet and Elim “have established that a preliminary injunction should issue,” it said They seek an order compelling RUS to “deobligate” Interior and Mukluk’s ReConnect program awards “until such time as they can be declared void and unenforceable through this action,” it said. They separately seek an order compelling RUS to designate the plaintiffs as unserved, “thus removing the cloud on eligibility for concurrent and future federal funding during the pendency of this action,” it said.

Verizon is putting $100 million into its supplemental coverage from space partnership with AST SpaceMobile, the companies said Wednesday. The Verizon commitment "will enable AST SpaceMobile to target 100% coverage of the continental United States on premium 850 MHz spectrum [and is] a transformational commercial milestone,” AST Chairman-CEO Abel Avellan said.

The FCC Public Safety Bureau will conduct a voluntary exercise of the disaster information reporting system (DIRS) for all communications providers June 10-12, according to a public notice in Tuesday's Daily Digest. The exercise is intended to help communications providers test and practice accessing and filing DIRS reports, training employees on DIRS reporting, and updating DIRS contact info, the PN said. It will begin with a mock activation letter to all registered DIRS participants from the Public Safety Bureau June 10, the PN said. “The activation letter will clearly state that this is only an exercise and not a real DIRS activation.” The letter will include a list of preselected counties that form the affected area for the mock-DIRS activation, and providers will be asked to report data on any communication assets they have in those counties. “As this is only an exercise, the Bureau does not expect to receive actual counts of outages,” the PN said. “If a provider does not have any communications assets in the affected counties, it can still participate in the exercise by reporting mock data for the pre-selected counties.” The agency wants initial data by 10 a.m. EDT June 11 and an updated report by the same time on June 12. The bureau will send a deactivation letter by 3 p.m. EDT June 12 "letting all participants know that the exercise has been completed,” the PN said.

The FCC Public Safety Bureau asked for comment on the effects of the May 7-11 geomagnetic storm, which peaked on the 11th. Comments should be filed in docket 24-161 and are due June 24. Coronal mass ejections from the sun can distort the propagation of RF waves, the Friday notice said. On May 11, the FCC High Frequency (HF) Direction Finding Center “observed significant disturbance in the propagation of HF radio signals,” the bureau said. The bureau encouraged commenters “to provide any available evidence, particularly electromagnetic spectrum analyses, imagery, or chronological logs relating the storm’s impacts.” Comments should “include the description of the impacts; make and model of affected communications equipment, which could include transmitters, receivers, transceivers, switches, routers, amplifiers etc.; make, model, and type of affected antennae and their composition; frequencies affected; type and composition of cable adjoining communications equipment and the antennae, if applicable; duration of the impact; and any residual effects observed in the hours following restoration,” the notice said.

SES' proposed $3.1 billion purchase of Intelsat (see 2404300048) could mean more C-band spectrum becomes available for 5G, New Street’s Jonathan Chaplin said in a Thursday investors note. Chaplin said questions have been asked about the spectrum implications since the deal was unveiled April 30. “We think the merger could result in 100 MHz [of C-band spectrum] being released relatively soon,” he said.

ISP groups and New York state might soon reach agreement and avoid an appeal of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision to uphold New York state’s Affordable Broadband Act (case 21-1975). The 2nd Circuit previously granted an extension to file for rehearing or rehearing en banc until Friday (see 2405010005). In an unopposed motion on Wednesday, the industry groups asked for a two-week extension until June 7. The plaintiffs and state “are discussing and anticipate reaching within the next two weeks an agreed-to stipulation regarding the New York law at issue … that would obviate the need for Plaintiffs-Appellees to file a rehearing petition before this Court,” the ISP groups wrote. “Following diligent and repeated discussions, the parties reached tentative agreement on the outline of this agreed-to stipulation -- by which Plaintiffs-Appellees would agree to forgo filing a petition for rehearing or rehearing en banc in exchange for certain agreements from Defendant-Appellant.” The plaintiffs said the “parties expect to reach final agreement as to that agreed-to stipulation before June 7, 2024, but not before” this Friday when the rehearing petition is currently due.

The annual cost of maintaining AT&T’s copper network is more than $3 billion, not the $10 billion figure that Chris Sambar, executive vice president-technology operations and head of network, mentioned Tuesday (see 2405210059), an AT&T spokesperson wrote in an email Wednesday.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court erred when it ruled that E-rate reimbursement requests to the Universal Service Administrative Co. (USAC) are actionable claims under the False Claims Act (FCA), Wisconsin Bell’s U.S. Supreme Court reply brief said Monday (docket 23-1127). The reply brief supported Wisconsin Bell's April 15 cert petition to reverse the 7th Circuit’s decision. In holding that the FCA’s treble damages and civil penalties apply to submissions made to USAC -- a private corporation paying private funds -- the 7th Circuit “explicitly acknowledged” that it was taking a “contrary view” from the 5th Circuit “about the identical program,” the reply brief said. The circuit split “directly affects billions of dollars distributed each year under the E-rate and three other universal service programs," it said. The acknowledged conflict “casts a shadow of extraordinary liability over a massive number of transactions involving numerous private entities that are subject to government supervision,” said the reply brief. SCOTUS should grant Wisconsin Bell’s cert petition “to resolve the circuit split and restore clarity to the scope of the FCA as applied to government-adjacent programs funded with private money,” it said. SCOTUS distributed Wisconsin Bell's cert petition for the justices' June 6 conference, said a text-only docket entry Tuesday.

The FCC's rules reclassifying broadband as a Communications Act Title II telecom service and reestablishing net neutrality are effective July 22, according to a notice in Wednesday's Federal Register (see 2405080044). Also, China Mobile International, China Telecom, China Unicom, Pacific Networks and ComNet "shall discontinue any and all provisions of broadband internet access service" as of Sept. 19, the notice said.