FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said Johannes Bauer, director of the Quello Center at Michigan State University, will serve a one-year term as chief economist at the FCC. Among Bauer’s areas of focus at the center are 5G, the IoT, AI, broadband access and deployment and digital equity, the FCC said Thursday. “Bauer will bring understanding of the latest research related to industry, foster the professional development of the FCC’s economists, and ensure economic and data analysis of the highest quality for the benefit of the consumer,” Rosenworcel said.

The FCC committed more than $40.8 million in additional Emergency Connectivity Fund support Wednesday. The new funding will support 220 schools and school districts, seven libraries and library systems, and three consortiums, said a news release. “With the school year in full swing, the FCC continues its work to ensure students everywhere have access to broadband connections and digital tools they need to successfully complete their schoolwork," said Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel.

A coalition of financial trade groups raised concerns with the FCC about its proposed rules to give consumers the ability to revoke prior express consent through any reasonable means under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (see 2308150071). Use only session initiation protocol codes 608 and 603+ for labeling blocked calls, the American Bankers Association, ACA International, American Financial Services Association, Credit Union National Association and National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions told an aide to Commissioner Brendan Carr, per an ex parte filing posted Tuesday in docket 17-97. The groups also warned that financial institutions and other companies may not be able to honor revocation requests within 24 hours because they may come from multiple channels rather than in a centralized manner. The groups expressed "strong support for actions to remove bad actors and illegal traffic from the network," saying it's "key that the legitimate, often critical, calls that our members place are completed."

An FCC order partially rejecting and partially granting petitions on certain parts of its 2022 broadband labeling order is effective Monday, said a notice for that day's Federal Register (see 2308290049).

The FCC fined Stage 2 Networks $308,451 for failing to timely file annual and quarterly telecom reporting worksheets, per a notice of apparent liability Thursday. The company failed to file four annual worksheets and 15 quarterly worksheets between February 2020 and August, the order said. Stage 2 also failed to fully respond to an Enforcement Bureau letter of inquiry regarding the filing of annual customer proprietary network information certifications and maintaining current information in the commission's registration system.

The FCC Connect2Health Task Force will host a webinar Sept. 27 at 2 p.m. EDT on the commission's mapping broadband health in America platform, said a public notice Wednesday in docket 23-309. The task force will demonstrate how the platform can "be used to generate actionable insights" and give users an opportunity to provide insight for further development of the tool, the PN said.

A Dell’Oro analyst warned Wednesday that carriers may face higher capital costs unless technological advances come along that keep costs low. The demand for capacity in long distance networks has been growing at an average annual rate of 30% for the past decade and that growth is expected to continue for the next 10 years, blogged Jimmy Yu, vice president-optical transport. But carrier capital expenditure costs haven’t increased at that rate because of improvements in spectral efficiency (SE), he said. Yu blamed Shannon’s Law, a theorem on the limits of channel capacity. “Increasing SE was the biggest lever to reducing the price-per-Gbps. However, due to Shannon’s Limit, future SE gains are harder to realize,” Yu said: “New technical innovations must be created. Otherwise, one day, service provider Capex will need to grow exponentially to keep up with user demand for bandwidth.”

The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau denied Virgin Islands Next Generation Network's (VINGN) petition for reconsideration of its final eligibility determination for the affordable connectivity outreach grant program because it met the definition of a "contractor" of a broadband provider, per a letter posted Monday in docket 21-450 (see 2304060064). VINGN also sought a waiver of the eligibility rule, saying it's an "instrumentality of the government of the USVI, a public corporation, and a wholly owned subsidiary of the Virgin Islands Public Finance Authority." The bureau granted the waiver request, awarding VINGN $250,000.

The FCC Wireline Bureau reminded all recipients of Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program funds Friday they must file their next status update Oct. 9. Updates are due at the FCC every 90 days, the bureau said.

Citing a report that the FCC's USF contribution factor will likely increase to 36.2% during Q4 (see 2309050040), Free State Foundation President Randolph May blogged last week that those numbers show the system must be fixed. “The current Universal Service Fund subsidy regime is unsustainable, and it must be meaningfully reformed,” May said: “This is not to say that there should not be subsidies to support universal service goals, including support for low-income persons and for high-cost areas that otherwise would not be served. It is to say the legacy universal service regime is broken -- and clearly unsustainable.”