Week ahead: FCC readies for September meeting

It’s been a busy summer for the Federal Communications Commission.

The agency has moved forward with a proposal to expand Lifeline subsidies to broadband, passed several items related to next year’s spectrum auction and established new robocall rules.

In comparison, the agenda items for an FCC meeting Thursday are relatively low profile.

{mosads}One item is a notice of proposed rulemaking that would require submarine cable operators to notify the FCC when there are outages on their cable networks.

In a blog post about the item, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler wrote that there were “approximately 60 submarine (or ‘undersea’) cables that provide connectivity between the mainland U.S. and consumers in Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Marianas, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as virtually all connectivity between the U.S. and the rest of the world.” Many of them are run by groups containing multiple companies, he wrote.

“The FCC needs to get timely information about submarine cable outages, with enough detail to understand the nature and impact of any damage and disruption to communications, help mitigate any impact on emergency services and consumers, and assist in service restoration,” he wrote. “More consistent reporting on submarine cable outages will improve the FCC’s ability to spot trends, address systemic issues, and inform policy making.”

The only other non-consent item on the agenda is an order that would allow broadcasters to fulfill their obligations to consumers by posting details of contests online, rather than reading them out on air. They would be required to broadcast the URL on air.

On Capitol Hill, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a Wednesday hearing exploring reforms to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

The tech industry has made a priority of closing a loophole that allows law enforcement to use a subpoena, rather than a warrant, to force providers to hand over users’ emails that are more than 180 days old. 

Wednesday’s hearing will feature testimony from officials at the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. Representatives from Google and the Center for Democracy and Technology will also speak.

Senate staffers will be briefed on patent reform by the trade group 21C and other groups next Tuesday. The group is supporting the Senate’s version of reform but has expressed major reservations with the House bill. The legislative path forward is still up in the air, with a packed schedule in the Senate and past delays in the House.

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