On October 15, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued a decision in Consumers’ Research v. FCC, No. 25-60535. The court held that the FCC violated the Government Corporation Control Act (“GCCA”) by establishing USAC without specific congressional authorization.
While the ruling only directly affects the latest contribution factor, its
This is the first of several planned blogs on the recently released NTIA BEAD Restructuring Policy Notice (“Notice”).
In early March, Department of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick paused all funding under the $42.5 billion BEAD program pending a “rigorous review” by the new administration. At that time, the Secretary announced his intention to “rip out”
Even before taking office, incoming members of the Trump Administration and some Republican members of Congress criticized various regulatory requirements in the $42.5 billion BEAD program as being unnecessarily burdensome and contributing to a perceived slow rollout of BEAD funding. The Commerce Department and Congress have now begun efforts to streamline and reform the BEAD
The Supreme Court in a 6-3 vote overturned the landmark decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, sharply limiting the authority of federal administrative agencies, including the FCC.[1] After the decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo,[2] it will be easier to challenge and overturn agency decisions, and federal agencies
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (“NTIA”) has adopted a “Programmatic Waiver” of its letter of credit (“LOC”) requirement for subgrantees of funding under the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (“BEAD”) program created by the Infrastructure and Investment Job Act (“IIJA”). This is big news for small and mid-size public and private entities
While there is no one solution to deploying affordable broadband, broadband partnerships have emerged as an attractive option in many areas of the country; indeed, in some instances, partnerships may be the only feasible option.[1] Recognizing the attractiveness of broadband partnerships, Congress and many states have sought to encourage such partnerships to help accelerate
Just over a month ago, the FCC released its pre-production draft of its new Broadband Maps. The initial map is based on service availability data collected from broadband providers through the ongoing Broadband Data Collection (“BDC”) and reflects services available[1] as of June 30, 2022.[2]
The release of the Broadband Map initiated
The Federal Communications Commission (“FCC” or “Commission”) completed its first Broadband Data Collection (“BDC”) on September 1, 2022.[1] The Commission is now accepting and evaluating bulk challenges to the FCC’s Broadband Serviceable Location Fabric (“Fabric”), which serves as the foundation for the FCC’s upcoming broadband data map. To ensure the most accurate broadband map
The Federal Communications Commission (“FCC” or “Commission”) launched its Broadband Data Collection (“BDC”) program on June 30, 2022. As we have previously discussed in the first and second blog posts of our BDC series, all facilities-based providers of fixed and mobile broadband Internet access that have one or more end user connections in service are
As discussed in our initial post in this series, the FCC is about to launch its new Broadband Data Collection (“BDC”) program. Starting this summer, all facilities-based providers of fixed and mobile broadband Internet access services will be required to submit broadband data on a biannual basis.
In this post, we delve into the who,