The FCC expanded the reporting area for communications outages caused by Hurricane Helene to include counties in Tennessee and Virginia and additional counties in South Carolina, said a public notice in Monday’s Daily Digest. Reports from the affected counties show communications services experiencing outages from the storm but improving.

T-Mobile agreed it will make extensive changes in its business practices to bolster its customers' security and it will pay a nearly $15.8 million fine, the FCC said Monday. The company will spend at least that same amount strengthening its cybersecurity practices, though the carrier's costs will likely be significantly higher, the FCC said. Elements of the announced consent decree resolve separate incidents in 2021, 2022 and 2023, which the FCC Enforcement Bureau was investigating.

Popping in unannounced Saturday night, D.C. Council Public Safety Chair Brooke Pinto (D) found “unacceptable” and “extremely dangerous” levels of staffing at the District of Columbia’s 911 center, the councilmember said during a livestreamed hearing Monday. Multiple members and witnesses voiced little if any confidence in the Office of Unified Communications or Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) fixing reported problems, which include blown addresses and delays answering calls and sending help.

The FCC released its order approving 3-2 radio broadcaster Audacy’s request for a temporary waiver of its foreign-ownership requirements. The dissents from both FCC Republicans condemn the order as a deviation from normal FCC procedure, but neither mentions by name the involvement of the Soros family in the deal, though that has been the main focus of Republican lawmakers and conservative media critical of the restructuring. Commissioner Brendan Carr previously called the waiver a “Soros shortcut.” To suggest that Audacy is receiving special treatment is “cynical and wrong,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, pointing to numerous similar grants from the FCC going back to 2018. “Our practice here and in these prior cases is designed to facilitate the prompt and orderly emergence from bankruptcy of a company that is a licensee under the Communications Act.”

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel acknowledged Friday that the agency’s definition of AI may need fine-tuning and rejected the idea of a dedicated AI regulatory agency. Speaking at the 7th Annual Berkeley Law AI Institute, she also discussed the end of Chevron deference.

House Oversight Committee GOP leaders said Thursday night they launched an investigation into the FCC’s handling of radio group Audacy’s request for a temporary waiver of FCC foreign-ownership rules to complete a bankruptcy restructuring that includes George Soros-affiliated entities purchasing its stock. Panel Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and Rep. Nick Langworthy, R-N.Y., claim the FCC’s expected approval of Audacy’s request (see 2409170015) represents a politicization of the review process just more than one month before the Nov. 5 presidential election. Langworthy briefly raised the issue during a House Oversight hearing earlier this month (see 2409190063).

The FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council on Friday heard initial reports from its three working groups, which are just starting. Speakers warned that the assigned topics are challenging. Focusing on AI and 6G, CSRIC held its initial meeting in June (see 2406280050). Friday's was the first meeting of substance under the new cycle.

Emergency 911 networks appear largely to have withstood the powerful Hurricane Helene, officials said Friday. Helene made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane Thursday at 11 p.m. in Taylor County, part of Florida’s Big Bend region, with maximum sustained winds of 140 miles per hour, the office of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Friday. After preparing for the massive storm (see 2409250048), telecom companies reported some damage to network infrastructure and said they are responding to problems that flooding and power outages caused.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr again took aim at how the Biden administration and NTIA have implemented the $42.5 billion broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program, a concern Republicans on Capitol Hill have amplified (see 2409190063). BEAD is “a program worth fighting for,” but it must change, Carr said Friday during an American Enterprise Institute webinar.

The FCC's digital discrimination rules "pile overreach on overreach," said attorney Morgan Ratner on behalf of the Minnesota Telecom Alliance (MTA) and other industry groups challenging the commission's rules Wednesday during oral argument in the 8th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court (see 2407300048). The rules are based on an "unprecedented disparate impact scheme that is in many ways the broadest the federal government has ever seen," the lawyer added. None of the FCC's decisions in its order is based on a "plausible understanding" of Congress' intention.