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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The head of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission unveiled plans on Tuesday to repeal landmark 2015 rules that prohibited internet service providers from impeding consumer access to web content in a move that promises to recast the digital landscape. FCC chief Ajit Pai, a Republican appointed by President Donald Trump in January, said the commission will vote at a Dec. 14 meeting on his plan to rescind the so-called net neutrality rules championed by Democratic former President Barack Obama that treated internet service providers like public utilities. The rules barred broadband providers from blocking or slowing down...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday unveiled plans to repeal a landmark 2015 order that barred internet service providers from blocking or slowing down consumer access to web content, and said the regulator will prevent states and cities from adopting similar protections.

SIERRA VISTA — Unsolicited automated phone calls are a top source of complaint for the Federal Communications Commission, which is way the government agency is trying to enact new restrictions in order to protect consumers. A proposal brought forth by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai last month would allow voice service providers to block certain calls that “falsely appear” to be unable to make outgoing or taking incoming calls, according to an October FCC fact sheet. The commission estimated that U.S. consumers received more than 2.4 billion automated calls per month in 2016, many of which included a caller with a...

Donald J. Trump spoke to rural voters in a way that launched him into the presidency. His soaring rhetoric and no-nonsense promises to stand up against corruption were exactly what his constituents voted for. Say it ain’t so, but now, his own Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is pushing a rule that will hurt the very voters who put him in the White House. The swamp has overtaken the FCC and President Trump’s Make America Great Again motto is in jeopardy. Will the Trump Administration stand up to the big mobile carriers or will it cave just like every Administration...

President Trump said last week that broadcast TV licenses "must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked" in response to "partisan, distorted and fake" news coverage. But few people seem to have taken him seriously, even though complaints against broadcasters are easy to file. Publicly available data from the Federal Communications Commission show there wasn't a significant bump in consumer complaints against TV stations after a pair of Trump tweets Thursday, despite the fact that complaints are made using a simple online form or phone call.

The Hollywood Reporter unveiled that PBS and its public broadcasting brethren have written the Federal Communications Commission with a list of complaints. The headline reads, "PBS Wants the Government to Reexamine Hard Stance on Indecency." That's funny, since we haven't seen a "hard stance on indecency" since the Hays Code a half-century ago. And that wasn't even the government. Since then, liberals have successfully thwarted almost any effort to have the federal government enact broadcast decency rules, even those codified by the Supreme Court. By the time Barack Obama became president, all thoughts of regulation were abandoned. In 2012, midway...

If there’s anything good about ringless voicemails, it’s the fact that they bring people together. These voicemails that simply appear on your phone seem to invite universal hatred. Indeed, the FCC has gotten almost 2,800 complaints about ringless voicemails in June alone. Among the complaints: lost business due to spam clogging the mailbox, added data costs from checking messages, mailboxes flooded to capacity unable to receive messages from family.

The Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC), the leading conservative seniors’ organization in the country, filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Thursday over CNN’s reporting on Russian hacking. In the light of hidden camera videos from James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas showing a CNN producer calling the narrative “bulls***,” and CNN Contributor Van Jones’s characterization of the Russia “collusion” story as a “nothing burger,” AMAC has brought a complaint under FCC regulations against the knowing broadcast of false information. AMAC President Dan Weber, in a press release accompanying the filing of the complaint, said: [I]t became clear CNN...

Officials with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) blasted The Washington Post Friday over a story alleging that the FCC’s Chairman Ajit Pai is getting too cozy with the White House. Pai’s chief of staff, Matthew Berry, said in a tweet that WaPo reporter Brian Fung invented a fake meeting between President Donald Trump and Chairman Pai. {..snip..}

A high-level employee at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 2014 appeared to give leaders of liberal-leaning groups preferential treatment for posting and publicizing comments on the agency’s public forum for the net neutrality debate. Details of the highly friendly support were first described by then-The Washington Post’s Nancy Scola, who referred to it as an “unusual collaboration” in an in-depth report on the FCC’s filing system. Those details became significantly more incriminating after Mike Wendy, director of the market-oriented nonprofit MediaFreedom, recently received once-classified pieces of electronic communications years after he filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request....

Summary My interview with one of the top US telecom legal experts discussing the impact of 2017 FCC regulatory changes in the area of Business Data Services (BDS), or telecom services mostly for businesses or inter-carrier traffic. I recently interview Andrew Lipman, Senior Partner and head of the telecom and media group at Morgan Lewis, an international law firm of 2,000 lawyers and about 30 offices across the US, Europe, and Asia. Andy has been practicing telecom law for over 35 years and his telecom practice, which is global in nature, is one of the largest telecom legal practices in...

As I write this, there is a crowd outside the house of FCC commissioner Pai. His crime? He is returning control of the internet to internet service providers (ISPs). The Obama administration enacted "Net Neutrality" in defiance of a Supreme Court decision. In essence, Barack Obama seized ISP property because the ISPs weren't serving the public interest. This was exactly how socialist revolutionary Benito Mussolini defined Fascism: a system where citizens own private property so long as they serve the public interest. Churchill said Fascism would take root in the West under the guise of anti-Fascism, but I digress. My...

The FCC will not take any action in response to complaints over a May 1 broadcast of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” in which the host quipped during his opening monologue that “the only thing [Trump’s] mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s c— holster.” The FCC received thousands of complaints following the broadcast. In response to an inquiry, an FCC spokesman provided a statement on the status of its review. “Consistent with standard operating procedure, the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau has reviewed the complaints and the material that was the subject of these complaints,” the FCC statement said....

Regulation: "Net neutrality" has become the Holy Grail of various so-called consumer organizations. But government regulation isn't what consumers need. Competition is. And there would be more of that if the government would get out of the way. On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission voted 2-1 to start undoing the massive expansion of the FCC's regulatory control over the internet, enacted two years ago by the Obama administration under the guise of protecting "net neutrality." From the reaction — or more accurately, the overreaction — from advocacy groups and know-nothing pundits, you'd think they'd just voted to exterminate the internet....

Obama Final Travel Tally: Nearly $100 Million JW Sues for FBI Records –and Payments – Relating to ‘Trump Dossier’ Government Yanks Report Blasting DHS for Catching Less than 1% of Visa Overstays We Probe Obama White House Influence Over FCC Attempt to Regulate Internet Obama Final Travel Tally: Nearly $100 Million There may be no better way to keep on eye on our leaders’ penchant for pretending to royalty than to tally the cost of their travel and accommodations. Our nation has granted its presidents exquisite transport because we need for our leaders to be efficient and safe. However,...

In a deal that will allow one broadcasting company to reach 72 percent of U.S. households through ownership of local news stations, it was reported this week that Sinclair Broadcast Group is buying Tribune Media for nearly $4 billion. Such a move wouldn’t have been possible a few weeks back, but Donald Trump’s new Federal Trade Commission (FCC) chairman, Ajit Pai, just began implementing sweeping changes to previously established media ownership rules. Bloomberg explains: We're revolutionizing the news industry, but we need your help! Click here to get started. “A Sinclair-Tribune merger was made easier last month when the FCC...

If you're wondering where the Washington, D.C., swamp is being drained as promised, look no further than the Federal Communications Commission and intrepid new Chairman Ajit Pai. For eight long years, the Obama administration circumvented our deliberative democratic process to impose laws via administrative fiat and his infamous "pen and phone." And no agency illustrated that malfeasance more than the FCC, where former Chairman Tom Wheeler in particular rammed through partisan policies and midnight regulations of dubious legality, often suffering the wrath of an unamused judicial branch for its shenanigans. Chief among those Obama FCC misdeeds was its relentless and...

During last year’s presidential campaign, Jared Kushner reportedly made a deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group: The Trump campaign would provide Sinclair’s local news stations with intimate access to the candidate, in exchange for “fair” coverage of the GOP nominee. Here are some of the ways that Sinclair kept its broadcasts fair and balanced, according to the Washington Post: Sinclair-owned stations and its Washington bureau scored 15 “exclusive” interviews with Trump over the past year, including 11 during the final three months of the campaign in critical states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio. They did 10 more with Trump’s running mate,...

Late night talk show host Stephen Colbert's controversial joke about President Trump drew the attention of the Federal Communications Commission. The agency received "a number" of complaints about Colbert's commentary earlier in the week, according to the FCC's chief. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai promised to "take the appropriate action" following a comprehensive investigation of Colbert's remarks. The FCC's response will depend on whether Colbert's remarks are considered "obscene."

Public fear is an ally of big government. When fear sets in among the populace -- often with encouragement from self-interested politicians -- the result is usually an expansion of governmental power and a loss of individual rights. Politicians typically stoke fear by exaggerating some perceived threat or by inventing one out of whole cloth. They then declare that government alone can provide the answer. Take the demonization of a recent move led by Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., to undo last-minute Obama-era rules from the Federal Communications Commission regulating online privacy. The rules exempted powerful...