FCC

Before the Federal Communications Commission even had a chance to look at the revised Open Internet rules being proposed by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, the agency was already being slammed by advocacy groups on what they thought he might propose.

In fact Common Cause was calling the proposal "a major step backward." Those rules would allow ISPs to negotiate fees for major bandwidth users such as Netflix and YouTube to assure they have access to Web capacity. But is this really the case?

In one of his first days on the job, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler has asked the CTIA Wireless Association to move quickly toward unlocking phones for consumers.

When a phone is unlocked, it can be used with any wireless carrier. It became illegal for consumers to unlock phones on their own earlier this year because of a ruling by the Librarian of Congress, who is responsible for handing out exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The Federal Communications Commission yesterday accused five wireless service providers of obtaining duplicate payments from a federal fund for low-income consumers. The FCC wants the companies to repay the extra money and, in addition, to pay $14.4 million in fines.

The wireless providers allegedly violated rules of the Lifeline program, which has helped people afford basic telephone service since 1985. It was expanded to cover pre-paid cell phone service in 2005 under former President George W. Bush.

It appears that when Dish wants something it doesn't give up.

After making a surprise bid of $25.5 billion to acquire Sprint on Monday -- which would snatch the mobile provider from the hands of Japan's SoftBank -- Dish submitted a filing to the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday claiming a SoftBank acquisition of Sprint wouldn't be good for U.S. national security.

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has raised concerns about the Librarian of Congress's controversial decision to stop allowing consumers to unlock their own cell phones in order to take them to competing carriers. In a Wednesday interview with Techcrunch, Julius Genachowski said that the "ban raises competition concerns; it raises innovation concerns."

In August of 2011, while in the middle of upgrading its network security monitoring, the Federal Communications Commission discovered it had already been hacked. Over the next month, the commission's IT staff and outside contractors worked to identify the source of the breach, finding an unspecified number of PCs infected with backdoor malware.

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday launched a smartphone security checker website to help consumers ensure their devices are as secure as possible.

The page lists various mobile operating systems and also points to a general checklist of actions users can take to secure their smartphones.

Late Tuesday afternoon, the FCC announced it signed a consent decree (PDF) with AT&T in which the telecom company promised to refund consumers who had been unfairly pushed from a pay-as-you-go wireless data plan to a monthly data plan. AT&T instated the monthly data plan in 2009, but promised customers who were already buying wireless data through AT&T that they would be "grandfathered" into the new pricing structure, thus keeping their lower data rates.

Internet-service providers should adopt an industrywide standard to help keep hackers from taking over customers’ computers, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said.

Providers of high-speed Internet service, such as Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) and AT&T Inc. (T), should create a voluntary code of conduct to help protect against so-called botnets that secretly infect computers, Genachowski said in a speech today in Washington. He urged providers to take steps to thwart schemes that hijack Internet traffic and direct consumers to fraudulent websites.