Congress Requests GAO Report on Spectrum Management  

Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) and Ranking Member Greg Walden (R-OR) sent a letter to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) urging it to conduct an updated review of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) federal spectrum management processes. Pallone and Walden asked GAO to consider as part of its review how federal spectrum users interact with NTIA and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), how the NTIA and FCC interact with each other, and the recent federal spectrum management process breakdowns.   

“Last year, it was clear that the federal spectrum management process broke down,” Pallone and Walden wrote to GAO. “Rather than working through the NTIA as the central repository and manager of federal spectrum, we are concerned that many of the federal agencies with spectrum allocations may have circumvented this statutory process.”  These breakdowns played out in multiple arenas, including the debate leading up to the National Defense Authorization Act, the 2.5 gigahertz (GHz) FCC docket, the 24 GHz FCC auction, and elsewhere. 

Specifically, the lawmakers requested that GAO study the following matters and provide recommendations as appropriate:  

• How can the NTIA and the FCC improve their process for resolving frequency allocation disputes in shared or adjacent bands and ensure that spectrum is used or shared efficiently? 
• How can federal spectrum users more productively interact with the NTIA in furtherance of the NTIA’s overall federal spectrum coordination role? 
• Where more than one federal agency uses a particular band of spectrum, how can the coordination and management process, led by NTIA, be updated and improved? 
• What additional resources does the NTIA need to best coordinate and manage federal spectrum allocated to the various federal agencies? 
• How can federal agencies be encouraged to coordinate with NTIA prior to filing comments with the FCC or another independent agency in matters related to telecommunications and information policy? 
• What lessons can be drawn from breakdowns in the most recent coordination process for the World Radiocommunication Process? What could the key federal agencies, the NTIA, the FCC, and Department of State, do differently to prevent future breakdowns in this process? 

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The Regulatory Mix Today:  Congress Requests GAO Report on Spectrum Management, FCC Small Entity Compliance Guide for Truth in Caller ID Rules,  FTC Voice Cloning Workshop  

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FCC Small Entity Compliance Guide for Truth in Caller ID Rules 

The FCC released a Small Entity Compliance Guide to help small entities comply with its most recent order adopting amended rules in response to RAY BAUM’s Act.  Inteserra Briefing Service subscribers see Briefing dated 8/15/19.  The order revised the FCC’s truth in caller ID rules to: (1) encompass malicious spoofing activities directed at consumers in the United States from actors outside of the country, and (2) reach caller ID spoofing using alternative voice and text messaging services.  Among other things, the FCC broadened its definition of “voice service” by interpreting “interconnected” to include any service that enables voice communications either to or from the PSTN (i.e. one-way VoIP).  The new rules become effective February 5, 2020.  

FTC Voice Cloning Workshop  

The Federal Trade Commission announced it will host a workshop on January 28, 2020, to examine voice cloning technologies.  Voice cloning technologies enable users to make near-perfect reproductions of a real person’s voice.  Advances in artificial intelligence and text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis have allowed researchers to create a near-perfect voice clone with less than a five second recording of a person’s voice. 

Although there are a number of promising uses for this technology (for example, editing the work of voice actors and enabling people with tracheotomies and other conditions to use TTS systems using voices derived from their previously-recorded audio samples), it also has the potential to cause substantial harm when used maliciously. For instance, numerous consumers already fall prey to “grandparent scams” (where an elderly person receives a phone call supposedly from a grandchild in distress who needs cash) and phishing scams (where an employee is contacted by a superior and directed to immediately wire funds to a vendor). 

The workshop will examine: 

• Speech synthesis using the voice of an actual person. 
• Development and deployment of voice cloning technologies, from healthcare and consumer-oriented applications (customer service, entertainment, etc.) to fraudulent schemes. 
• Ethical concerns related to the use of cloned voices. 

The event will feature remarks by FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra as well as industry officials, academics, and others.  The workshop will be webcast. The webcast link will be posted to the event page on the day of the workshop. 

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The Regulatory Mix, Inteserra’s blog of telecom related regulatory activities, is a snapshot of PUC, FCC, legislative, and occasionally court issues that our regulatory monitoring team uncovers each day. Depending on their significance, some items may be the subject of an Inteserra Briefing.