The FCC's Media Bureau, with input from the Enforcement Bureau, issued an order waiving the "broad outreach" requirements of its EEO rules when it comes to rehiring employees released due to the COVID-19 pandemic, saying that should not adversely impact the goal to ensuring employment nondiscrimination. 

The waiver applies for employees rehired within nine months of the date they were laid off, said the bureau. 

The EEO rules require broadcasters and MVPDs with more than five (broadcast) or six (MVPD) employees to "engage in broad recruitment outreach for all full-time job vacancies." 

But because there will be so many vacancies due to COVID-19 layoffs, the FCC said in the public interest to allow the rehiring of released employees without conducting broad recruitment of competing candidates.  

"Given the unique importance of broadcasters and MVPDs in providing access to breaking news and critical information relating to the pandemic, the public interest, convenience, and necessity would be best served by encouraging these entities to maintain, or quickly resume, normal operations," the bureau said in announcing the waiver. "Facilitating the expeditious re-hiring of full-time employees laid off as a result of the pandemic to job vacancies created by the pandemic supports this important goal."

Straight Path Communications has agreed to pay more than $100 million to settle an investigation into its failure to deploy wireless service as required by its spectrum license, and it will sell or surrender all of its 5G licenses, according to the FCC.

The company will surrender 196 of its 1,000 39-GHz licenses, sell the rest, and give the FCC 20% of the proceeds from that sale.

Squatting on spectrum licenses without any meaningful effort to put them to good use in a timely manner is fundamentally inconsistent with the public good,” said Travis LeBlanc, chief of the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau," in announcing the settlement.  “Wireless spectrum is a scarce public resource. We expect every person or company that receives a spectrum license to put it to productive use.”

Straight Path will have to pay $15 million up front, but won't have to pay the other $85 million if it either sells the balance of the licenses within 12 months or surrenders them. The 20% of the sale price is an additional penalty.

Straight Path called it a "comprehensive settlement" that has "cleared the way for a review of strategic alternatives to maximize shareholder value," said CEO Davidi Jonas, which means selling the licenses. It has retained Evercore to advise it on the sale.

“We are pleased that we were able to achieve a comprehensive settlement with the FCC, which allows us to move forward as the largest holder of 39-GHz spectrum, with about 95 percent of the total licenses commercially available at this time, as well as a significant holder of 28-GHz in major markets, including New York and San Francisco," Jonas said.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai took his criticism of the FCC's Enforcement Bureau to the legal minds that have to deal with the results of bureau actions.

In a speech to the 33rd annual Practicing Law Institute/Federal Communications Bar Association Institute on Telecommunications Policy & Regulation, Pai said the bureau was trying to grab headlines with big fines rather than following the law.

"We have to recognize that the Enforcement Bureau’s purpose is not to pursue media coverage as vigorously as Roxie Hart from the musical Chicago," Pai said, according to a copy of his prepared text in which he displayed his penchant for colorful analogies. "Nor is it to make policy on a whim. Rather, it is to firmly but fairly enforce rules that are already on the books."

He was echoing criticisms of the bureau he aired at a House FCC oversight hearing last month.

Pai said the bureau's priorities are off, that it is no longer accountable to FCC commissioners and that it is less productive than in the past, something bureau chief Travis LeBlanc definitely disputes.

Pai complained during last month's House hearing that the bureau had not responded to his requests for information on investigations currently in the pipeline, though during that hearing, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler suggested that did not break with precedent.

In his speech, Pai called for more congressional oversight and said the commissioners should get to vote on large consent decree settlements -- those of more than $100,000 for common carriers, and more than $25,000 for others. He pointed out commissioners already get to vote on notices of apparent liability or forfeiture orders above those amounts.

He also called for deadline for final action, either acting on a forfeiture order within a year or nullifying it. He also said the bureau should give consumers a way to track and understand the progress of a case involving a notice of apparent liability.