On May 19, 2011 the FCC entered into a consent decree with Luxul Wireless, Inc. Luxul Under the terms of the agreement, Luxul has to pay a "voluntary contribution" of $18,200. This fine is a little higher than normally seen for a first offense. More importantly, Luxul was suckered into agreeing to adopt a FCC compliance plan, appoint a compliance officer, provide compliance training and report to the FCC on a periodic basis. Further, Luxul was ordered to allow prior customers to trade in the alleged "non-compliant" equipment for compliant systems.
The investigation started with a Letter of Inquiry from the FCC. The LOI sought information on whether Luxul was violating the rules by, among other things, selling wireless external amplifiers as a separate unit and not as a part of a system. Whether Luxul was or was not violating technical rules is irrelevant to the punishment. As pointed out in numerous articles written on this Blog, the FCC cannot issue a Notice of Apparent Liability unless it first issues a formal Citation that complies with the statutory requirements. None of the LOI's we have seen meet the statutory requirements to be considered the equivalent of a Citation.
Further, even if the LOI was the equivalent of a Citation, the FCC has no authority to issue a NAL unless Luxul had continued to violate the rules after receiving the Citation. All that Luxul need to do was stop selling the product and the FCC could not have imposed any punishment on Luxul. It appears that Luxul was bullied into agreeing to the terms of the Consent Judgment.
If anyone receives any communication from the FCC, they should immediately contact a lawyer experienced in dealing with the FCC's Enforcement arm. In many cases, not only can any punishment be avoided but the FCC can be forced to pay the attorney's fees.
No comments:
Post a Comment