The FCC Wireless Bureau approved waivers sought by the Paskenta Band of Nomlaki Indians and the Lower Sioux Indian Community General Council, allowing them to use 2.5 GHz spectrum under the FCC’s tribal window. The Paskenta Band in California got a waiver for a parcel “previously owned in fee by the Tribe and placed into trust in October 2018,” and the Lower Sioux in Minnesota for “small areas of off-reservation trust lands.” Trust lands aren't otherwise eligible under the FCC’s rules. Both orders were in Wednesday’s Daily Digest.

International Trade Today is providing readers with the top stories from March 29-April 2 in case they were missed. All articles can be found by searching on the titles or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.

Imax announces Chairman Bradley Wechsler to step down, effective with the June 9 annual shareholders meeting ... JMA Wireless taps Ericsson’s Joe Constantine as chief technology and strategy officer ... Contract intelligence company Icertis adds former Xerox CEO Ursula Burns to its board of advisers ... MaxLinear appoints Tsu-Jae King Liu from the University of California-Berkeley to its board ... AI platform MutualMarkets names former Fox TV Entertainment Group Chairman Sandy Grushow, BlueVine’s Dhiraj Kumar and former Jaguar Land Rover Vice President-Marketing Kim McCullough to its board of advisers ... Energizer Holdings appoints General Mills Chief Financial Officer Don Mulligan to its board ... Cloud-based e-commerce solutions provider ChannelAdvisor adds former Salesforce.com executive Linda Crawford to its board.

Localities and NATOA fired back at objections by the Wireless Infrastructure Association to NATOA's petition for reconsideration of the FCC compound expansion order, approved 3-2 last year over dissents by Jessica Rosenworcel and Geoffrey Starks (see 2006090060). “The Order applied the wrong legal standard as articulated by the dissenting Commissioners and failed to address other legal and practical implications raised in the record,” said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 19-250: “Reconsideration is not only appropriate, it is necessary to ensure the Commission fully addresses the significant implications of the new rules.” CTIA defended WIA. “These rule changes foster collocations on existing facilities that are critical to bridging the digital divide,” the group said: “The rules also preserve the core right of localities to manage local land use, consistent with the Commission’s priority to ‘find common ground with our state, local, and Tribal partners.’” WIA “stands by” its opposition to the petition and “looks forward to working with the commission and any interested stakeholders in promoting broadband deployment to underserved communities across the U.S.,” a spokesperson said.

LG Display landed Discomfort Glare Free marketing claim verification from UL for its OLED TV panels, it said Wednesday. Its panels are the first to be recognized for emitting no glare, which can cause eyes to tire easily, said the company. UL’s testing is based on the Unified Glare Rating (UGR) recognized by the International Commission on Illumination. The verification mark is issued when the UGR is 22 or less when watching TV between 70 and 300 lux, said LG.

President Joe Biden’s administration proposed $100 billion in broadband spending Wednesday as part of the $2 trillion American Jobs Plan infrastructure proposal. That level of spending and Biden’s calls for legislation to improve broadband pricing transparency and affordability mirror Democratic lawmakers' Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act (HR-1783/S-745) and Leading Infrastructure for Tomorrow’s America Act (HR-1848), as expected (see 2103160001). Reaction to the plan divided along party lines.

Several CBP land border ports are now operating “downtime procedures” due to problems in ACE, an agency official said April 1 during a call with software developers. The affected ports include Laredo and El Paso in Texas, he said. “We are seeing significant disruptions at the land border ports at this time,” he said.

President Joe Biden’s administration proposed $100 billion in broadband spending Wednesday as part of the $2 trillion American Jobs Plan infrastructure proposal. That level of spending and Biden’s calls for legislation to improve broadband pricing transparency and affordability mirror Democratic lawmakers' Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act (HR-1783/S-745) and Leading Infrastructure for Tomorrow’s America Act (HR-1848), as expected (see 2103160001). Reaction to the plan divided along party lines.

The FCC Wireless Bureau approved a waiver for Maine’s Passamaquoddy Tribe to use 2.5 GHz spectrum for wireless connections on 94,000 acres of trust lands. “According to the Tribe, most of the trust lands are in areas lacking state municipal governments and where ‘there is a general lack of basic infrastructure, and there is simply no telecommunications infrastructure like cell phone or radio towers,’” said Tuesday's order. The rules exclude trust lands, but “strictly applying" that "would be inconsistent with the Tribal Window’s purpose of providing wireless communications services in rural Tribal areas,” the bureau said. Staff also OK'd a waiver sought by the Middletown Rancheria of Pomo Indians of California for several parcels of fee lands owned by the tribe adjacent to or near their reservation.

Experts in the United Kingdom are expressing a skepticism over the effectiveness of Britain's new freeport system, questioning the ports' ability to attract new investment and provide duty relief for imports. They point to accusations of the political nature of the system's execution and the fallacy that the U.K. couldn't have set up the freeports when it was part of the EU, when in fact they existed on England's shores from 1984 to 2012. A lot of “magical thinking” goes into freeports, Steptoe & Johnson's Christophe Bondy said.