Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said Wednesday he favors reauthorization of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act, one of several communications policy issues the committee is “intent on moving” on this year. Wicker said during an Incompas event he is bullish about advancing privacy legislation but less certain about prospects for bills on net neutrality and improving conditions for 5G. Other federal officials meanwhile noted there's no 5G "killer app" yet.
The FCC has shifted stances in its draft repacking reimbursement order and proposes using FY 2019 reimbursement dollars to pay back low-power TV, translator and FM stations as well as using the $200 million from FY 2018. The draft order was released Friday along with the tentative agenda. It includes items on spectrum horizons and other 5G changes, a proposal for new 911 wireless location accuracy requirements, a draft order setting intermediate carrier standards for rural call completion and rules on reauthorization of broadcast satellite stations.
Jerry Dias, national president of Canada's UNIFOR syndicate, said that before NAFTA, Canada had a small trade surplus in goods with the world, but now it has a $120 billion deficit. He said that General Motors, while closing plants in Canada, doubled its capacity in Mexico. Mexican consumers buy 240,000 GM vehicles a year, and Mexico is on the cusp of producing 1 million vehicles, he said. "And guess where those jobs come from? Canada and the United States." Dias said Canada has lost 500,000 manufacturing jobs in the nearly 25 years that NAFTA has been in place. "Tell me why I should celebrate?"
The FCC will take up an order at the March 15 commissioners’ meeting setting aside a big chunk of spectrum across four bands, above 95 GHz, for 5G, Chairman Ajit Pai said Thursday. With President Donald Trump also tweeting about 5G (see 1902210057), Pai blogged that 5G is the meeting’s key focus. The agenda also includes 900 MHz rules and media modernization and repacking reimbursement orders. Also on the agenda: spectrum partitioning, disaggregation and spectrum leasing rules, tougher requirements for locating wireless calls to 911 and intermediate carrier standards to improve rural call completion. Draft items are to be released Friday.
New York City warned in a Tuesday filing that opening the 6 GHz band to unlicensed use would cost the city money and any changes would take time to complete. “The City expends considerable financial and human resources to ensure that its public safety mission critical radio communications systems are reliable under all circumstances,” it said in docket 18-295, responding to the 6 GHz NPRM. The proposals “if enacted as written, will force the City to re-design many of its microwave backhaul links in order to ensure that the City’s mission critical land mobile radio systems continue to perform to public safety reliability standards under all conditions.” The city is concerned that in cases where fixed service (FS) microwave receivers are located in or on high buildings “within dense urban areas, a transmitting unlicensed device may interfere with the weak signal present at FS microwave receivers supporting public safety or critical infrastructure land mobile radio operations,” the filing said. The city is also concerned about restrictions on new or expanded FS microwave links for public safety and other operations, it said.
New York City warned in a Tuesday filing that opening the 6 GHz band to unlicensed use would cost the city money and any changes would take time to complete. “The City expends considerable financial and human resources to ensure that its public safety mission critical radio communications systems are reliable under all circumstances,” it said in docket 18-295, responding to the 6 GHz NPRM. The proposals “if enacted as written, will force the City to re-design many of its microwave backhaul links in order to ensure that the City’s mission critical land mobile radio systems continue to perform to public safety reliability standards under all conditions.” The city is concerned that in cases where fixed service (FS) microwave receivers are located in or on high buildings “within dense urban areas, a transmitting unlicensed device may interfere with the weak signal present at FS microwave receivers supporting public safety or critical infrastructure land mobile radio operations,” the filing said. The city is also concerned about restrictions on new or expanded FS microwave links for public safety and other operations, it said.
The FCC is expected to make broadband deployment on federal lands a top infrastructure focus in coming months, building on infrastructure work overseen by Commissioner Brendan Carr over the past year, industry officials said. FCC officials are starting to quietly ask about the lay of the land and what steps the agency can take to fill in gaps. The FCC’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee made a number of recommendations last year in a report on streamlining siting on federal lands (see 1801240033) .
Though debate rages in New York over the wisdom of the local opposition that provoked Amazon to pull the plug on Long Island City, Queens (see 1902140054), City Council leaders who hammered the deal for three months refused to walk back the two confrontational oversight hearings they held in December and January that no doubt contributed to Amazon's decision to withdraw.
Though debate rages in New York over the wisdom of the local opposition that provoked Amazon to pull the plug on Long Island City, Queens (see 1902140054), City Council leaders who hammered the deal for three months refused to walk back the two confrontational oversight hearings they held in December and January that no doubt contributed to Amazon's decision to withdraw.
Arkansas senators voted 34-0 Tuesday to lift state restrictions on municipal broadband. It goes next to the House. The GOP-sponsored SB-150 got its first House hearing Wednesday in the Insurance and Commerce Committee. “After reasonable notice to the public, a government entity may, on its own or in partnership with a private entity, apply for funding under a program for grants or loans to be used for the construction, acquisition, or leasing of facilities, land, or buildings used to deploy broadband service in unserved areas … and if the funding is awarded, then provide, directly or indirectly, voice, data, broadband, video, or wireless telecommunications services to the public in the unserved areas,” reads the bill. It would declare lack of rural broadband a state emergency. Cities may deploy broadband under current law if they have a municipal electric utility, but SB-150 would allow any local government to move forward, blogged the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Journalist panelists at NARUC in Washington Tuesday also discussed the bill and other muni broadband legislation elsewhere.