The V-band satellite market, while speculative, could have 2.6 million installed sites by 2030, generating more than $25.8 billion in cumulative annual revenue, Northern Sky Research said Wednesday. NSR said those looking at V-band opportunities should consider launching programs that would support multiple terabits per second, and more than 5 Tbps could be generated 2023-30, not counting such segments as mobility. It said V-band deployment challenges include landing rights in key countries, hardware development and rain fade. Satellite operators are seeking FCC approval for the constellations (see 1703020036).

The V-band satellite market, while speculative, could have 2.6 million installed sites by 2030, generating more than $25.8 billion in cumulative annual revenue, Northern Sky Research said Wednesday. NSR said those looking at V-band opportunities should consider launching programs that would support multiple terabits per second, and more than 5 Tbps could be generated 2023-30, not counting such segments as mobility. It said V-band deployment challenges include landing rights in key countries, hardware development and rain fade. Satellite operators are seeking FCC approval for the constellations (see 1703020036).

ATLANTA -- CBP recently signed a memorandum of understanding for implementation of unified cargo processing with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and will start a cargo processing pilot at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport for exports to Mexico, CBP officials said Dec. 5 during the agency’s East Coast Trade Symposium. While he didn’t provide a specific date, Guadalupe Ramirez, assistant director for field operations at CBP’s Tucson field office, said that pilot will be the next expansion in Arizona of the processing project, adding that it will have a “huge impact” on the speed of exports from the airport to Mexico. Jose Garcia, representative for taxation and customs affairs at the Mexican Embassy in Washington, said his country’s customs agency wants to expand unified processing pilots to U.S. airports that ship high volumes of cargo to Mexico.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration should put in place a “soft compliance” policy for its Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP) filing requirements when they take effect on Jan. 1, 2018, the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America said in a letter to the agency citing concerns over trade community readiness. Despite “extensive outreach” by NOAA, customs brokers and their importer clients are having trouble getting the required data from other actors in the supply chain, and there has been insufficient time for testing in ACE, the NCBFAA said in the Dec. 1 letter.

The FCC Public Safety Bureau granted waivers to Alaska and King County, Washington, in orders released Thursday. The Alaska order waived Section 90.20(c)(3) to operate a new VHF base station on four channels using nonstandard channel centers. The state said it needs the waiver to improve coverage of its land mobile radio system. For King County, the bureau waived 90.613 and 90.623(a) to operate on 11 800 MHz frequencies for mobile-only, on-scene, mutual aid communications in the conventional mode. The county said it plans to use the channels for public safety communications in underground and indoor locations where service from its 800 MHz trunked radio system isn’t adequate.

TCL, which announced Dolby Vision high-dynamic-range support in its TV products at CES two years ago (see 1601060012), is weighing adoption of the HDR10+ platform as well, if content gets deployed in the new dynamic-metadata-based format, a senior executive told us. With TCL’s rapid climb recently in U.S. TV market share, according to key industry analysts, landing the brand’s support would be a huge coup for the HDR10+ format, which Fox, Panasonic and Samsung plan to begin licensing on an “open,” royalty-free basis next month (see 1708280018).

While the U.S. Postal Service bilateral data sharing agreements with some foreign counterparts have improved data and targeting procedures for inbound U.S. shipments, information shared by those overseas agencies is sometimes inaccurate or incomplete, the top Republican and Democrat of the Senate Homeland Security Committee said in a Nov. 20 letter to several U.S. agencies. Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and ranking member Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., are seeking several points of information regarding executive branch efforts to curb imports of opioids and opioid analogs, including the total number of packages containing opioids, and “total amount of opioids by quantity,” seized by CBP, broken down by carrier -- such as UPS, FedEx, DHL and the U.S. Postal Service (USPS).

Fiscal year 2018 Homeland Security spending legislation released by the Senate Appropriations Committee Nov. 21, directs $38 million to support ACE core functionality and $5 million for ACE enhancements, language that wasn’t included in similar legislation that passed the House in September (see 1709150052). “It is clear that additional system development is needed to continue to facilitate interactions with vendors and importers,” the committee said in an explanatory statement of the bill. Fully automating CBP Form 214 (Application for Foreign-Trade Zone Admission and/or Status Designation) would be an example of such an enhancement, the summary says. CBP plans to roll out FTZ admission capabilities in ACE by Dec. 9 (see 1709110034).

CBP issued a final rule revising the list of user fee airports to reflect the removal of user fee status for Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield, Calif., and the designation of user fee status for four airports: Griffiss International Airport in Rome, New York; Van Nuys Airport in Van Nuys, California; Cobb County Airport-McCollum Field in Kennesaw, Georgia; and Charlotte-Monroe Executive Airport in Monroe, North Carolina. User fee airports are airports that do not qualify for designation as international or landing rights airports, but have been approved by CBP to receive, for a fee, the services of CBP officers for the processing of aircraft entering the U.S., and the passengers and cargo of those aircraft.

British singer-songwriter James Blunt will be the biggest international recording star in years to take the IFA concert stage when he performs Sept. 2 at the IFA Sommergarten outdoor amphitheater at the Messe Berlin fairgrounds to close out the show’s opening weekend, organizers announced Tuesday. Blunt has sold more than 20 million albums globally and his 2005 debut release Back to Bedlam reached No.1 in the U.K., the U.S. and 12 other countries, they said. IFA opens Aug. 31 for a six-day run.