FCC commissioners approved a notice of apparent liability of $8 million against K20 Wireless “for apparently willfully and repeatedly violating” affordable connectivity program rules. Also, the carrier will be removed from the program. “From at least June 2022 to May 2023, K20 sought and received ACP Tribal lands support for subscribers who were not eligible for those benefits,” said an order posted Friday. “For approximately 50 percent of these subscribers, the Company, after switching the subscriber’s ACP enrollment to K20, then changed the subscriber’s existing non-Tribal lands home address to a false address on Tribal lands not associated in any way with that subscriber,” the order said: “K20 then sought ACP reimbursement for those subscribers at the rate available for consumers residing on Tribal lands.”
The FCC Public Safety Bureau sought comment Thursday on an application and waiver request from Woodburn, Oregon, on a license for a new trunked private land mobile radio system using four VHF channels from the industrial/business pool in Marion County, Oregon. “Woodburn states that the four I/B channels [[it seeks]] to license are needed ‘for the development of a … Digital Trunking System’ which will be part of a ‘cooperative effort between’” Woodburn's Police, Public Works and Transit departments and Hubbard's Police and Public Works departments, the bureau said: “Woodburn proposes to license eight Public Safety Pool channels in addition to the four I/B channels for its trunked system but states that all additional VHF Public Safety Pool channels have been ‘exhausted in the area and no further usable channels can be located.’” Hubbard is in Marion County.
The Court of International Trade on May 8 sent back the Commerce Department's treatment of antidumping duty respondent Assan Aluminyum's raw material costs and hedging revenues due to issues in how the agency addressed the elements contemporaneously in the AD investigation on aluminum foil from Turkey.
The Centers for Disease Control is finalizing its new requirements for imports of dogs to address the risk of rabies. Among other changes from its July 2023 proposed rule (see 2307110062), the agency no longer will require that U.S.-vaccinated dogs that have been in countries at high risk for rabies be imported through a port with a CDC quarantine station, though foreign-vaccinated dogs still will be subject to that requirement.
Most comments support an Enterprise Wireless Alliance petition at the FCC seeking modifications to Part 90 rules to eliminate the assignment of frequencies within the band's 809-816/854-861 MHz portion to specific pools of eligible entities (see 2402280033). Public safety groups opposed the change.
The subcommittee that covers intellectual property issues under the House Judiciary Committee questioned how Congress should address the escalating volume of de minimis packages -- and the opportunities those shipments provide for sending counterfeits and goods made with forced labor, but the CBP witness responsible for de minimis and IP declined to back any of the ideas that were bandied about.
In a May 1 complaint, a Malaysian exporter of utility scale wind towers took issue with several decisions made by the Commerce Department in a 2021-2022 countervailing duty administrative review, including its refusal to grant an entered value adjustment (EVA) and its choice of surrogate market (CS Wind Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. v. U.S., CIT # 24-00079).
DOJ on May 1 filed a forfeiture action against "a set of aircraft landing gear for a Boeing 737-800" CBP detained in Miami in September, the agency announced. The gear was bought to benefit a Kyrgyzstan-based transshipper of dual-use items "servicing" Russia, "in violation of U.S. economic sanctions."
Between Intelsat's end-user direct relationships and its OneWeb low earth orbit (LEO) partnership and SES' geostationary and medium earth orbit (MEO) assets, SES' proposed $3.1 billion purchase of Intelsat (see 2404300048) gives it more mobility competition options, Valour Consultancy Senior Analyst David Whelan emailed us Wednesday. The high level of synergy between SES and Intelsat makes the deal unsurprising, Whelan said. "It creates a new entity with multi-orbit capabilities and a vendor that becomes a one-stop-shop for Ku- or Ka-band solutions," he said. The deal gives SES direct access to aviation customers -- something it had little of outside of government, he said. SES will likely not want to disrupt the status quo in terms of Intelsat’s current customer base and will look to augment Ku-band service with its own satellites, he said. Between SES' Skala service, its O3b MEO constellation and Intelsat's Flex, New SES will be supplying connectivity to more than 12,000 maritime vessels globally, "so already a strong player," he said. The deal might not help it much in landing new customers, as LEO-only is increasingly the preferred option, he said.
The Treasury and State departments announced May 1 that they are sanctioning more than 280 entities and people in Russia and third countries for helping Moscow sustain its military industrial base during its war against Ukraine.