Hyped for years, shipments of flat-panel satellite antennas are ratcheting up and manufacturers are moving from design and development to being production-ready, Valour Consultancy said Friday, forecasting a total of 100,000 units being shipped by year's end for connectivity applications like aviation, maritime and land mobility. It said non-geostationary orbit satellite capacity growth will drive antenna demand.

New York state will make $20 million available to counties for emergency communications upgrades through the interoperable communications grant targeted program, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said Friday. New York seeks to improve land mobile radio interoperability for public safety agencies within the state and in border states, the governor’s office said. Funding may be used for enhancing redundancy and resiliency of public safety radio systems, expanding coverage and frequency band capabilities of national interoperability channels and developing or enhancing shared radio and other systems, it said. Applications are due Sept. 8. “This grant funding will help ensure our communities across the state have the modern communication tools they need to act quickly and effectively to protect New Yorkers and save lives,” said Hochul.

NTIA's broadband equity, access and development (BEAD) program puts a heavy emphasis on fiber deployments, but satellite-delivered connectivity will likely be part of the mix of technology options states set out as options in their initial proposals, we were told. States' and territories' initial proposals are due to NTIA by Dec. 1.

The FCC and the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) are partnering on a trial of georouting calls to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, the commission said Thursday as commissioners approved 988 outage reporting requirements 4-0, as expected (see 2307130010). Commissioners also unanimously approved an order allowing 14 FM6 stations to broadcast analog signals as an ancillary service and an order giving tribal libraries and other E-rate participants greater access to funding.

A bipartisan bill recently introduced in the House would give the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. the power to block all U.S. land purchases by entities from certain “foreign adversary” countries and require mandatory CFIUS filings for those entities buying land near all American military bases. The Protecting U.S. Farmland and Sensitive Sites From Foreign Adversaries Act, introduced last week, also would establish a “presumption of non-resolvability” for those reviews, which would require the committee to assume at the outset that any national security concerns can’t be resolved.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a Friday opinion (docket 22-2392), affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment in Verizon’s favor, ruling that the denial by White Deer Township in central Pennsylvania of Verizon’s applications for seven variances to build a 195-foot monopole cell tower had the effect of prohibiting the provision of personal wireless services, in violation of the Telecommunications Act. Verizon leased 2,600 square feet of a 1.9-acre property to build the tower to fill a four-mile gap in wireless coverage along a desolate stretch of Interstate 80.

Industry officials say they’re hearing little about when the FCC will approve final rules for the 5.9 GHz band. FCC commissioners approved an order in November 2020 opening 45 MHz of the band for Wi-Fi, while allocating 30 MHz for cellular vehicle-to-everything technology. Follow-up work remains.

The FCC and SpaceX, in defending the agency's order approving SpaceX's second-generation satellite constellation, make explanations that were unmentioned in the FTC authorization, Dish Network told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in docket 12-1337 reply brief Wednesday. Dish and the International Dark-Sky Association are challenging the second-gen authorization (see 2301060004). Dish said those unmentioned explanations include citing doubt about the findings of a study performed by a Dish-hired expert. "The doubt invented by the FCC would be sophistry pure and simple even if it were not a post hoc invention of counsel," Dish said. Dish said the FCC also elevates SpaceX's certification that its system complies with power limits to the status of evidence. Dish said the two rely on alleged ITU findings of compliance that don't cover the “joint effect” of the system, as required by the FCC's authorization. It said findings eventually made by the ITU about second-gen compliance with power limits, rather than mooting the challenge to waivers SpaceX received, "illustrate the vast unregulated no-man’s land that the Order has created" because the ITU findings differ from the joint effect finding the FCC had sought.

The Commerce Department stuck with its use of adverse facts available for countervailing duty respondent Risen Energy for its alleged use of China's Export Buyer's Credit Program, in spite of a second Court of International Trade remand requiring Commerce to reconsider the issue, among others. In the remand results, Commerce also reevaluated its use of Thai land prices when calculating benefits for respondents JA Solar and Risen and its benchmark data for ocean freight, dropping JA Solar's CVD rate from 7.75% to 7.68% and Risen's from 9.84% to 9.69% (Risen Energy v. U.S., CIT # 20-03912).

FCC Precision Ag Task Force members met Tuesday to hear updates from working group leadership and to hear from state officials and the FCC broadband data task force on federal funding to expand broadband. The meeting was the first to include an in-person option since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020.