The FCC’s C-band order faces a test this week as wireless carriers more fully turn up their C-band operations starting Saturday. A report Monday on ABC’s Good Morning America warned of possible flight delays during the travel weekend for the July 4th holiday because of delays in retrofitting some radio altimeters. “The concern is there is a possibility of a bleed-over … that it could cause radio altimeters, which are critical to certain types of landings in jetliners, to malfunction,” said aviation expert John Nance. Delta said 190 of its 900 planes aren't equipped with updated altimeters, while United says it expects to meet the deadline for mainline jets, industry officials said: American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and Frontier Airlines say they retrofitted all their aircraft and don’t expect problems. “The FCC put DOT and airlines on notice of #5G C-band operations 5 years ago,” tweeted former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai: “Earlier this year, the FAA said it would cost airlines $26 million to retrofit airplanes. In 2022, those airlines made $6.8 billion from bag fees alone.” Wireless carriers agreed earlier this year to extend protection for flight operations from some C-band deployments until Jan. 1 (see 2304030070). “The airline industry had more than five years to prepare for the changes, didn’t do enough, and will probably blame anyone but themselves if things go wrong,” Recon Analytics’ Roger Entner told us. Airlines For America didn’t comment. The major carriers and the FCC also didn’t comment.

The Lane County, Oregon, motion for summary judgment against AT&T’s complaint to force approval of a 150-foot-tall cell tower (see 2306020025) makes several arguments that all “must fail,” said AT&T’s opposition Thursday (docket 6:22-cv-01635) in U.S. District Court for Oregon in Eugene. AT&T also filed a motion for summary judgment against the county (see 2306230009).

A witness representing a nongovernmental organization focused on the environment called on the Senate Finance Committee to take up legislation that would ban imports of products that are made on illegally deforested land, including in the Amazon rainforest, at a committee hearing on cattle supply chains and Amazon deforestation June 22.

CBP is inching closer to mandating electronic export manifest, with rail EEM the farthest along but air EEM still needing work, said David Garcia, program manager of the agency’s outbound enforcement and policy branch. Garcia said the agency is aiming to publish them in the Federal Register “within the next year or two.”

The Commerce Department incorrectly concluded that exemptions from Turkey's Bank and Insurance Transactions Tax (BITT) were countervailable subsidies, in the final results of the 2020 administrative review of the countervailing duty order on steel concrete reinforcing bar from Turkey, exporter Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret said in a June 21 complaint. Kaptan also took issue with Commerce's valuation benchmark for industrial land in Turkey (Kaptan Demir Çelik Endüstrisi ve Ticaret A.Ş. v. U.S., CIT # 23-00131).

Squire Patton adds Everett Eissenstat, former deputy director of the National Economic Council under President Donald Trump, as a partner for its public policy team ... VF names former Logitech President-CEO Bracken Darrell CEO, effective July 17; Benno Dorer, interim president-CEO since Dec. 5, will remain a VF board member; interim Chair Richard Carucci becomes permanent chair ... Entravision names Michael Christenson, ex-New Relic and CA Technologies, CEO, effective July 1 ... Instapage, landing page company, promotes Chief Operations Officer Imran Syed to CEO ... LocatorX, open IoT hardware and software company, names Infleqtion’s Chester Kennedy CEO; previous CEO Scott Fletcher moves to chief commercial officer.

Squire Patton adds Everett Eissenstat, former deputy director of the National Economic Council under President Donald Trump, as a partner for its public policy team ... Latino Media Network names SiriusXM’s Rose-Anne Tifre chief revenue officer ... VF names former Logitech President-CEO Bracken Darrell CEO, effective July 17; Benno Dorer, interim president-CEO since Dec. 5, will remain a VF board member; interim Chair Richard Carucci becomes permanent chair ... Somos, phone number administration platform, adds Hudson Strategic Advisors Managing Principal Lisa Crutchfield and Brook Colangelo, former White House chief information officer under President Barack Obama, to its board ... Entravision names Michael Christenson, ex-New Relic and CA Technologies, CEO, effective July 1 ... 8x8 taps Twilio’s Lisa Martin as CRO ... Empower AI names Jim Rittinger, ex-MFGS, general counsel-corporate secretary ... Charge Enterprises, electric vehicle charging infrastructure company, adds DigitalBridge Chief Financial Officer Jacky Wu, also ex-American Tower and Verizon, to its board ... Instapage, landing page solutions company, promotes Chief Operations Officer Imran Syed to CEO ... LocatorX, open IoT hardware and software company, names Infleqtion’s Chester Kennedy CEO; previous CEO Scott Fletcher moves to chief commercial officer ... Cybersecurity company Lodestone taps Kudelski Security’s Francisco Donoso as chief technology officer ... New hires at Apexon, digital tech services company: Anand Kabra, ex-Wipro Technologies, as chief people and transformation officer; Sandeep Dhar, ex-Goldman Sachs, as chief delivery officer; and Srinivasan Jayaraman, HCL Technologies, as CRO.

Pentagon Federal Credit Union, Verisk Analytics and Lead Intelligence record visitors’ electronic communications activities on PenFed’s website without their consent, said a Friday class action (docket 2:23-cv-04785) in U.S. District Court for Central California in Los Angeles.

The FCC Precision Ag Task Force will meet July 11 at 11 a.m. at FCC headquarters and virtually. The task force will hear working group reports. The current and future connectivity demand WG was aiming to present a draft report to the full task force by that date (see 2303280055). “The Task Force will discuss executive summary details, provide updates on the progress of their respective reports, and continue to discuss strategies to advance broadband deployment on agricultural land and promote precision agriculture,” the FCC said.

The top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee has reintroduced a bill eliminating Chinese shippers' eligibility for de minimis, keeping the ban on China, and adding a requirement that remaining de minimis shipments include at a minimum: a description; an HTS code; a country of origin, shipper, importer; and a U.S. value. The new version also dropped language around sections 232 and 301 tariffs in the previous version.