The FCC’s proposed policy statement on receivers lays out core principles to “help inform the Commission’s future actions and stakeholder expectations about interference from spectrally and spatially proximate sources,” according to a draft released Thursday for the commissioners’ April 20 open meeting. The draft draws on recommendations in a 2015 report by the FCC’s Technology Advisory Council.
The Court of International Trade in a March 21 opinion made public March 29 upheld parts and sent back parts of the Commerce Department's final results in the first administrative review of the countervailing duty order on aluminum foil from China. Judge Timothy Reif said Commerce properly rejected a benchmark submission from the respondents, led by Jiangsu Zhongji Lamination Materials Co., and legally calculated the benchmark for the primary aluminum program. Reif remanded the case on the grounds that the agency did not properly explain its decision to pick the Trade Data Monitor data source to calculate the aluminum plate/sheet program benchmark or its selection of data to calculate the benchmark for the land program.
Members of the FCC Precision Ag Task Force raised concerns Tuesday about how the commission's next iteration of the broadband availability map will treat agricultural lands. Meeting virtually, the task force also heard updates from working group leaders and discussed the timing of its reports amid efforts to pass the 2023 farm bill (see 2212020059).
STC Two and Global Signal's February breach of contract complaint (see 2302280015) should be dismissed, said defendant Thomas Branham Friday in a response and counterclaim (docket 2:23-cv-00764) in U.S. District Court for Southern Ohio in Columbus. STC sued the landowner, who allegedly padlocked the entrance to a cellsite in violation of a public contracting services site agreement dating to 1998.
Blue Origin's failed New Shepherd rocket launch on Sept. 12 was due to a failure of an engine nozzle, which then triggered the crew capsule escape system, the company said Friday. The mission was unmanned. It said the crew capsule and payloads on board landed safely and will be flown again. It said all systems designed for public safety "functioned as planned," and it's making changes to engine design and expects to resume flights soon.
The Enterprise Wireless Alliance petitioned the FCC for a rulemaking to modify its rules, which currently require industrial business (IB) frequency coordinators to secure concurrence on primary use VHF/UHF channels. “The proposed changes would eliminate what have become unnecessary economic and administratively burdensome requirements for frequency coordinators to secure concurrence on the frequencies specified,” the petition said. More than 20 years ago, the FCC consolidated the land mobile radio services into the IB and public safety “retaining concurrence requirements for certain primary user channels,” said EWA President Robin Cohen: “The VHF/UHF bands have come a long way over the past few decades with more enhanced coordination processes, the introduction of trunked technologies, and the availability of exclusive use channels. The reservation may have made sense 25 years ago but makes little sense in today’s private land mobile spectrum environment.”
Some states have fairly sharp pencils for estimated awards from NTIA’s broadband, equity, access and deployment (BEAD), but others are working with wide ranges. States were mixed on whether it's challenging to plan their broadband programs without knowing the award amount. NTIA is expected to make funding allocation announcements June 30.
The Court of International Trade should affirm Commerce's remand redetermination in a countervailing duty investigation on granular polytetrafluorethylene resin from India, despite the department dropping a subsidy under protest, Commerce said in its March 16 response to remand comments (Gujarat Fluorochemicals Ltd. v. U.S., CIT # 22-00120).
AT&T highlighted its recent growth in wireless and fiber in a Wednesday news release. AT&T’s wireless network now covers more than 2.91 million square miles in the U.S., “an increase of about 100,000 square miles in 2022, or like covering the entire United Kingdom,” AT&T said. The network is available to 290 million people in nearly 24,000 cities and towns across the U.S. AT&T also increased wireless coverage by more than 40% on federally recognized tribal lands in 2020-2022, the company said. In 2022, AT&T said it laid more than 60,000 miles of fiber in the U.S.: “All that fiber helps carry more than 594 petabytes of data traffic on an average day, up 23% year-over-year.”
Five people from Iran, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates were charged in two cases at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for violating the Arms Export Control Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, DOJ announced. They allegedly tried to obtain and export U.S. technology to Iran from 2005 to 2013.