The cost of providing mobile broadband service to all targeted areas in Alaska would be “roughly $596 million,” Alaska carrier GCI said in a report it submitted to the FCC. The targeted markets are those previously identified as possible recipients of support from the FCC Mobility Fund. The primary costs are tied to establishing cell sites and backhaul from the cell site to hub points in Fairbanks, Anchorage or Juneau, the report said. The model behind the report was developed by the Brattle Group (http://bit.ly/YwVtCG). “The State of Alaska encompasses a very large area (by itself equal to 20 percent of the land mass of the Lower 48 States combined), is sparsely populated (with roughly 1.2 people per square mile, compared with over 100 people per square mile on average in the Lower 48) and has a limited road system,” the report said. “Many of Alaska’s communities are remote, located completely off-road (accessible only by airplane, boat, or snow machine).”
CBP announced the location and agenda for the next meeting of the Advisory Committee on Commercial Operations (COAC), March 6 at 1 p.m. (ET) in Washington, D.C. Online registration for webcast and in-person participation is available through March 4, said a Feb. 19 notice.
Maine government agencies now have access to frequencies normally reserved for transportation needs, said attorney Robert Gurss of Fletcher Heald on the firm’s blog Wednesday (http://xrl.us/bogr2n). The law firm represented the state of Maine and Harris Corp., the post said. “The VHF [150-170 MHz] band has propagation characteristics that make it ideal for land mobile radio use in sparsely populated, mountainous, and heavily forested areas,” the blog post said. “Other available land mobile frequency bands, such as UHF and 700 MHz, require far more transmitter sites to provide comparable coverage.” These VHF public safety assignments are not common and are “limited, especially in areas near the Canadian and Mexican borders,” it added. Maine contracts with Harris on a statewide VHF network, however, and the FCC granted a waiver for the network to use these frequencies normally intended for railroad companies earlier this February (http://bit.ly/UfRTib), the post said.
The major cuts to government spending that would occur if sequestration comes to fruition would create major problems for CBP and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, among others, said Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Napolitano conveyed her concerns in a letter responding to House Homeland Security Committee Ranking Member Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who asked about how sequestration, set to take effect March 1, would affect DHS. Sequestration would "increase wait times at our Nation's land ports of entry and airports" and "affect aviation and maritime safety and security," she said in the letter (here).
New products that Mattel touted at Toy Fair highlighted a shift in strategy for its Apptivity brand and an expanded use of augmented reality. At last year’s Toy Fair, Mattel unveiled Apptivity-branded toys across several product lines that used mobile apps, including ones based on the Hot Wheels, World Wrestling Entertainment and Cut The Rope brands (CED Feb 16/12 p7). This year, the company decided to limit the use of the Apptivity brand strictly to the Fisher-Price product line for infants and young children, although Mattel is continuing to use apps for other company products, Scott Van Vliet, vice president-Digital Play, told us.
More than 40 groups and individuals urged President Obama to take a "time out" in what they called a headlong run to export more than 40 percent of America's natural gas for use by other nations, in an ad in the New York Times (here). The ad was signed by the Civil Society Institute, Sierra Club, Physicians Scientists Engineers for Healthy Energy, "Gasland" director Josh Fox, actor Mark Ruffalo and others.
State and local officials will grapple with many choices and challenges of coordination in preparing to apply for the $121.5 million in grants that NTIA will give as part of its State and Local Implementation Grant Program Federal Funding Opportunity for FirstNet, speakers said during a Monday NATOA discussion. The grants were announced Wednesday (CD Feb 7 p11). The application deadline is March 19.
Comcast agreed to take an equity stake in Arris because the cable operator was interested in making sure Motorola’s set-top box and network equipment business lands “in a good place,” Arris CEO Bob Stanzione told analysts Thursday during the company’s earnings call. Arris agreed to buy the Motorola Mobility business from Google late last year (CD Dec 20 p4). “You can think of it not only as an endorsement, but they were interested in the Motorola Home business winding up in a good place,” Stanzione said. “Their investment was aligned with that motive.” When the deal closes both Google and Comcast will own a little less than 8 percent of Arris’s shares. Comcast’s investment in Arris probably won’t mean the cable operator will buy more Arris or Motorola equipment than it already does, Stanzione said. “I don’t think this is going to sway their purchasing decisions,” he said. Both Arris and Motorola are suppliers to Comcast but the cable operator has a multi-supplier policy it’s expected to uphold, Stanzione said. The transaction is proceeding, Stanzione said. “We've received the debt ratings we anticipated and the financing commitments are nearly finalized,” he said. “We are now in that awkward period of awaiting DOJ approval,” he said. The company said it still expects the deal to close before July. Q4 sales increased 22 percent from a year earlier to $344 million, Arris said. The company recorded a net income of $14.8 million, up from a $59.6 million loss a year earlier that followed a one-time write-down and amortization charge.
Amazon has landed a U.S. patent for the technology to resell digital goods, according to the Patent and Trademark Office website (http://1.usa.gov/Xp49L7). According to the patent’s abstract, the secondary electronic marketplace would include digital objects such as “e-books, audio, video, [and] computer applications.” Through the marketplace, users could transfer their digital object to another user’s “personalized data store when permissible and the used digital content is deleted from the originating user’s personalized data store,” the abstract said: Additionally, digital objects could have “a threshold number of moves or downloads,” after which “the ability to move may be deemed impermissible and suspended or terminated."
Amazon has landed a U.S. patent for the technology to resell digital goods, according to the Patent and Trademark Office website (http://1.usa.gov/Xp49L7). According to the patent’s abstract, the secondary electronic marketplace would include digital objects such as “e-books, audio, video, [and] computer applications.” Through the marketplace, users could transfer their digital object to another user’s “personalized data store when permissible and the used digital content is deleted from the originating user’s personalized data store,” the abstract said: Additionally, digital objects could have “a threshold number of moves or downloads,” after which “the ability to move may be deemed impermissible and suspended or terminated."