FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski named David Turetsky, a communications lawyer at Dewey & LeBoeuf, as new chief of the Public Safety Bureau. The appointment is effective after Memorial Day. Acting Chief David Furth will return to duty as a deputy chief of the bureau. Turetsky becomes the second chief under Genachowski, following his initial appointment of retired Rear Adm. Jamie Barnett, who left the agency at the end of April.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection released the following documents ahead of the May 22, 2012 Commercial Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) meeting scheduled for Savannah, Georgia:
Expanded trade among China, the Republic of Korea (ROK) and Japan was one of the key topics during the Fifth Trilateral Summit Meeting among them that concluded May 14 in Beijing. The Joint Declaration on the Enhancement of Trilateral Comprehensive Cooperative Partnership included the following trade-related items:
Orbcomm reported total revenues of about $15.9 million for the first quarter, an increase of 101 percent from Q1 2011. Service revenues were $11.5 million compared to $7.4 million last year, the global satellite data communications company said. This 56 percent increase was due to “an increase in the number of billable units and higher usage in core service,” including revenues from automatic identification system satellite launches and the acquisitions of StarTrak Systems and PAR Logistics Management Systems. The company added 42,000 net new subscribers, including 19,000 subscribers acquired with the land mobile satellite transaction that closed in January, Orbcomm said. As of March 31, there were about 689,000 billable subscriber communicators, compared to 589,000 last year the same time, which is an annual increase of 17 percent, the company said.
BRUSSELS -- Preliminary results of a European Commission study to boost efficiency of spectrum use to spur mobile broadband and other applications is focusing on bands used for satellite, terrestrial, aeronautical and defense applications, speakers told a European Commission workshop. The EC-funded study is a pilot program, or prototype, for the EU spectrum inventory, said Scott Marcus of WIK Consult. The inventory should identify candidate bands for improvement in use and assist in determining what might be done, the cost and expected benefits, said Marcus, who is project manager.
Low-power FM (LPFM) advocates and incumbent radio broadcasters squared off this week in comments on how the FCC should implement the Local Community Radio Act (LCRA). Individual LPFM stations and the Prometheus Radio Project also solicited listeners and members of the public to file comments with the agency, resulting in hundreds of brief comments in the docket. In general LPFM advocates argued for broader interpretations of the statute allowing more flexible rules for LPFM operators while incumbent FM broadcasters made the case for more narrowly tailored rules that protect their services.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) are moving forward on several pieces of the U.S.-Canada Beyond the Border Action Plan for Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness, such as increasing benefits to NEXUS members, streamlining the NEXUS membership renewal process and launching a plan to increase NEXUS membership, they said May 8.
Congressional investigators are looking into allegations of loan fraud raised by cable operators against a county government in Minnesota that accepted about $66 million in funds from the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) to build a fiber broadband network there. Mediacom Communications, which serves some of the less sparsely populated parts of Lake County, Minn., complained last year to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s office of the inspector general that Lake County’s Broadband Initiatives Project (BIP) loan application appeared to be fraudulent, designed to set the county up for financial failure and allow outside consultants hand-picked by local officials to buy the fiber-to-the-home systems at a discount (CD March 17/11 p6). More recently it has been taking its case to nearly anyone else who might listen, including federal prosecutors in D.C. and investigators with the House Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, and apparently gaining some traction.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection offered some clarifications on the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) International Organization for Standardization (ISO) seal standard for truckers, in a set of Frequently Asked Questions. The FAQs describe the continued use for seal standard ISO/PAS 17712. A new seal standard for containers was previously planned to be implemented by March 1, 2012, but CBP said in February an indeterminate delay was necessary for testing.
The next meeting of the Advisory Committee on Commercial Operations of Customs and Border Protection (COAC) will be on May 22, 2012 at 1 p.m. (EST) in Savannah, Ga. U.S. Customs and Border Protection is seeking comment on the planned agenda items, according to a notice in the Federal Register May 4, 2012. Online registration for webcast and in-person attendance at the COAC meeting is open through May 18, 2012.