EchoStar’s purchase of Hughes could lead to a policy shift by the second company on the Universal Service revamp because the acquiree has voiced different positions on the issue from the acquirer, FCC filings show. Hughes, which has previously said satellite broadband should be left out of the USF and Connect America fund, could change its position if EchoStar takes over. A united satellite broadband front would “be a big positive for the industry and provide a very strong response to the FCC” General Counsel Lisa Scalpone of WildBlue said in an interview.
On March 17, 2011, the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution approving a "no-fly zone" over Libya and authorizing all necessary measures to protect civilians. It further decided that all States should deny permission to any Libyan commercial aircraft to land in or take off from their territory unless a particular flight had been approved in advance by the committee that was established to monitor sanctions imposed by resolution 1970 (2011).
The Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications System reminded the FCC of the “critical public safety land mobile radio use” of spectrum in the 470-512 MHz band, TV channels 14-20. The system said it’s deploying an interoperable voice network in the spectrum. “Under no circumstances should a ‘repurposing’ of the television spectrum prevent the ongoing public safety use of the 470-512 MHz band,” LA-RICS said. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office noted that parts of the 470-512 MHz band are “authorized by both rule and waiver” for public safety use in the Los Angeles as well as New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, Chicago, Miami, Pittsburgh, Dallas, and Houston metropolitan areas. “The 470-512 MHz band has long been, and is expected to remain, the principal public safety mobile frequency band in Los Angeles,” the office said. “A total of 50 law enforcement agencies and fire departments within the County operate their primary public safety communications in the UHF band, primarily in 470-512 MHz."
The Makuhari Messe convention center in Chiba, Japan, site of the annual CEATEC Japan show, was not damaged in the March 11 quake, CEATEC Producer Takashi Nakanishi told us by email Friday. Nakanishi said he couldn’t comment “at the moment” on what impact the disaster might have on this year’s CEATEC, which is scheduled to open Oct. 4 for a five-day run. Our check of the Makuhari Messe online calendar found that all events scheduled at the facility through the end of March have been canceled. But rolling blackouts, not damage to the facility, caused the cancellations, organizers of the various events said. The New Otani Makuhari hotel next to the convention center also escaped damage in the quake and no hotel quests or employees were injured, spokeswoman Yuka Kido said. Like the Chiba Marines baseball stadium that sits on Tokyo Bay, Makuhari Messe, situated only 1,000 feet inland from the stadium, was built on landfill in the late 1980s. ESPN baseball analyst Bobby Valentine, who managed the Marines from 2004 to 2009, was quoted in newspaper reports as saying that since the stadium was built on landfill, the land underneath “now seems to be compromised” and that the stadium was in danger of “sinking into the bay.” Valentine is setting up a relief fund for victims of the quake and tsunami, the reports said.
A lawsuit against Sprint Nextel and Level 3 in Idaho argued that people who own or owned land next to or under railroad rights of way in the state may be eligible for payments. A preliminary approval of a proposed settlement was granted by the U.S. District Court in Boise. The suit alleged that, before installing the telecom equipment, the communications companies were required to obtain consent from those landowners who owned the land under the rights of way. Sprint and Level 3 contended that the permissions granted by the railroads were sufficient, even where the railroad didn’t own all property rights in the rights of way, and denied any wrongdoing. The proposed settlement would provide cash payments to qualifying class members based on various factors. Those factors would include: The length of the right of way where the cable is installed, the length of time they owned the property, and whether the right of way was created by a federal land grant. The proposed settlement would also provide Sprint and Level 3 with a permanent telecom easement, which would allow the companies to use the railroad rights of way for their telecom equipment.
The FCC approved an application from CAAM Partnership for a new AM station in Snohomish, Wash., said a letter released Wednesday from the Media Bureau. It denied objections from Citizens to Preserve the Upper Snohomish River Valley, Stewards of the Land and Community and others. The bureau found that the station “will have no significant impact on the quality of the human environment."
On March 9, 2011, the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control held a hearing on “Money Laundering and Bulk Cash Smuggling across the Southwest Border,” where CBP Commissioner Alan Bersin discussed agency efforts along the Southwest border, including the 100% scanning of southbound rail shipments. In addition, an ICE official discussed that agency’s efforts along the Southwest border, including the training of Mexican customs officials.1
CBP announced that Chris Maston will serve as the new field operations director in San Diego effective March 13, 2011. Previously, he served CBP as the Port Director over the San Ysidro and Otay Mesa passenger ports of entry in San Diego County. As the director of field operations, Maston will provide management oversight for all passenger and cargo operations within the San Diego region, including at the land border ports of entry on the California/Mexico border, as well as airport and seaport operations in San Diego.
For the most part, undersea communications cables appeared to have held up through the massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan, though parts of the networks remained out of service Monday. Two segments of a trans-Pacific network were out of service and at least two other cables were damaged. Some of the undersea cables in the Asia-Pacific region that Verizon participates in were damaged, a spokeswoman said. But the company’s eighty-way “optical meshing” diversity in the Pacific allowed the network to stay operational before, during and after the earthquake and numerous aftershocks, she said. The technology allows traffic to be automatically re-routed onto different submarine cables when a network event occurs, she said. The Verizon local networks in Tokyo and Osaka continued to operate normally, as did its global network, the spokeswoman said. The company has been helping several other affected providers restore services, she said. Sprint Nextel hasn’t experienced any effects on its network assets or service following the disasters, a spokeswoman said. Japan’s Internet has held up since the earthquake, according to Internet monitoring firm Renesys. Only about 100 of roughly 6,000 Japanese network prefixes in the global routing table were temporarily withdrawn from service -- and that number has decreased since the event, said Renesys Chief Technology Officer James Cowie. Other carriers around the region have reported congestion and drops in traffic due to follow-on effects of the quake, but most websites are up and operational, and the Internet is available to support critical communications, he said. Compared to the 2006 Taiwan earthquake, which resulted in a larger number of major cable breaks, it appears that the majority of the region’s submarine cables have escaped the worst damage, and diverse capacity remains to carry traffic around the points of damage, he said. The western and northern sections of the Pacific Crossing-1 undersea cable system connecting the U.S to Asia were still out of service Monday, said Pacific Crossing, a subsidiary of Japanese operator NTT Communications. The company is inspecting the damage and is accelerating the restorations activities, it said. PC-1 is a 13,049-mile fiber ring that lands at two sites on the U.S. west coast and two sites on Japan’s east coast. NTT said backup cable routes were used to support traffic between Japan and other parts of the world. There are 20 trans-Pacific and intra-Asia cable systems that land in Japan, according to research firm Telegeography. Overall, the undersea cable network has experienced limited damage, the firm said. AT&T is working to reduce some customer impact from damage to undersea cables that are operated by the APCN-2 consortium, a group of some 14 global service providers, including AT&T, a spokesman said. APCN-2 is an undersea cabling network that connects ten landing points across Asia-Pacific, including China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan. AT&T is re-routing affected customers’ traffic to unaffected circuits and will ensure customers have minimal service disruption, the spokesman said. Still, some networks remained out of service. Japanese operator KDDI said one of its undersea cables between Japan and the U.S. has been damaged and is unable to transmit any signals. Korea Telecom also said a segment of the Japan-U.S. Cable Network is damaged. Several Chinese telecom operators reported slower speeds and other disruption of Internet services.
For the most part, undersea communications cables appeared to have held up through the massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan, though parts of the networks remained out of service Monday. Two segments of a trans-Pacific network were out of service and at least two other cables were damaged.