Tribes without ancestral lands will now receive the FCC’s assistance in getting AM and FM stations, under an order approved 5-0 at Thursday’s meeting (CD March 3 p9). Also under the order, radio move-ins from rural to urban areas will become harder, as had been expected (CD Feb 22 p6). New procedures will apply to the pending applications to amend the FM allotments, AM allotments and non-final FM allotment orders, a commission official said. The upshot of the order is that many of the 96 pending applications for radio stations to move from rural to more urban areas may not be approved, industry and agency officials said.
Kopin will deliver its Golden-i head-mounted display (HMD) software development kit to Motorola Solutions with a goal of bringing product to market in first-half 2012, Kopin executives said Thursday on an earnings call. Golden-I combines Kopin’s 0.6-inch LCD microdisplay with 800x600 resolution with Microsoft embedded 6.0 software, Texas Instruments OMAP processor, and Hillcrest Labs’ six-axis position tracker in an HMD. SDKs will be released by month’s end with plans for Motorola to start HMD production by year-end, Kopin Chief Financial Officer Richard Sneider told us. The software will be built into TI’s OMAP processor, he said.
Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile submitted a report to the FCC making the case that an “incentive-based public/private 700 MHz broadband network” along with a D-block auction remains sound public policy. “The primary intent of this study is to show that public safety priority requirements can be fully met when a public safety user moves … to a shared partner (D-Block or other 700 MHz) commercial network during public safety network congestion conditions,” said the report by Roberson and Associates, a Chicago-based consulting firm. “The shared architecture reinforces that the public safety agency managing the dedicated public safety network will maintain control of the public safety user priority management, especially during emergency situations.” A shared network would reduce costs for public safety, the report said. “On the network side, the infrastructure cost to public safety is substantially reduced due to the co-location of base sites, towers, and radio network equipment,” the study concluded. “On the user device side, economies of scale driven by commercial volumes will result in lower device costs to public safety.” The fight over a D-block auction pits Sprint and T-Mobile, both looking for additional spectrum, against AT&T and Verizon Wireless, which favor giving public safety control of the D-block. Sprint Vice President Larry Krevor said in an interview that a shared network, as proposed by the FCC, continues to make sense. “Public safety has been saying, ‘We really can’t rely on commercial networks, we can’t share with commercial networks, we have to control our own spectrum'” he said. “I found that perplexing, because the previous D-block auction was all about shared networks with public safety.” Krevor conceded that the fight over the D-block has become emotional. “Our goal here is to provide facts and some accurate information to help base the decisions on,” he said. “No matter how the D-block issue is resolved, it still makes sense for public safety to partner with commercial to get broader coverage. The paper shows the issue’s complexity, T-Mobile Vice President Kathleen Ham said in a second interview. Ham said the carriers will brief Hill staff on the conclusions. “We heard from public safety this priority access issue was important to them,” she said. “We really wanted to dig in and look at the technology and look at what is possible.” Ham noted that LTE offers significant flexibility. Public safety is “used to the land-mobile radio world, where if the channel is not there there’s no priority,” she said.
With the FCC set to approve Thursday a notice of inquiry about spectrum on tribal lands, AT&T Vice President Joan Marsh reminded the commission of a step it can take now to guarantee continued wireless coverage on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota: approve the company’s application to become an eligible telecom carrier there. “At this point there is only one thing that threatens AT&T’s ability to continue to provide high quality wireless services to the Pine Ridge Reservation: the FCC,” she wrote on the carrier’s policy blog. “Eight months have passed since AT&T filed a Petition to Transfer to AT&T the ETC designation previously held by Alltel, which covers the Pine Ridge Reservation. We're not asking for special treatment here. Rather, we just want to receive the same ETC designation previous carriers have held for serving this high cost area."
Tribes without ancestral lands would receive an assist from the FCC in getting AM and FM stations, under a draft order set for a vote at Thursday’s meeting, agency officials said. A landless tribe could get a waiver of commission rules by showing that it should receive a priority now reserved for tribes with lands, FCC officials said. That part of the radio order is not controversial inside the commission or out, agency and industry officials said.
Boxee said Tuesday it landed a $16.5 million round of financing with new investors Pitango and Softbank, and participation by prior investors General Catalyst, Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures. The Internet TV software and hardware maker said Pitango’s Isaac Hillel will join its board. Its last financing round, 18 months ago, was $6 million, “and at that time we were 12 employees, our software was in alpha and the Boxee Box was a dream,” CEO Avner Ronen said on the Boxee blog. Now it has 34 employees, the software is in version 1.0 and its Boxee Box is available in 34 countries, he said. The new funding will go toward adding to its development team, building new functionality, “continuing to squash bugs” in the software, adding new sources of content and signing up new device and distribution partners. Recent additions include Netflix and Vudu, while Iomega is working on a Boxee network-attached storage device and ViewSonic is working on a TV based on Boxee, Ronen said.
Boxee landed a $16.5 million round of financing with new investors Pitango and Softbank, and participation by prior investors General Catalyst, Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures, it said Tuesday. The Internet TV software and hardware maker said Pitango’s Isaac Hillel will join its board. Its last financing round, 18 months ago, was $6 million, “and at that time we were 12 employees, our software was in alpha and the Boxee Box was a dream,” CEO Avner Ronen said on the Boxee blog. Now it has 34 employees, the software is in version 1.0 and its Boxee Box is available in 34 countries, he said. The new funding will go toward adding to its development team, building new functionality, “continuing to squash bugs” in the software, adding new sources of content and signing up new device and distribution partners. Recent additions include Netflix and Vudu, while Iomega is working on a Boxee network-attached storage device and ViewSonic is working on a TV based on Boxee, Ronen said.
The Government of Canada issued the following trade-related notices on February 23, 2011:
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a news release and fact sheet on its progress in securing U.S. borders in FY 2010, such as establishing an import safety targeting center, increased seizures for IPR and safety violations, more timely AD/CV liquidations, etc.
Activision’s multiplatform Call of Duty: Black Ops moved up three slots to return to the top of the U.K. game sales chart, according to Chart Track’s leisure software chart for the week through Saturday. The only new release in the top 10 was Capcom’s Marvel Vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, at No. 2. The Xbox 360 version accounted for 57 percent of the title’s sales, versus 43 percent for the PS3 SKU, said the Association for U.K. Interactive Entertainment, which released the data. Electronic Arts and Ubisoft each had two games in the top 10. EA’s were Dead Space 2 for the 360, PS3 and PC, down one at No. 3 in its fourth week, and the multiplatform FIFA 11, down two, No. 5, 21st week. Ubisoft’s were Just Dance 2 for the Wii, up one, No. 6, 19th week, and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood for the 360 and PS3, down two, No. 7, 14th week. Atari’s Test Drive Unlimited 2 for the 360, PS3 and PC, the prior week’s No. 1 game (CED Feb 15 p9), tumbled to No. 4 in its second week. Rounding out the top 10 were Nintendo’s Mario vs. Donkey Kong Mini-Land Mayhem for the DS, down two, No. 8, third week; Take-Two Interactive’s Grand Theft Auto IV: The Complete Edition for the 360, PS3 and PC, No. 9 again in its second week; and Sony Computer Entertainment’s PS3 game LittleBigPlanet 2, No. 10 again in its fifth week.