On January 7, 2011, the following trade-related bills and resolutions were introduced:
The Department of Homeland Security has announced a new partnership with the World Customs Organization to enlist other nations, international bodies and the private sector in increasing the security of the global supply chain and outlined a series of new initiatives to make the system stronger, smarter and more resilient.
Sprint Nextel has signed frequency reconfiguration agreements (FRAs) with more than 95 percent of non-border licensees in phases I and II of the 800 MHz rebanding, the company told the FCC in a progress report. Sprint said it has completed more than 70 percent of the country’s non-border area retunes. The carrier reported progress in retunes along the Canadian border. “Approximately 275 public safety” and business/industrial land transportation “licensees in each of the Canadian border regions received their replacement frequency proposals … or were required to be retuned,” Sprint said. “Eleven licensees are currently engaged in planning efforts with signed Planning Funding Agreements. More than 170 licensees have signed their FRAs or have their FRAs pending” for review by the 800 MHz Transition Administrator. Sprint has been working on the retuning since the FCC approved its landmark 800 MHz rebanding order in 2004.
On December 17, 2010, the House Passed H.R. 6523, the Ike Skelton National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011. The Senate passed H.R. 6523 on December 22, 2010, clearing the measure for the President.
Independent retailers are coming off an erratic holiday season marked by gains in audio over the previous year but offset by steep discounting on the video side, retailers told Consumer Electronics Daily. “TV was the most challenging category and the most hit and miss business out there,” said David Workman, executive director of PRO Group. Year-over-year numbers experienced a 20 percent decline in ASPs, he said. Citing big box competition with “more aggressive” opening price points than in previous years, combined with unit increases required to offset those ASP declines, “the math didn’t work,” he said.
The FCC has fallen months behind its aggressive schedule for issuing follow-up orders to the National Broadband Plan. By the FCC’s latest count, 21 of 68 action items set up by the report remain incomplete. The agency has made “incremental progress” on two others, an agency spokesman said Friday. Two items which were scheduled to be wrapped up by the end of June remain on the FCC’s to-do list. Critics of the net neutrality order approved by the agency Dec. 21, including Republican Commissioners Robert McDowell and Meredith Baker, say the agency’s months’ long focus on that order is in part responsible for sometimes slow progress implementing the plan.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued a general notice announcing that it is expanding air traveler eligibility for participation in the Global Entry pilot to two trusted traveler programs, NEXUS and SENTRI, to permit participants of these programs currently in good standing to utilize Global Entry kiosks as part of their NEXUS or SENTRI membership.
As cable operators look to expand their business services efforts by pursuing larger commercial customers with up to 250 employees, they need to prepare themselves for a market vastly different than the one most of them have been used to, according to industry experts. Operators have had considerable success in reaching smaller businesses (CD Dec 28 p3).
The FCC Wireless Bureau granted a waiver to Marathon Petroleum Co. from a 2004 freeze prohibiting applications for new authorizations in the 900 MHz Business Industrial Land Transportation (B/ILT) band. Marathon seeks to use a B/ILT station at the Catlettsburg refinery in northeastern Kentucky. In 2004, the bureau “instituted a freeze on applications for new 900 MHz B/ILT authorizations because it feared that the exceptionally large number of applications it had received could compromise its ability to accommodate displaced systems during the 800 MHz band reconfiguration process designed to resolve interference to public safety communications,” the bureau’s new order said. The bureau said that “it would continue to accept applications for license modification and would entertain requests for waiver of the 900 MHz application freeze.”
On December 15, 2010, the European Commission updated its Frequently Asked Questions document on the advance security data requirements that become mandatory for ocean, air, and land inbound and outbound cargo starting January 1, 2011.