The TIGER II1 transportation infrastructure projects announced by Transportation Secretary LaHood on October 20, 2010 include port improvements in various locations, a new port and harbor facility in Tennessee, marine highway investments, and intermodal rail improvements, among other things.
AT&T added and retained more wireless customers in the third quarter than it had in any previous Q3, the carrier said Thursday. And it sold a record number of Apple iPhone handsets, though many were to subscribers it already had. AT&T mobile broadband “is approaching a $20 billion a year business, and the business is growing at 25-30 percent,” Chief Financial Officer Rick Lindner said on the carrier’s earnings call. Wireline isn’t achieving the same success, but Lindner said the carrier isn’t thinking about ditching the business.
AT&T added and retained more wireless customers in the third quarter than it had in any previous Q3, the carrier said Thursday. And it sold a record number of Apple iPhone handsets, though many were to subscribers it already had. AT&T mobile broadband “is approaching a $20 billion a year business, and the business is growing at 25-30 percent,” Chief Financial Officer Rick Lindner said on the carrier’s earnings call. Wireline isn’t achieving the same success, but Lindner said the carrier isn’t thinking about ditching the business.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement reports that eighty-six countries joined representatives of the World Customs Organization (WCO), the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to discuss an international effort to counter the illicit diversion and trafficking of precursor chemicals that may be used by terrorists and other criminal organizations to manufacture explosive devices.
On October 13, 2010, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Bersin addressed the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. on issues which included border security and trade facilitation.
Congress could move on spectrum legislation next year no matter which political party is in control, a telecom aide to Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, told a Law Seminars International conference Monday. A package of noncontroversial spectrum items could be attached to a reauthorization of the FCC’s auction authority, said the aide, Matthew Hussey. FCC Wireless Bureau Chief Ruth Milkman urged Congress to quickly authorize incentive auctions to free up broadcaster spectrum.
Objectives and requirements being developed in a draft new ITU-R recommendation and report on providing telecom for a large number of widely dispersed ubiquitous sensors or actuators in the land mobile service primarily focuses on interference, cell size, power control and other characteristics of the cellular network, the Telecommunications Industry Association told the group. The TIA group on smart device communications said functionality includes data buffering to preserve battery power and providing devices with wakeup schedules when they need to communicate with the network. In addition to the lower layers under consideration in the ITU-R work, smart device communications also requires standardized upper layer protocols and data models, together with standardized “convergence layer” to the underlying data transport, TIA said. That will spur deployment of applications, it said. TIA specifications will address the upper layers of the protocol stack and specify functionality that can run on top of various wired and wireless networks, TIA said. The smart device group has also been discussing the definition of “a common domain information model” to provide a uniform structure and access methods for the data stored in smart devices, they said. The group will make the functionality available to applications through a set of application programming interfaces, it said. TIA wants the ITU-R working party to consider including in its work the objectives and requirements for the convergence layer.
Radio astronomy observations could no longer be conducted if gear based on a recently approved ITU-T recommendation for next-generation home networking transceivers hits the market, participants in an ITU-R working party on radio astronomy said in a letter to seven other groups. Several ITU-R participants and groups have raised similar interference concerns, the letter said. It referred to participants working on the mobile satellite, radio-determination-satellite, terrestrial broadcasting and radiolocation services, and the land, maritime and aeronautical mobile services. The radio astronomy service has primary allocations at 150.05-153 MHz, 322-328.6 MHz and 406.1-410 MHz.
Shortly before to its adjournment for the November 2010 elections, the Senate had been considering S. 3454, its National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011.
U.S. Trade Representative Kirk has announced that the U.S. has requested consultations with Canada under the 2006 Softwood Lumber Agreement (SLA 2006) regarding the alleged unfair under-pricing of timber harvested from public lands in the Interior region of British Columbia.