The FCC shouldn’t boost regulatory fees charged private land mobile radio service licensees, PCIA said in comments filed with the agency. Fiscal 2008 fees would be four times higher than in 2003, PCIA said, noting that fees are supposed to be cost-based. “As an FCC-certified frequency coordinator, PCIA interacts extensively with the FCC,” the group said. “PCIA perceives a decline in the overall staffing level devoted to PLMRS at the FCC, which would naturally correlate with the described reduction in the number of PLMRS licensees.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has issued a press release announcing that the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) has released "Synthesis and Assessment Product 4.3 (SAP 4.3): The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity in the United States." The CCSP integrates the federal research efforts of 13 agencies on climate and global change. (Press Release No. 0136.08, dated 05/27/08, available at http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_1OB?contentidonly=true&contentid=2008/05/0136.xml.)
On May 7, 2008, the House Homeland Security Committee's Border, Maritime, and Global Counterterrorism and Management, Investigations, and Oversight subcommittees held a hearing on "Assessing the Resiliency of the Nation's Supply Chain."
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued its weekly tariff rate quota and tariff preference level commodity report as of May 27, 2008. This report includes TRQs on various products such as beef, sugar, dairy products, peanuts, cotton, cocoa products, tobacco, certain BFTA, DR-CAFTA, Israel FTA, JFTA, MFTA, SFTA, UAFTA (AFTA) and UCFTA (Chile FTA) non-textile TRQs, etc. Each report also includes the AGOA, ATPDEA, BFTA, DR-CAFTA, CBTPA, Haitian HOPE, MFTA, NAFTA, SFTA, and UCFTA TPLs and TRQs for qualifying apparel and/or other textile articles, the TRQs on worsted wool fabrics, etc. (CBP's weekly TRQ/TPL commodity report available at http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/trade/trade_programs/textiles_and_quotas/commodity/)
The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Friday sided with the FCC, upholding the agency’s dismissal of a private land mobile radio station license despite objections that the order violated the Administrative Procedure Act. In 1991, the FCC granted licenses to Francisco Padilla and Vince Cordaro, who assigned them to James Kay. When Padilla and Cordaro failed to apply for license renewals, the commission dismissed Kay’s assignment applications because an expired license can’t be assigned. Kay sought judicial review. “There is no unfairness” since a potential assignee may “demand, as a condition of the assignment contract, that the potential assignor (the license holder) seek a timely renewal from the Commission,” the court found. “That is what Kay should have done here; his quarrel is properly with Padilla and Cordaro, not the Commission.” A wireless industry attorney called the case relatively insignificant: “The economic value of the license isn’t very significant… It’s a narrow principle of administrative law and the tip off to that is that the whole opinion is four pages.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted a notice announcing that the fourth tranche for the fiscal year 2008 specialty sugar tariff rate quota that opened on Wednesday, May 14, 2008 oversubscribed at opening moment. The pro rata percentage is 60.31951% or 0.6031951.
EU lawmakers overwhelmingly approved rules on selecting mobile satellite operators for services such as broadband Internet or mobile TV. The proposal, a compromise with EU transport ministers, aims to improve accessibility, speed and quality of electronic communications, especially in rural areas, an EU Parliament Industry Committee spokeswoman said. The text adopted Wednesday sets pan-European rules for selecting mobile satellite services providers, including a ban on assigning a single applicant more than 15 MHz for earth-to-space and 15 MHz for space-to-earth communications. Lawmakers and officials of member countries on at the EU’s periphery were “very concerned that the selection criteria might favor operators who could only provide a service covering the center of Europe,” report author Fiona Hall (U.K., Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe) said during Tuesday’s debate. The new law requires operators to cover at least 60 percent of overall EU land area from the time a system starts operating, the committee spokeswoman said. After no more than seven years, the system must reach all 27 countries covering at least half the population and 60 percent of each state’s land area, she said. If demand exceeds spectrum available, the European Commission will choose operators according to certain criteria, stressing pan-European geographic coverage. Eligibility also depends on consumer and competitive benefits, spectrum efficiency and public objectives such as protecting health, safety and security, she said. The ITU has designated the 2-GHz band for use by mobile satellite systems. EU governments have given up their national spectrum allocation rights to the 1980 to 2010 MHz and 2170 to 2200 MHz bands to make way for pan-EU services, the spokeswoman said.
Getting analog-passthrough DTV converters to consumers whose coupons are about to expire is the goal of a tie-in low-power TV’s Community Broadcasters Association debuted Tuesday with box supplier Microprose. But Microprose was delisted as a certified supplier, apparently because it’s against NTIA rules to redeem coupons for pre-orders, as Microprose was doing, an agency spokesman said.
Getting analog-passthrough DTV converters to consumers whose coupons are about to expire is the goal of a tie-in low-power TV’s Community Broadcasters Association debuted Tuesday with box supplier Microprose. But Microprose was delisted as a certified supplier, apparently because it’s against NTIA rules to redeem coupons for pre-orders, as Microprose was doing, an agency spokesman said.
The FCC approved unanimously on circulation an order that says the agency will issue a rulemaking before establishing a timetable for private land mobile radio licensees to transition to 6.25 kHz technology. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin had placed the item on the agenda for Wednesday’s meeting, but it was deleted from the agenda following approval. That leaves one item intact for Wednesday’s meeting -- a rulemaking seeking comment on rules for reauction of the 700 MHz D-block.