AstroVision International (AVI) said it had reinstated a contract with Ball Aerospace & Technology for its 2-bird commercial land remote sensing system in geostationary orbit. AVI’s original launch milestones were Sept. 2003 and Dec. 2004. However, AVI asked the FCC for a 48-month extension of construction and launch milestones after it agreed to suspend its construction contract with Ball to “modify construction and payment milestones under the construction contract.” AVI said both companies still were holding “additional discussions regarding certain provisions of the agreement, including delivery dates and payment schedules,” but modifications wouldn’t result in further delays.
The move of Sony’s top CE management to Cal. may produce some shuffling of product category responsibilities within the national sales group, but those won’t mean “big fundamental changes” in brand strategy, Sony Consumer Sales Group Pres. Bob Weissburg told us.
With an IEEE standards process on ultra-wideband (UWB) still at an impasse, a coalition that includes Intel and Texas Instruments (TI) plans to present new test data next month that addresses interference concerns, sources said. Meanwhile, camps divided between Intel, TI and other technologies and a side led by Motorola said they were moving forward on their own specification while the standards process remained bogged down. “We feel like it’s not reasonable to be constrained unduly by a process that is being kept in place politically,” said Stephen Wood, Intel strategic mktg. director for UWB.
The N.Y. Supreme Court upheld a tower zoning decision by the town of New Scotland to deny a permit for construction of a new wireless telecom tower. The court (Case 94211) ruled the town acted within the legal confines of the federal Telecom Act because wireless carriers had other options available to close coverage gaps. Site Acquisitions Inc., a company that builds and leases wireless telecom towers, had sought to build a 160-ft. tower on a parcel in a residential zone, and said denial of the permit effectively banned wireless service to the community. The court ruled that the town’s denial of the tower permit was based on “substantial evidence that less intrusive means of remedying the gap in service” were available including wireless transceiver mounting points on buildings and utility poles, which the company had ceased to consider after it found the vacant land parcel.
The FCC approved applications related to WorldCom’s reorganization out of bankruptcy as the newly formed MCI, including assignment or transfer of Sec. 214 authorization, Sec. 310 licenses and submarine cable landing licenses. The Commission said its approval was required for WorldCom’s debtor-in-possession reorganization and emergence from bankruptcy to move forward. Since petitioning for bankruptcy, MCI “has aggressively rid itself of the individuals who allegedly committed acts of corporate fraud and has substantially reformed the corporate structures and policies that enabled such alleged fraud to occur,” the agency said. “In the aftermath of public revelations concerning WorldCom’s accounting problems,” the Commission said it had reviewed the qualifications of WorldCom and MCI in the context of the license and authorization transfers to the newly formed MCI. “The Commission has an obligation to undertake its own independent assessment of whether an applicant has the basic qualifications to be a Commission licensee, but we see no reason here to second-guess the extensive corporate governance reforms made under the careful review and special expertise of expert agencies including the SEC and the federal courts that have been involved in proceedings related to WorldCom’s proposed reorganization.” On matters of corporate governance in the case, the FCC said it gave “due attention” to the extensive review of several other expert federal agencies and courts. “Although final decisions on liability for the acts committed under the prebankruptcy WorldCom continue to proceed in other fora, the applicants have established that granting their applications is in the public interest,” it said. As a threshold matter, the Commission said it had to determine whether the applicant was qualified to hold and transfer control of licenses under Sec. 310(d) of the Communications Act. It said the underlying public interest concerns in the broadcast arena, such as indecency regulation, didn’t apply with equal force to common carrier facilities, “where content is divorced from conduit.”
The Assn. of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO) told the FCC in an ex parte filing last week it would support Commission rules for realigning 800 MHz that would ensure the entire cost of retuning would be covered. APCO, Nextel, PCIA, the Industrial Telecom Assn. (ITA) and others have backed a “consensus plan” for mitigating public safety interference at 800 MHz, including spectrum exchanges involving 700, 800, 900 MHz and 1.9 GHz. Nextel committed to funding up to $850 million in public safety and private wireless relocation costs if the Commission adopted the plan as proposed. APCO said it still staunchly backed the plan and that, to the extent some public safety agencies had objections, their main concerns appeared to be with the size of the Nextel funding commitment and whether it’s enough to cover retuning costs. “While we fully support the consensus plan and urge its adoption, we also indicated that we would support Commission rules, consistent with the plan, to ensure that the entire cost of retuning would be covered under any circumstances,” APCO said. It said the retuning process itself was “manageable” and far less disruptive than addressing interference on a case-by-case basis. Without the plan, public safety agencies would be forced to live with the interference and risk the safety of their workers or divert scarce funding to try to fix problems as they occurred. “We made clear that homeland security and other ‘new’ sources of funding for public safety agencies must not be diverted to fixing interference problems that others created,” APCO said. The group also disagreed with some arguments to the FCC that business/industrial and land transportation (B/ILT) licensees would lose 800 MHz spectrum to make the plan possible. “In fact, the spectrum at issue was ‘lost’ long ago when B/ILT licensees sold it to Nextel,” it said. Public safety has an acute need for that spectrum to alleviate congestion and promote interoperability, APCO said.
The union representing workers at TV glass maker Techneglas won’t open the current contract for a wage freeze or concessions the company had sought to keep its plant open in Pittston, Pa. In a Dec. 7 letter posted on an employee Web site, union Pres. Stephen Duda said an audit of Techneglas’ books showed no need to open the contract expiring June 2005. Union officials had met with Techneglas management in Aug. as the company sought financial relief, including higher prescription co-payments. Workers are guaranteed a 4.5% raise in 2004 under the contract, Robbins said. The hourly wage is $14.96-$20.26, he said. Techneglas had requested concessions from members of Local 243 of the Glass, Molders, Pottery, Plastics & Allied Workers union, saying it was struggling to compete with low-cost glass producers in the Far East. One-time rival Corning Asahi Video closed its TV glass plant in State College, Pa., in Sept. and sold its equipment to Chinese manufacturer Henan Anyang CPT Glass Bulb Group. Techneglas’ work force, which exceeded 1,800 in 1999, has been reduced to around 750 unionized and 150 nonunion workers, Local 243 Business Agent Randy Robbins told the (Wilkes-Barre) Times-Leader. “The stance taken by Local 243 was that the Techneglas financial records do not reflect a need to open the current labor agreement at this time,” Duda said in his letter. Joseph Schaeufele, vp-mfg. & engineering at Techneglas, wasn’t available for comment. Besides the wage freeze, the company proposed eliminating bonuses, pay for lunches and work breaks 30 min. or longer, and holiday pay for days not worked, Duda wrote. The company proposed reducing double time to time and a half for overtime, the letter said. Meanwhile, Henan Anyang hired a company to start breaking down the equipment at the Corning plant this month and will have it out of the facility in 6-9 months, a Corning spokesman told the (State College) Centre Daily Times. The plant and its 100 acres of land haven’t been put up for sale because the equipment won’t be removed for several months, the spokesman said. The Chamber of Business & Industry of Centre County hired commercial site selection consultant Moran, Stahl & Boyer, Duluth, Ga., for $56,000 to study options for the plant. The consultant is expected to report in 6-8 weeks, Chamber Pres. John Coleman told the Centre Daily Times.
The next step toward resolving the Internet tax moratorium in the Senate will be an up-or-down vote on the proposed bill and an opposing amendment, not a compromise, a key Hill staffer said Wed. Frank Cavaliere, adviser to S-150 sponsor Sen. Allen (R-Va.), told the National Conference of State Legislatures that “there is not a compromise out there, there will not be a compromise.” “We would still like to see a compromise reached,” said Rachel Welch, counsel for Senate Commerce Committee ranking Democrat Hollings (S.C.), but she said based on Cavaliere’s comments “we may have gotten to a point where there is an unbridgeable divide.”
Most of the handful of power utilities that had announced commercial broadband-over-power-line (BPL) deployment timelines in Sept. have pushed back their deployment schedules, but they insist that the delay wasn’t caused by technical or regulatory glitches. The City of Manassas (Va.), Cinergy Corp., Ida. Power and PPL Telecom had announced deployment plans ranging from Oct. to early next year (CD Sept 23 p5), but only Manassas appeared on track for commercial rollout near schedule.
Granting relief to public safety agencies and others, the FCC stayed an order intended to pave a path toward narrowband technology in the private land mobile radio service. Several groups had challenged the order, which set dates for moving to narrowband equipment in spectrum below 512 MHz. Four groups had sought a stay of rules for moving to narrowband equipment in spectrum below 512 MHz -- IPMobileNet, the American Assn. of Railroads, the American Petroleum Institute and United Telecom Council, and public safety groups that included the Assn. of Public Safety Communications Officials. Meanwhile, 18 groups have pending petitions seeking reconsideration of a decision setting interim deadlines for public safety users to shift to more- efficient 12.5 kHz-capable equipment, and barring certification of equipment capable of operating at one voice path per 25 kHz of equipment starting Jan. 1, 2005. They also sought reconsideration of a Jan. 13, 2004, deadline, after which applications to expand the coverage area of an existing radio system would be approved only for narrowband operations. The rules barred within 6 months of Federal Register publication any applications for new operations using wideband channels at 150-174 MHz or 421-512 MHz bands and let incumbent wideband Part 90 licensees make changes only to the extent their interference contours didn’t expand. The FCC said the order released Wed. addressed only 4 stay requests. The order said a stay of the Jan. 13 deadline “pending further proceedings” would further the public interest. “Nothing in the record before us suggests that there will be any injury to any other party if the requested relief is granted,” the FCC said. In the long term, the rules are meant to relieve congestion and clear space for additional licensees in the PLMR bands below 512 MHz, the order said. A temporary stay pending consideration of the petitions for reconsideration doesn’t worsen problems the rules were meant to address, the FCC said. It also said 6 months may not be enough time for all licensees to plan changes to their existing wideband systems or to plan new wideband systems that must be compatible with existing system to meet the Jan. 13 deadline. Sen. Durbin (D-Ill.) recently wrote the FCC he supported challenges by public safety groups. Durbin said Ill. first responders used an interoperability system, the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System (MABAS), to communicate throughout the Chicago area and across the state on a common channel. He said the system, in place since the late 1960s, had expanded from northern Ill., coordinating areas around St. Louis. Durbin said MABAS was attempting to expand to include all of Ill. and adjoining communities in Ind., Iowa, Mo. and Wis. “The deadline of Jan. 13, 2004, to submit applications will prevent the communities from participating in this system,” he said.