The administration’s first intellectual property officer, Victoria Espinel, stepped down on Friday, said an Office of Management and Budget official on Tuesday. The official said the administration appointed Howard Shelanski as acting head of the Office of Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, effective Aug. 10. Shelanski will balance that position with his current role as head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. OMB declined to comment on whether Shelanski’s shared responsibilities present a challenge to either office. Media reports said BSA-The Software Alliance is considering Espinel as the next CEO. A BSA spokesman declined to comment. Espinel was recently named a leader of an interagency effort with the International Trade Commission and Customs and Border Protection aimed at improving CBP’s process for enforcing intellectual property-related exclusion orders (CD June 21 p14).
CBS and RTL partnered to launch two channels in the Southeast Asia markets. The venture, to be based in Singapore, will be named RTL CBS Asia Entertainment Network, CBS said in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/18saSd4). The channels will be broadcast in English and local languages, and they'll be distributed “in up to 29 Asian markets including Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia” and others, it said. “Both of the channels will be available in high definition.” The first channel, RTL CBS Entertainment, will be available next month and the second channel, RTL CBS Extreme, will launch in the spring, it said.
The Senate Communications Subcommittee scheduled a field hearing on the state of communications in Arkansas. It will be held Monday at 9 a.m. at the Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas Board Room in Little Rock, said the committee in a news release Monday (http://1.usa.gov/147NgH9). “Testimony will focus on the state of communications in Arkansas, including issues facing telecommunications and media companies that provide service in the state,” the release said. “In addition, the hearing will focus on how broadband can improve consumer welfare by expanding opportunity and access to services like telemedicine, education and business development.” Witnesses have not yet been announced. Subcommittee Chairman Mark Pryor is a Democrat from Arkansas.
The FCC proposed a $9,000 fine for the Billy Ray Locklear Evangelical Association over missed deadlines to file children’s programming reports, according to a Media Bureau notice of apparent liability released Tuesday. The association’s North Carolina-based station WLPS-CD Lumberton-Pembroke filed to report that it had filed its children’s television reports late for seven quarters, and filed inaccurate certificates of continuing compliance in 2011 (http://bit.ly/147KW2Y).
Huawei and Ericsson hold a collective 74 percent of all LTE network contract awards, said Informa Telecoms & Media on Tuesday in a report. Huawei holds 40 percent of all contracts, Ericsson 34 percent and Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) 17 percent, while Alcatel-Lucent, ZTE, Samsung and NEC hold 9 percent total of allocated contracts, Informa said. Huawei, Ericsson and NSN “have illustrated significant technological expertise and support to mobile operators,” said Dimitris Mavrakis, the report’s co-author, in a news release. “Preliminary research among operator CTOs, conducted by Informa, also suggests that Ericsson and Huawei are highly regarded when assessing vendors according to technology, pricing, support and managed-service capabilities.” LTE remains the fastest-growing mobile network technology, with Informa forecasting that there will be 1.36 billion LTE subscriptions by the end of 2018. Informa forecast a slightly higher subscription growth rate than it did a year ago, reflecting major LTE deployments by Verizon Wireless, SK Telecom, NTT DoCoMo, Everything Everywhere and Vodafone (http://bit.ly/122sFq9).
ATK signed a contract with Orbital Sciences to provide first and second stage propulsion for an air launch vehicle designed by Orbital. The vehicle, which will be designed for Stratolaunch Systems, is part of an air-launched space transportation system, ATK said in a press release (http://bit.ly/167i1iA). The contract includes the design, development and flight hardware for initial Stratolaunch missions, it said. The stages for the ALV “will also use high-strength, low-weight graphite composite cases, advanced propellants and heritage materials” from ATK’s line of “commercial solid rocket motors,” ATK said.
CBS and Time Warner Cable must end their harmful dispute, both Democratic senators from California said in a letter Monday to the CEOs of both companies (http://1.usa.gov/147CeBN). “It has now been 11 days since retransmission consent negotiations between your two corporations reached an impasse,” wrote Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. “Millions of customers in the Los Angeles area and throughout the country have subscribed to receive the programming CBS networks create and Time Warner Cable distributes, but are unable to access it because of this standoff.” They called the situation “unfair to the millions of your customers who are caught in the middle of your dispute” and called for an immediate resolution.
More than 220,000 families now have signed up for a broadband connection at home from Comcast’s Internet Essentials since the program began 22 months ago, said the cable ISP during a re-launch of its program for low-income households Tuesday in Miami (http://bit.ly/19fDI14). Comcast will increase broadband speeds for Internet Essentials on Sept. 1 up to 5 Mbps downstream and up to 1 Mbps upstream, “tripling download speeds” for customers since the program’s start, said the company in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/16gby7r). “For school students today, digital literacy is no longer an option, it is a necessity,” said Miami-Dade County School Superintendent Alberto Carvalho. “Our curriculum and informational systems are all rapidly moving to the digital world, which means getting students connected to the Internet becomes a more critical task.” Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen said customer satisfaction for the program is 90 percent, and 98 percent would recommend the service to others. “When you are successful in connecting the equivalent of entire cities to the Internet, you know you are making real and meaningful progress to help close the digital divide in America,” said Cohen in a blog post (http://bit.ly/14JnAXD). Much work among government agencies, nonprofits and ISPs remains to close the so-called digital divide, all those stakeholders have told us (CD July 9 p2).
The FCC International Bureau dismissed a Harris application for a new fixed satellite service earth station in Old Town, Fla. The bureau found the application unacceptable for filing, it said in a letter to Harris (http://bit.ly/16Iv7Sk). The stated maximum input power of .071 watts doesn’t appear to be sufficient to close the link with SES-2, it said. If Harris refiles the application, “it must confirm that the power requested is sufficient to close the link with SES-2, submit a link budget in support of such a confirmation and update the frequency coordination,” it said. The company lists the antenna azimuth angle in the western limit as 252 degrees, the bureau said. But the bureau said its computations show that antenna azimuth angle should be 251.5 degrees.
LightSquared seeks authority to construct and operate a remote earth station in Miami. It will operate as part of the company, LightSquared said in its application to the FCC International Bureau (http://bit.ly/1cKrLV3). Fox Television Stations seeks authority to operate a transmit earth station satellite news gathering vehicle “for the purpose of transmitting compressed digital video, audio and data signals in multiplexed single transport stream,” it said in its application (http://bit.ly/147r0NB). Trinity Broadcasting Network applied for authority to own and operate an international communications satellite transmit and receive earth station. The company intends to transmit and receive programming via satellite, it said (http://bit.ly/14Jwft3).