Intelsat hasn’t restored service to Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) after meeting this week with IRIB, the State Department and International Telecommunications Satellite Organization, ITSO said. Intelsat stopped transmitting broadcasts for IRIB this month to comply with the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013, which imposes sanctions on IRIB (CD July 2 p12). Intelsat, IRIB and the State Department agreed to exchange further correspondence over the coming weeks, “but at this point in time there hasn’t been a decision regarding restoration of service,” said Patrick Masambu, ITSO deputy managing general. The meeting was an initial discussion, “in the context of the ITSO agreement, concerning the expiration of Intelsat’s license to broadcast for IRIB as a result of placement of IRIB on the U.S. Treasury Department’s specially designated nationals list,” said a State Department official. Iran and the U.S. are parties to the ITSO Agreement, which ensures that satellite communications are available on a global and non-discriminatory basis, the official said. The sanction isn’t focused on the Iranian broadcast sector generally, the official said: The non-renewal of Intelsat’s license for IRIB “holds accountable a specific Iranian entity used by the regime as an instrument of repression and intimidation.”

A variable 600 MHz band plan would create “interference challenges” and could require hundreds of kilometers of physical separation between TV transmitters and wireless operations, said NAB in a meeting with FCC staff Monday, according to an ex parte filing and accompanying PowerPoint presentation released Thursday (http://bit.ly/18NpDKL). Variable band plans, such as those proposed in the FCC’s 600 MHz band plan public notice (CD May 21 p4), could involve interference “from mobile handsets or base stations to DTV reception” and “interference from high power DTV transmissions to lower-powered wireless operations,” NAB said. The minimum separation between broadcast stations and wireless operations would be “about 350 km,” said NAB. The association’s PowerPoint presentation includes a chart giving the distance between New York City and surrounding cities -- Philadelphia is 138 kilometers away, Boston 301 kilometers and Washington 331 kilometers. These large separation distances could “substantially” limit market variability on the East Coast, and spectrum recovered in one city could limit how much could be reallocated elsewhere, NAB said. The “separation distances needed result in wireless exclusion zones across much of the region,” NAB said.

Pennsylvania’s Keystone Initiative for Network Based Education and Research reached its goal of connecting the state’s colleges and universities last month, which NTIA lauded in a blog post Thursday (http://1.usa.gov/18bXWMd). “The recently completed 1,600-mile statewide network currently provides affordable broadband service to customers, mostly colleges and universities, through 63 connection points on the network reaching 50 counties throughout Pennsylvania,” wrote Anthony Wilhelm, associate director of NTIA’s Office of Telecommunications and Information Applications. The network eventually is expected to help connect K-12 schools as well, he added. The network, which received a $99.6 million grant from NTIA’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program and $29 million in matching contributions, “provides a catalyst for continued improvements in educational advancement and economic development throughout the Keystone State,” he said.

The FCC should adopt user accessibility rules to compel AT&T’s U-verse system to carry listings for public, educational and governmental (PEG) channels in order to make it easier for the disabled to find “helpful local programming,” said the Chicago Access Corp. in an ex parte filing Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1b3UR0T). Under the name CAN-TV, Chicago Access operates five noncommercial public access PEG channels that feature content for people with visual, auditory and other disabilities. “It is impossible for anyone from the disability community to make informed local choices based on AT&T’s treatment of hundreds of PEG channels,” said the ex parte. “The only identification of a multitude of different channels is a generic listing for ‘Local Government, Education and Public Access.'” AT&T’s interface also makes it difficult for the disabled to find specific channels, the ex parte said. “The visually impaired are clearly disadvantaged on AT&T’s U-verse system in terms of finding and benefitting from CAN TV local channels and programming,” it said. CAN-TV wants the FCC to issue rules on U-verse’s listing and user interface as part of the rulemaking process on accessibility in user interfaces, implementing sections 204 and 205 of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CD June 3 p15). AT&T did not comment.

Southern Telecom is expanding its partnership with Tower Cloud, leasing additional dark fiber to support Tower Cloud’s backhaul network in Georgia, Southern said Thursday. The agreement will let Tower use the fiber for “high-capacity, Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing inter-city connections between Atlanta, Macon, Ga., and Jacksonville, Fla.,” said the news release (http://bit.ly/12kdO7i). The fiber provides low-latency transport, it said.

Sprint representatives met with Wireline Bureau Chief Julie Veach and others at the FCC to push for special access reform. “Specifically, we discussed the importance of addressing the broken special access market, how delay in addressing unreasonable special access prices and practices undermines competition and broadband deployment, the timing of the Bureau’s pending data request, and the time periods to be covered by the pending data request,” said an ex parte filing on the meeting (http://bit.ly/12kdS7b). A Level 3 representative was also at the meeting.

The Utilities Telecom Council and startup Winchester Cator fired back at the two parties opposed to reconsideration of their petition asking that utilities be allowed to use the 14.0-14.5 GHz band on a secondary basis for fixed point-to-point and point-to-multipoint services. The Satellite Industry Association and EchoStar were alone in asking the FCC to reject the recon petition (CD July 2 p6). “SIA’s response to this issue is curious: Far from disputing it, SIA seeks to defend the fundamental inconsistency of the decisions by asserting that the judicial standard for review of an agency’s action is so lax as to make their failure to apply a consistent standard essentially non-reviewable,” UTC and Cator said (http://bit.ly/15yYMyH). “SIA is wrong both as a matter of Commission rule and policy and as to judicial review.” SIA ignores the “methods proposed by UTC/Winchester to avoid interference with primary satellite operations, including a five degree exclusion angle, that are more protective of primary satellite operations than currently imposed upon secondary operations in the band,” they said. The two also struck back at EchoStar: “EchoStar’s reading of the Order to suggest that every terrestrial station must be individually coordinated with every operating satellite to take into account its ‘particular sensitivities’ would undermine the very notion of an aggregate interference threshold."

Oceus Networks said it successfully demonstrated the use of a deployable 4G LTE network on a high-altitude balloon platform. The rapidly deployable technology can be used to provide first responders with broadband and communications services during the first 72 hours after a disaster, Oceus said Thursday. The company demonstrated the service last week in Boulder, Colo.; the balloon traveled 200 miles and reached an altitude of 75,000 feet. The Oceus team was able to connect to the airborne network using Motorola Solutions Band 14 devices, including the VML 700 data modem and the LEX 700 smartphone. The demonstration was part of the FCC’s Deployable Aerial Communications Architecture (DACA) initiative, which explores the use of High-Altitude Platforms as part of the FirstNet public safety network, Oceus said. The company said it plans to file a formal report on the results of the demonstration in the FCC’s DACA docket (http://bit.ly/1au3JOb).

The International Trade Commission voted Wednesday to begin an investigation of whether imports of a children’s TV show carried on the Disney Channel, called Mr. Young, violate Section 337 of the Tariff Act by infringing copyrights held by E.T. Radcliffe and Emir Tiar. The program is a comedy about a student who becomes the teacher of his class. The June 7 complaint (CD June 13 p18) said the show violates a copyright Radcliffe holds on a pilot for a TV program he wrote called Student Teacher. The allegedly infringing show is produced in Canada by Thunderbird, and imported to the U.S. from Canada and aired by Disney Channel, the petition said. Radcliffe and Tiar requested an exclusion order and cease-and-desist orders. The ITC named Disney, Thunderbird Films and Mindset Television as respondents (http://1.usa.gov/13QPuPB). A Disney spokeswoman declined to comment.

TDS Telecom finished its first broadband stimulus project, funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, it said Wednesday (http://bit.ly/189vIOF). The company installed about three miles of fiber, which provides connections for 150 households in Orchard Farm, Mo., TDS said. It described several dozen projects partially funded by the federal government throughout the country.