FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Mignon Clyburn visited Florida Monday to inspect damage from Hurricane Irma. The trip included a meeting with Miami-Dade Emergency Operations Center staff and visits to communication facilities affected by the storm. “Lessons learned from #Irma will help improve the #reliability and #resiliency of our nation's communications networks,” Clyburn tweeted. Pai will visit 911 call centers in Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas later in the week “to discuss the importance of connectivity for public safety services in rural America and ways to bridge the digital divide,” a media advisory said. TV viewership in Texas homes unaffected by Tropical Storm Harvey rose Aug. 27 as it approached the coast and flooding began, comScore reported. “This difference was most pronounced in the morning and early afternoon hours, but continued to be evident throughout the entire day." The combined total-day average audience for Houston’s ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox affiliates was more than 537,000 households during Harvey, comScore said, a 140 percent increase over the previous week. In Beaumont, major TV stations had an average audience “double that of the relevant cable channels across the entire broadcast day,” the company said. Four Florida public safety answering points are still down due to Irma, same as Sunday, said Monday’s Disaster Information Reporting System release. Two PSAPs are still experiencing difficulties in the U.S. Virgin Islands, also unchanged. In Florida, 3 percent of cellsites are down, an improvement from 4 percent. In the USVI, 54 percent of cellsites are out of service, an increase from 50 percent. Florida has at least 893,409 wireline and cable subscribers without service, an improvement from 1.1 million. “Large numbers” of consumers are without cable or wireline service in the USVI due to widespread power outages, the report said. Florida has five TV stations out, the USVI have two down, same as Sunday. Twenty-seven radio stations are out of service in Florida and the USVI.
The U.S. is seemingly on the path to clarifying its outer space treaty regulatory obligations for emerging, nontraditional space activities, but a host of other obligations the U.S. has under OST are waiting and need more specificity, too, said speakers at a University of Nebraska space law conference Friday. Speakers said the federal government needs to make clear which agency is "the front door" to all the various other agencies with a hand in reviewing such nontraditional space activities.
Between wildfires in the West and hurricanes Harvey and Irma, the need for FirstNet is clearer than ever, Chair Sue Swenson said Thursday: “It’s not lost on us that what we’re doing is ever so critical.” Swenson opened the authority’s board meeting Thursday, streamed from Boulder, Colorado. Vice Chair Jeff Johnson said board members didn’t go to the storm-hit areas, at Swenson’s direction, because they didn’t want to get in the way. “There’s a time and a place for that,” said Johnson, a former fire chief. “As an incident commander for the majority of my career, I can tell you ‘not now’ is my thinking. We’ll talk later.”
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai names ex-Deputy Managing Director Dana Shaffer Wireless Bureau deputy bureau chief/chief of staff ... Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., announces promotions of Crystal Tully to policy director and counsel-communications and technology, Cort Bush to senior professional staff member, communications and technology policy team, and Brianna Manzelli, ex-Republican National Committee, joins committee as press secretary and digital director ... In Ballard Spahr's combining with Levine Sullivan First Amendment and media law firm effective Oct. 1, all of the latter law firm's 25 lawyers join the bigger firm; they include name partners Lee Levine, Michael Sullivan, Elizabeth Koch and David Schulz; plus attorneys Jay Ward Brown, Chad Bowman, Cameron Stracher and others.
VerifyMe adds Keith Goldstein, ex-American Banknote, as chief operating officer ... Groupon hires Jennifer Carr-Smith, ex-Peapod, as senior vice president/general manager-North America local ... Nardello & Co. picks Mark Ray, ex-PwC, as managing director/head-digital investigations ... Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., announces promotions of Crystal Tully to policy director and counsel-communications and technology, Cort Bush to senior professional staff member, communications and technology policy team, and Brianna Manzelli, ex-Republican National Committee, joins committee as press secretary and digital director.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration voluntary guidelines for safe deployment of autonomous vehicles, released Tuesday by Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, put a lighter touch on federal oversight of self-driving cars than the guidance NHTSA issued a year ago under the Obama administration. The new report, called "Automated Driving Systems 2.0: A Vision for Safety," makes DOT “processes more nimble by creating a flexible framework to help match the pace of private-sector innovation,” Chao told a ceremony webcast from the Mcity autonomous vehicle test center at the University of Michigan.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said he will propose by year-end to open additional high-frequency bands for 5G, building on the 28, 37 and 39 GHz reallocated last year (see 1607140052). Pai was among the first speakers Tuesday at GSMA’s first Mobile World Congress Americas, co-hosted by CTIA in San Francisco. Much of his speech focused on his usual big themes, including tackling the digital divide and eliminating unnecessary regulation.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said he will propose by year-end to open additional high-frequency bands for 5G, building on the 28, 37 and 39 GHz reallocated last year (see 1607140052). Pai was among the first speakers Tuesday at GSMA’s first Mobile World Congress Americas, co-hosted by CTIA in San Francisco. Much of his speech focused on his usual big themes, including tackling the digital divide and eliminating unnecessary regulation.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said he will propose by year-end to open additional high-frequency bands for 5G, building on the 28, 37 and 39 GHz reallocated last year (see 1607140052). Pai was among the first speakers Tuesday at GSMA’s first Mobile World Congress Americas, co-hosted by CTIA in San Francisco. Much of his speech focused on his usual big themes, including tackling the digital divide and eliminating unnecessary regulation.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration voluntary guidelines for safe deployment of autonomous vehicles, released Tuesday by Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, put a lighter touch on federal oversight of self-driving cars than the guidance NHTSA issued a year ago under the Obama administration. The new report, called "Automated Driving Systems 2.0: A Vision for Safety," makes DOT “processes more nimble by creating a flexible framework to help match the pace of private-sector innovation,” Chao told a ceremony webcast from the Mcity autonomous vehicle test center at the University of Michigan.