The Ariane 5 rocket was assembled for a scheduled May launch of two satellites, Arianespace said. Sky Perfect JSAT’s JCSAT-13 and Vietnam’s VINASAT-2 satellites will launch on the rocket to provide service in the Asia-Pacific region, said Arianespace.
The AFL-CIO and the Communications Workers of America are turning up the heat on T-Mobile USA to allow unionization of its workforce. The unions said Friday 12 Deutsche Telekom workers, members of the ver.di union, and a member of Germany’s Bundestag, were in Washington during the week to meet with American workers. They also had a meeting at the German Embassy. “The group will meet with U.S. workers in Washington after traveling to two states to meet with American workers and see first hand the hostile working conditions for T-Mobile employees in the United States,” the unions said. “As a whole, DT workers in Germany are treated far better than DT employees in the U.S. In Germany, workers sit on the board of DT, they are free to form a union, and have a meaningful voice in the workplace. In the U.S., efforts to organize at T-Mobile USA … are met with hostility and threats.” T-Mobile fired back. “Contrary to these claims, T-Mobile is a service-oriented company and an award-winning employer,” the carrier said. “T-Mobile employees receive great benefits, a positive work environment, career development opportunities and open, ongoing communication with management. … T-Mobile respects the rights of unions to exist and we recognize and respect our employees’ rights to organize or to refrain from organizing. That said, we remain convinced that it is better for both T-Mobile employees and our business to maintain a direct working relationship between management and employees. The vast majority of T-Mobile employees have chosen not to be represented by a union."
GE Satcom changed its name to Signalhorn on Feb. 2, the company said. The company on Thursday called Signalhorn a “powerful and substantial brand identity to carry it forward into many more decades of superior service delivery."
The FCC acted procedurally inappropriately in moving to pull LightSquared’s conditional waiver and ancillary terrestrial component (CD Feb 16 p1), the company said Thursday in an FCC filing (http://xrl.us/bmupem). LightSquared asked the FCC to extend the comment deadline -- now March 1 -- for the agency’s proposals to March 30. The comment period provided is “wholly inadequate, particularly considering the depth and volume of the new information” from NTIA’s report, said LightSquared. The FCC issued its public notice proposing to rescind LightSquared’s operations the day after NTIA filed its report based on GPS interference testing. LightSquared deserves more time to address the NTIA report, which took several months to complete, the company said. The FCC gave LightSquared “just nine days” to work with technical experts and draft a response on why the NTIA’s analysis is flawed and why there’s no reason to pull the conditional waiver or ATC authority, said LightSquared. That time frame isn’t enough for LightSquared to meaningfully comment on the 300 pages of new information in the record, the company said. While LightSquared would have another 30-day period to protest the FCC’s actions if fulfilled, LightSquared should be allowed to make its case fully now, it said.
Changes to the FCC’s plan to process FM translator applications “may have a preclusive impact on” the availability of channels for low-power FM stations “in spectrum-limited markets,” a LPFM group said. “Although urban availability is most critical for the development of LPFM, some markets have few or no frequencies available inside the ‘center market’ grid used by the commission to assess LPFM availability,” Prometheus Radio Project said. “In such places, additional effort must be made to ensure availability elsewhere in the market.” A Prometheus official had conversations with Audio Division Chief Peter Doyle of the Media Bureau and an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, said an ex parte filing made a day late and posted Thursday to docket 99-25 (http://xrl.us/bmupc8). The bureau has drafted two items on LPFM that are awaiting a commissioner vote (CD Feb 24 p16).
No matter how DBS subscribers are calculated, Time Warner Cable faces effective video competition on Hawaii’s big island, the company said. “Regardless of whether the analysis considers the entire Island of Hawaii or the two separate franchise areas, the test is still met because DBS Penetration exceeds 15 percent in each legacy franchise area,” a threshold that can result in FCC deregulation of municipal oversight over cable rates, Time Warner Cable said: “It is clear the DBS providers serve well in excess of 15 percent of the relevant households.” The state opposed Time Warner Cable’s petition to the commission because the company didn’t provide separate satellite subscriber figures for the Hilo and Kona franchise areas (CD Feb 16 p21). The operator’s reply was posted Thursday to docket 12-16 (http://xrl.us/bmuo7g).
ITU Secretary General Hamadoun Touré is urging quick deployment of IMT-Advanced-compliant mobile broadband networks and encouraging governments to get rid of burdensome taxes on information and communications technology equipment and services that could hinder mobile growth, the ITU said Friday. “Operators who move fast to deploy IMT-Advanced technologies, and who price their services competitively, will reap the full benefit of the next wave of explosive growth,” Touré said. “Governments who have committed to following best-practice ICT regulation are now reducing or even eliminating some sector-specific taxes. ITU would like to see all governments follow their lead.” ITU’s Radiocommunication Assembly in January endorsed LTE-Advanced and WirelessMAN-Advanced as the basis for IMT-Advanced next generation high-speed cellular broadband. They “both qualified as IMT-Advanced-compliant, capable of supporting speeds of 1 Gbps while stationary and 100 Mbps while in motion,” the union said. Touré will outline his desire for timely mobile broadband rollout and a more balanced approach to ICT taxation at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona in March, the ITU said.
In a move that may up-end EU laws mandating storage of Internet and telephony traffic data, the German Constitutional Court Friday tossed out several provisions requiring telecom providers to retain customers’ personal data, Bingham McCutchen telecommunications lawyer Axel Spies said. The high court upheld rules ordering service providers to collect and store assigned telecommunications numbers such as phone and mobile terminal numbers and associated subscriber personal information such as names and birth dates, he said. That means selling prepaid services and numbers for cellphones to end users who use them anonymously remains prohibited, he said. The court also upheld a section on eavesdropping and data collection by law enforcement agencies via interfaces and other automated means, he said. However, it criticized storage of Internet Protocol addresses, which contain more information and potential identifiers and must be treated with more legal care than “mere telephone numbers,” he said. But one section, which governs how telecom companies provide the information to law enforcement manually, by sifting through the records, was found unconstitutional, he said. In particular, making providers hand over any information on access security codes such as passwords or personal identification numbers was found to breach the right to informational self-determination enshrined in the national constitution, he said. But the rule will stay in place temporarily until June 30, 2013, at the latest as long as the safety codes are collected and used only under the conditions and to the extent explicitly foreseen by applicable law enforcement measures, he said. “This is an important decision” that will take time to digest, Spies told us. It will have an impact on the wider debate in Germany on to what extent telecom providers must store all traffic data for law enforcement purposes under the EU data retention directive, he said. Large portions of the country’s adaptation of the EU measure were voided in 2010, such as the requirement to hold traffic data for six months, and the government hasn’t been able to put new rules in place despite pressure from police bodies, he said. “My impression is that this new decision will make it difficult to fully implement the data retention directive in Germany,” he said. A “quick freeze” system to accommodate the needs of law enforcement agencies, akin to that in the U.S., has become more likely, he said. Asked how, if Germany is unable to fully adopt the EU measure, the European Commission can expect other European governments to do so, Spies said: “This is part of the struggle between national constitutional law and EU law.” The EC is expected to unveil plans to revamp the directive this year.
Recently passed spectrum provisions will increase broadband adoption in rural areas and move the U.S. closer to having an interoperable public safety network, panelists said at the TechAmerica congressional briefing Thursday. The FCC will “hit the ground running” on spectrum incentive auctions, said Rick Boucher, former U.S. Representative. FCC staff has been preparing for the auctions, and he hopes the FCC can get it done in a short time, he said. The next step in spectrum reallocation is to ensure everyone can participate in the auctions and that they can get the best price with no burdensome conditions, said Anna-Maria Kovacs of the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. This move forward towards more spectrum will improve business opportunities for rural communities by giving them broadband access, said Jonathon Adelstein administrator of the USDA Rural Utilities Service. The strategy to provide broadband to rural areas in America is a “winner,” said CGI Senior Vice President Peter Ihrig. Bright-minded people will go where the technology is, he said, and when rural areas gain access to broadband, they will attract innovation and business, he said. Besides providing opportunity for innovation, the passing of this bill will also make an interoperable network a reality, Boucher said. “We can now celebrate a success” for what may be the most important legislation recently passed, he said.
Q4 sales at Journal Communications’ TV and radio stations fell 9.4 percent from a year earlier to $50.9 million on a sharp drop in political ad sales. Non-political local ad sales gained 5.7 percent from a year earlier on stronger auto ad demand and national sales gained 2.7 percent on renewed demand from financial services advertisers. Retransmission consent revenue gained 50 percent from a year earlier to $2.4 million.