Cobham bought more than 1.2 million shares in the share capital of communications solutions company Thrane & Thrane. It paid about $73 per share in cash, Cobham said. Cobham, a U.K.-based aerospace company, now owns more than 1.4 million shares, or about 25.6 percent of Thrane & Thrane. Cobham decided to buy the shares when some institutional investors “expressed an interest” in selling their holdings in Thrane & Thrane after former Chairman Waldemar Schmidt resigned. The aerospace company is considering a partnership with Thrane & Thrane as Cobham looks to invest in technology, Cobham said.
The FCC Wireline Bureau granted the domestic Section 214 application for transfer of control of SureWest Communications to Consolidated Communications Holding, finding that the application “serves the public interest” (http://xrl.us/bm2t5h). Consolidated bought SureWest in February for $341 million in cash and stock (CD Feb 7 p7).
The FCC Wireline Bureau seeks comment on two petitions for limited waiver of the call signaling rules adopted in the USF/intercarrier compensation order (http://xrl.us/bm2t38). The Alaska Rural Coalition requests a waiver for its member companies because “Alaska’s network infrastructure makes compliance with the Commission’s call signaling rules very difficult and prohibitively expensive.” FairPoint Communications seeks a waiver for call signaling rules that are “not technically feasible” because many of its subsidiaries are located in rural areas and use a variety of legacy switches that preclude them from complying with the new rules. Comments are due May 4 in docket 10-90, replies May 21.
The FCC International Bureau seeks comments on the Canadian government’s request for frequency coordination for earth stations. The stations operate in the 3700-4200 MHz and 5925-6425 MHz bands, the bureau said in a public notice (http://xrl.us/bm2t63) setting a May 4 comment deadline.
Transcripts by stenographers “were significantly better” than those prepared via speech recognition in an NPR Labs study done five years ago, one of the researchers told an FCC official. Speech recognition may have “improved in the past five years and, no doubt, continue to improve,” Tom Apone wrote in an email to Eliot Greenwald of the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau that was posted Wednesday in docket 05-231 (http://xrl.us/bm2tmn). Apone said his comments were meant to correct the record on captioning quality because his study was “quoted a bit out of context."
New low-power FM rules take effect June 4, the FCC said in a Thursday Federal Register notice (http://xrl.us/bm2tkf) on a March order lifting a ban that LPFMs must be several notches away on the radio dial from full-power stations (CD March 21 p11).
Windy City Cellular, which operates a mobile network on ultra-remote Adak Island in Alaska, asked the FCC for a waiver of a $3,000 annual cap on line support put in place following last year’s USF/intercarrier compensation reform order. Adak Island is a mountainous area characterized by “cyclonic storms, wind gusts in excess of 100 knots, fog storms in the summer, and an average accumulation of more than eight feet of snow,” the carrier said in a petition at the agency (http://xrl.us/bm2s6b). “Taking into consideration all three carriers that provide wireline or wireless voice service in the Adak area, WCC is the only carrier that provides voice service throughout the entire Adak area, including areas that extend into the sea and Aleutian Wilderness where critical services and industries operate.” If a waiver isn’t granted, “WCC will be forced to cease operating, causing consumers to lose service with no terrestrial alternative, and roaming ability throughout the Adak area will be lost,” the carrier said.
Neustar has an interim text-to-911 solution, which allows an SMS message addressed to 911 to be routed to a gateway where it’s converted into a TTY call using a VoIP network, the company said in a filing at the FCC. The FCC is looking for a short-term solution allowing people to send text messages to public safety answering points while a longer-term solution is put in place. Neustar said its solution could help “smooth out the transition” to next-generation 911. “Neustar views this approach as an interim solution that can provide near universal text-to-911 capability in a short period of time and also can provide a natural transition to next gen 911 capability,” the company said (http://xrl.us/bm2s4j). “Since almost all mobile phones are SMS capable but cannot do TTY and almost all PSAPs TTY capable but cannot handle SMS, Neustar’s interim solution is an attempt to bridge the gap between the two before and during the transition to NG911.” Neustar countered arguments by carriers opposed to SMS as a short-term fix. “Rather than diverting resources away from the deployment of NG911 as suggested by some, the multi-protocol capability of Neustar’s solution actually promotes NG911 by providing the pathway to a smooth transition,” Neustar said.
Gilat Satellite Networks will help distribute local content to Mexico’s largest commercial TV broadcaster. Grupo Televisa selected Gilat’s Sky Edge II VSAT (very small aperture terminal) network as part of a comprehensive monitoring project, Gilat said in a press release. The network will enable the transmission of multicast content, like ads and public messages, which allows Televisa “to take advantage of incremental opportunities by quickly updating its content and taking advantage of the IP broadcasting features” offered by the service. It also enables support staff in remote stations to use telephony-over-IP services to communicate directly with their centers, the company said.
The Advanced TV Broadcasting Alliance said the FCC should immediately release its allotment optimization model now that the commission has congressional authorization to hold incentive spectrum auctions. The alliance, which had called itself the Coalition for Free TV and Broadband, has been pushing a broadcast overlay plan to accommodate TV stations and wireless broadband spectrum use.