The National Retail Federation wants the Senate to “move swiftly” to confirm Customs and Border Protection acting Commissioner Kevin McAleenan as the agency’s permanent head, said the group in a Thursday statement. With Senate Finance Committee's approval of McAleenan Thursday, NRF is “pleased to see” his nomination “finally moving through the process,” it said. “As major importers, retailers rely on CBP to facilitate legitimate commerce and enforce our trade laws, which is essential to our nation’s global competitiveness.”
Britain's Competition and Markets Authority will provide notice of its provisional findings and possible remedies in Fox's proposed buy of Sky in mid-January, instead of later this month, it said in an administrative timetable update Wednesday. It said the final report will be sent to the secretary of state for culture, media and sport in February or March; the agency's statutory deadline is March 6. The secretary referred the merger to CMA in September for a full six-month investigation.
Insufficient attention is being paid to reduction of e-waste and to poor practices during design and production of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE), the U.N. reported Tuesday. The report cited a need to engage more with the private sector to address businesses' responsibility in EEE production. The U.N. said its activities on e-waste are centered mostly in Africa and Asia, less in Europe and “significantly less” in North America, Australia and New Zealand. Africa and Asia have long been a hub for near-end-of-life and end-of life “legally and illegally imported EEE,” it said. It advised focusing on repair and refurbishment activities, supporting new business models and reducing or eliminating taxes on reuse and repair operations. It pushed supporting member states and "supranational entities" such as the EU in tracking and containing precious and rare-earth metals used in EEE and efforts to identify the link between e-waste and natural resource exploitation. It said the U.N. should help inform member states by expanding national data collection and information-sharing.
The first of a series of inter-regional ITU workshops in preparation for World Radiocommunication Conference 2019 was held earlier this month, with topics including international regulatory frameworks and frequency allocations for high altitude platforms, railway communications and non-geostationary satellite constellations, the ITU said Thursday. Among attendees were regional groups such as the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity, Arab Spectrum Management Group, African Telecommunications Union, European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations, Inter-American Telecommunication Commission and Regional Commonwealth in the Field of Communications, ITU said. Radiocommunication Bureau Director Francois Rancy said 5G development "is putting a lot of pressure on manufacturers and operators to start technology developments and network deployments ahead of WRC-19 decisions," and ITU is working toward early consensus on global harmonization of such bands.
The Dec. 7 meeting of the State Department International Telecommunications Advisory Committee will include a report on the outcome of the World Telecommunication Development Conference, an update on preparations for the ITU 2018 Plenipotentiary conference and discussion of preparations for upcoming multilateral meetings at ITU, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, said the agenda. The meeting will be at 10 a.m. at AT&T on the 10th floor of 1120 20th St. NW.
An FCC order eliminating international traffic and revenue annual reports takes effect Dec. 21, under a rule being published in Tuesday's Federal Register (see schedule). The order, which also streamlines circuit-capacity reports, was adopted unanimously Oct. 24 (see 1710240062).
State commissions shouldn’t step in to regulate the internet as the FCC pulls away, American Enterprise Institute adjunct scholar Bronwyn Howell blogged Thursday. State-by-state policy on issues like net neutrality would remove an advantage the U.S. has over the EU in setting telecom policy, she said. “Fragmenting regulatory oversight will inevitably mean a fragmenting of the single market that has served the US so well in the mobile age,” Howell said. “Differential regulations across state lines could invoke real costs.”
Intelsat and Coca-Cola are partnering on delivery of satellite-enabled Wi-Fi services to remote parts of Africa, Intelsat said Tuesday. It said the two will work jointly to establish Wi-Fi access at retail faculties in rural areas, allowing for personal and commercial connectivity.
Broadcom CEO Hock Tan announced Thursday he's moving co-headquarters to Delaware from Singapore. Broadcom already operates co-headquarters in San Jose but also operated in Singapore after its 2016 purchase of Avago Technologies. President Donald Trump joined Tan in making the White House announcement, which Tan said came because “business conditions have steadily improved.” Broadcom “will invest more than $3 billion in R&D and $6 billion in manufacturing, creating many high-paying jobs,” Tan said. “More than $20 billion in annual revenue will come back to our cities, towns, and the American workers,” Trump said.
The FCC is ending Form 740 filing requirements for imported RF devices, effective Thursday, the agency is to say in that day's Federal Register. The FCC will continue to require compliance with rules for importing RF devices, it said: The regulator "retained the requirement that there must be an entity that assumes responsibility for the compliance of the device and modified the rules to ensure the existence and identity (and a domestic presence under the new [Supplier’s Declaration of Conformity (SDoC)] rules), of such a responsible party." Commissioners approved in July (see 1707130032).