NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center gave Swales Aerospace 5- year contract worth potential $350 million to provide engineering service for Goddard’s Applied Engineering, Technology, Suborbital and Special Orbital Projects Directorates, including studying, designing, developing, testing, verifying and operating spacecraft and ground system hardware and software. Swales also will coordinate work of Orbital Sciences, Jackson & Tull, Hammers and Curtis Management in deal that consolidates services of 2 prior engineering service contracts.

Salt Lake Organizing Committee will be broadcast frequency coordinator for 2002 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games in Salt Lake City, FCC said in notice Wed. Group will coordinate frequency use in 150 km radius from city during games, FCC said.

Ariz. Attorney Gen. Janet Napolitano ruled expansion of Ariz. Corporation Commission to 5 members from 3, which voters approved in Nov., won’t be effective until 2 additional commission members are selected by voters in 2002 general election. She said plain language of ballot question and fact that legislature didn’t budget for additional members in 2001-02 fiscal cycle clearly showed it didn’t intend that ballot proposition create vacancies that required interim gubernatorial appointments. On related question, Napolitano said current commissioners could be elected to one additional 4-year term when their present terms expired. She said past commissioners, who previously were barred by law from seeking commission seat ever again, could run for 2nd term on agency starting with 2002 elections. With legal questions settled, agency Comrs. Marc Spitzer and Jim Irvin agreed Tues. that Comr. William Mundell was commission’s new chmn. Chmn. serves indefinite term and always casts final vote.

Promotions at Time Warner: John Fogarty to vp, Gary Matz to vp, Trish McCausland to senior counsel… Sallie Fraenkel advanced to senior vp-mktg. & operations, program enterprises and distribution, Showtime… Jonathan Shair, ex-Bravo/Independent Film Channel, appointed vp-program scheduling and planning, Starz Encore Group… Richard Sulpizio, Qualcomm pres.-COO, elected to board… Ralph Haiek promoted to COO, Claxson Interactive Group… Michael Kennedy advanced to corporate vp and dir.-global govt. relations, Motorola… Berry Smith, senior vp, Schurz Communications, retires Jan. 31… Clifford Rees promoted to pres.- N. America, World Access… Changes at Broadbeam: Sri Sridharan, ex-ServiceNet, named pres.-COO; William Lenahan, CEO, KMC Telecom, joins board… Hewlett Packard Chmn. Carly Fiorina appointed to Cisco Systems board… Geoffrey Crowley promoted to regional vp-sales for the north, Net2000 Communications… Michael Kuehn, ex-Desert Island Resource Group, named vp-quality assurance & process development, Pathnet… Gordon McKenna, chmn., American Teleservices Assn., resigns.

New Edge Networks said orders for its broadband services increased more than 60% in last 2 months of 2000 because it picked up customers of competitors that were scaling back or in jeopardy of going out of business. New Edge said it took in record 1,700 orders in last week of Dec. alone.

Lucent Technologies is to supply fiber network to China’s Liaoning Province for subsidiary of China Telecom under $15 million contract announced Wed. Equipment is to be deployed by May. Lucent’s WaveStar OLS-400G has capacity of 400 Gbps, is capable of handling 5 million simultaneous phone calls or 80 one- page e-mails per sec., company said.

Texas Instruments (TI) plans to offer royalty-free licenses under TI patents needed to implement wireless home networking standard called IEEE 802.11g. Offer needs ratification of TI proposal for higher speed wireless local area networks in 2.4 GHz. TI said proposal would double data rate of 802.11b products to 22 Mbps.

OPASTCO urged FCC to set higher benchmark for prices charged by rural CLECs for access because their costs were higher. Commenting on FCC public notice that asked about effect of benchmarks on rural CLECs (CC Doc. 96-262), OPASTCO said it supported idea of benchmarks to hold down CLEC access charges but “a single benchmarked rate would not be suitable for all CLECs.” Higher cutoff should be established “for CLECs serving rural or high-cost areas that suitably reflects their higher costs of providing service,” OPASTCO said. Assn. said all of its members were rural telcos and about 1/3 of them operated CLECs.

Ameritech told Ind. Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC) it wouldn’t agree to agency’s request that Ameritech give bigger credits to customers that suffered lengthy service outages during last summer’s service quality crisis. Ameritech last fall voluntarily offered residential customers flat $12 credit and small-business customers flat $40 credit. But IURC last month said compensation was insufficient and strongly suggested company should pay up to $20 per outage day to residential customers and up to $40 per outage day to businesses, similar to outage compensation plan Ameritech agreed to in Wis. But in meeting Tues. with IURC Executive Dir. Michael Leppert, Ameritech Ind. Pres. George Fleetwood said his company wouldn’t be able to honor IURC’s request and further negotiation would be pointless. Ameritech spokesman said carrier believed best use of its resources was investing in network improvements, not issuing additional credits. He said different conditions in Wis. prompted Ameritech to issue larger outage credits there, but he didn’t elaborate. IURC’s Leppert said IURC up to now had hoped informal prodding of Ameritech through requests would have been enough to improve service and get adequate compensation for customers. He said next step would be formal investigation into Ameritech’s network operations and service management. But IURC has no legal power to fine utilities except as part of negotiated regulatory agreements. Pending proposal for renewal of Ameritech price cap regulation, which comes up for hearing Jan. 16, includes up to $30 million in annual penalties for service quality failures, $746 million in network investments and $180 million in rate cuts.

U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., ruling Tues. that rejected SBC’s advanced services subsidiary (CD Jan 10 p1) appeared to have raised more questions than it answered. Observers questioned Wed. whether decision might pressure Congress to revise Telecom Act to account for advanced services, how ruling would affect similar arrangement at Verizon and how it might play out under new Republican FCC. Court overturned trade-off FCC made with SBC: FCC allowed SBC to provide advanced services free of interconnection requirements if company formed separate affiliate to provide those services. In response to appeal filed by Assn. of Communications Enterprises (ASCENT), court ruled FCC didn’t have authority to forgo interconnection requirements of Sec. 251(c) just because SBC was providing advanced, rather than basic, services and using separate subsidiary. ASCENT represents competitive carriers, particularly those that resale ILEC service.