The U.S. federal spectrum governance system needs revamping, GPS advocates were told at Wednesday's Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) Advisory Board meeting in Annapolis, Maryland. Bradford Parkinson, board vice chairman and frequent critic of the FCC's Ligado approval (see 1801170028), said interference testing shows the company's planned L-band terrestrial rollout will cause harmful GPS interference and the board needs to urge the FCC to swap out Ligado's spectrum or "just say no" to Ligado's deployment plans. The agency didn't comment.
ACA Connects announces CEO Matt Polka stepping down in July ... Benton Institute for Broadband & Society appoints Revati Prasad, ex-Institute for Local Self-Reliance, director-research and fellowships… NAB announces Alex Siciliano, ex-The Petrizzo Group, as senior communications strategist, new position … IHeartMedia hires Sarah van Mosel from SiriusXM's Stitcher as executive vice president-iHeart Audience Network ... Boingo Wireless taps Tanya Lynch from Mouser Electronics as vice president-human resources ... Chinese social e-commerce platform Yunji promotes Peng Zhang to vice president-finance to replace Chengqi Zhang, resigning for personal reasons, both effective Friday.
The Health and Human Services Department asked the FCC to clarify whether certain automated, prerecorded calls and text messages are allowed under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. "We anticipate that no more than six to eight individual messages will be sent to any individual enrollee through some combination of text messages and automated, pre-recorded calls," said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, in a letter posted Friday in docket 02-278. The calls and texts would end "approximately 18 months after the end of the public health emergency."
COVID-19 lockdowns in Shanghai and the war in Ukraine demonstrate “that the world needs more resilient and more geographically balanced semiconductor manufacturing,” said Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger on an earnings call Thursday for fiscal Q1 ended April 2. The chip shortage cost the U.S. economy $240 billion last year, “and we expect the industry will continue to see challenges until at least 2024 in areas like foundry capacity and tool availability,” he said.
Top U.S.-based Huawei executives said Friday that they're hopeful the Biden administration will be open to revisiting sanctions against the company, in a virtual briefing for reporters.
The Senate voted 67-27 Thursday to formally begin conference talks aimed at marrying elements of the House-passed America Creating Opportunities for Manufacturing, Pre-Eminence in Technology and Economic Strength Act (HR-4521) and Senate-passed U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (S-1260). Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo again pressed lawmakers during a Wednesday Senate Commerce Committee hearing to move forward on talks to produce a compromise innovation measure, citing the need to bolster the U.S. semiconductor manufacturing industry (see 2204270065). Both measures include $52 billion in subsidies to encourage U.S.-based semiconductor manufacturing (see 2201260062) but differ in other areas.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and some Senate Commerce Committee members used a Wednesday hearing on the Commerce Department's FY 2023 budget goals (see 2204210059) as a platform to press Congress to quickly reach agreement marrying elements of the House-passed America Creating Opportunities for Manufacturing, Pre-Eminence in Technology and Economic Strength Act (HR-4521) and Senate-passed U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (S-1260). Committee members also pressed Raimondo on NTIA’s plans for distributing $48 billion in broadband money from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and how to improve interagency spectrum coordination.
Reps. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and Greg Pence, R-Ind., filed a House companion to the Senate's Securing Semiconductor Supply Chains Act (S-3309) Tuesday. The measure, which Senate Commerce advanced in December (see 2112150069), would direct the Commerce Department’s SelectUSA program to work with state-level economic development organizations to develop strategies to attract investment in U.S. semiconductor manufacturers and supply chains. “Disruptions in the semiconductor supply chain have impacted nearly every aspect of our economy and the daily lives of Americans,” Eshoo said. “Our Country has had to learn the hard way that relying on foreign supply chains jeopardizes our economic and national security,” Pence said. “There are other nations who know this, wanting to outpace our economy and chip away at our hold as a global superpower, and take advantage of this fact. America cannot be caught off-guard again, and this legislation would address that shortcoming.”
The House plans to consider two telecom supply chain bills as soon as Wednesday under suspension of the rules: the Transatlantic Telecommunications Security Act (HR-3344) and Protecting Semiconductor Supply Chain Materials from Authoritarians Act (HR-7372). HR-3344 and Senate companion S-2876 would help Central and Eastern European countries build 5G networks using equipment not made by Chinese manufacturer Huawei, including by authorizing U.S. International Development Finance Corporation financing for infrastructure development. HR-7372 would create a working group for reporting on the semiconductor supply chain disruptions caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The group would develop strategies for bolstering supplies of semiconductor materials and monitor potential threats to supply chains.
Global revenue in the semiconductor devices market will likely reach $620 billion by the end of 2022, up 11.5% from 2021, reported Frost & Sullivan Monday. Several drivers will accelerate growth in “all verticals,” including the increased deployment of 5G, rising adoption of 5G smartphones, increasing electronics content in automotive, migration to electric vehicles and the proliferation of IoT devices in smart homes, it said. Growth will be “especially strong” in the automotive sector, said analyst Prabhu Karunakaran.