The Federal Aviation Administration chose six unmanned aircraft system research and test site operators across the U.S., the agency said Monday (http://1.usa.gov/19xp7CB). The sites will be run by the University of Alaska, the state of Nevada, Griffiss International Airport in Rome, N.Y., the North Dakota Department of Commerce, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and Virginia Tech.

Tribune closed on its $2.2 billion purchase of Local TV, Tribune said in a news release Friday (http://bit.ly/19sYNta). The FCC approved the transaction Dec. 20 (CD Dec 23 p3). Tribune now owns 39 TV stations, and provides services through sharing agreements to three former Local TV stations now owned by Dreamcatcher. As a result of the sale, Tribune is both the largest Fox affiliate group and the largest CW affiliate group in the U.S., the release said. “The transaction creates the largest combined independent broadcast group and content creator in the country,” Tribune said.

The FCC’s 2015 World Radiocommunication Conference Advisory Committee will meet Jan. 27, the FCC said Monday in the Federal Register. The committee is collaborating with NTIA’s Interdepartment Radio Advisory Committee Radio Conference Subcommittee on consensus opinions on multiple WRC agenda items, which it will eventually present to the State Department (CD Dec 23 p9). The WRC Advisory Committee’s Jan. 27 meeting will include a presentation of the committee working groups’ preliminary views and draft proposals, the FCC said. The meeting is set to begin at 11 a.m. in the Commission Meeting Room. The meeting will also be webcast on the FCC’s website (http://1.usa.gov/1fW5DG2).

The Department of Defense highlights the challenge faced by the government of getting enough spectrum available for all of the military’s unmanned systems, including drones and unmanned ground systems. The “Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap” cites broader demands by spectrum-dependent systems (SDS) used by the military (http://1.usa.gov/1kWnzEc). “U.S. military operations are now occurring in many parts of the world where adequate spectrum is not available for [command and control], sensor, and data link systems,” DOD said. “There is a significant increase in the number of SDS the United States, our partners, and our coalition forces deploy to address current, and may want to deploy to address expected future, mission areas. In addition, these SDS collect more information, and missions often require greater bandwidths to send their information directly to warfighters.” Areas where the military has to operate are becoming more spectrally “noisy” in general “because of increasingly cluttered and hostile spectrum environments.” Dynamic spectrum access (DSA) as promoted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency can help, but isn’t a cure-all, DOD said. “DSA offers the ability to change frequency band use based on the actual use or nonuse of certain bands by other adjacent SDS,” the report said. “Developmental challenges include susceptibility to countermeasures, costs of integrating with existing systems, developing standards (including regulatory aspects), and cosite Interference.”

The FCC Public Safety Bureau extended by an additional six months, until June 30, the “true-up” date for calculating whether Sprint owes the government money as part of the 800 MHz transition. When the FCC approved the 800 MHz rebanding in 2004 it required Nextel, before its merger with Sprint, to pay the total value of the 10 MHz national spectrum license it got as part of deal. At the time, the FCC set the price of the license at $4.8 billion. Subtracting the value of the spectrum Nextel agreed to give up, $2 billion, left $2.8 billion Nextel had to cover by paying for the rebanding. The FCC has been extending the true-up deadline in six-month increments since 2008. While the Broadband Auxiliary Service relocation “is now complete and substantial progress has been made in 800 MHz rebanding, a significant number of 800 MHz licensees have yet to complete the process, and rebanding in the US-Mexico border region has only recently begun,” the bureau said (http://bit.ly/1dPhzaV). While Sprint has contended that enough has been paid out that the government can now conclude no money will be owed, the 800 MHz Transition Administrator (TA) has advised that taking this step would be “premature,” the bureau said. “We conclude that conducting a true-up of Sprint’s rebanding expenditures as of December 31, 2013 would be premature. Accordingly, we provisionally extend the true-up date, as recommended by the TA, until June 30, 2014, and direct the TA to file a report by May 15, 2014, with its recommendation on whether the true-up should be conducted as of June 30, 2014, or be further postponed."

The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology granted a waiver Monday to Autoliv ASP and Caterpillar that temporarily exempts the companies from the FCC’s Section 15.515(c) emissions rules. The waiver allows Autoliv to continue manufacturing and marketing its C4 vehicular radars to Caterpillar until Dec. 31, 2014 -- and for Caterpillar to continue importing the radars until the same date. The radars comply with the FCC’s existing Section 15.515(c) emissions limits, but do not comply with revised limits set to take effect Wednesday. Autoliv and Caterpillar had told the FCC that Caterpillar’s vehicles could not safely operate without the Autoliv radars, which Caterpillar will need until it can complete a planned redesign that will allow use of dually compliant radars. The FCC said the waiver will apply to only the about 900 vehicles Caterpillar believes it will manufacture through the end of 2014 that will require the Autoliv radar systems, most of which will operate outside the U.S. or in situations that will have a “negligible” influence on satellite interference in the 23.6-24.0 MHz band (http://bit.ly/1emBsXv).

Mobile video relay service (VRS) apps offered by major equipment makers still need improvement and often aren’t interoperable, the Technology Access Program at Gallaudet University said in a letter filed at the FCC. “We note that mobile interoperability, while greatly improved since our 2012 tests, still is in no way comparable to the level of voice interoperability seen in the mainstream,” wrote Christian Vogler, one of the researchers (http://bit.ly/1btO2AX). “Also, there still exists no single VRS-provided app that can successfully interoperate with every other provider for both outgoing and incoming calls; in fact, the provider that tops the rankings for outgoing calls is different from the one that tops the rankings for incoming calls.” The program tested mobile interoperability and battery life using apps from six VRS providers: Sorenson, ZVRS, Purple, Convo, CAAGVRS and Global VRS. “It is still impossible for a consumer to operate only one ten-digit number and be assured that they can connect with everyone else, no matter whether deaf or hearing,” Vogler wrote. “We further note that interoperability across answering machines still is substantially worse than for live point-to-point calls, and essentially unchanged from 2012.” The group reported that VRS applications don’t drain the mobile devices’ batteries “to a significant extent while idle on Wi-Fi. However, on Android devices there’s still some room for further improvement. It is also not yet clear how much battery drain there would be under a cellular data connection with fluctuating signal strength."

Free Press allegations that sharing agreements in Sinclair’s proposed purchase of Allbritton would give Sinclair financial control of ostensibly separate stations are based on “unsubstantiated estimates,” Sinclair’s lawyer said in a letter to the FCC Media Bureau last week (http://bit.ly/1caQ5xe). Free Press had claimed (CD Dec 9 p5) that some of Sinclair’s sharing arrangements involved the affected stations -- which would be owned by affiliated company Deerfield Media -- paying out nearly their entire annual revenue to Sinclair, which would bring the arrangement into conflict with the FCC’s local ownership rules. However, Free Press’s numbers are based on estimates from 2012. “The application of these unsubstantiated estimates to future performance of the stations is wholly speculative and should be dismissed for that reason alone,” Sinclair said. If operated under the terms proposed in the transaction, the stations involved in the sharing agreements will have “more than adequate revenues” to pay the fees involved with the sharing arrangements and “generate a significant operating profit for the licensee,” said Sinclair. The Media Bureau had also asked Sinclair to show how the companies that will own the stations involved in the sharing arrangements will have a financial incentive to control their own programming. “Every station license, whether or not involved in sharing agreements, has an inherent incentive to control programming” to attract more viewers and increase value to advertisers, Sinclair said. Since the “key costs” of a station involved in a sharing arrangement to receive services are fixed, “operating profits will increase if the revenue increases,” Sinclair said. The Media Bureau has also previously approved sharing arrangements similar to the ones proposed in the Allbritton transaction, and with a similar profit sharing breakdown, Sinclair said. That’s one of the reasons behind Free Press’s challenge of the transaction, Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood told us. Such transactions are a workaround for avoiding the commission’s ownership rules, he said. “This is why we want the full commission to take this up,” he said. Sinclair also disputed the Media Bureau’s contention that the company violated reporting rules by not including copies of local marketing agreements in its submission to the commission. Since the agreements cited by the bureau don’t involve stations involved in the Allbritton transaction, Sinclair had no reason to include them in the submission, the broadcaster said. The Department of Justice review of the Sinclair/Allbritton deal has been put on hold pending the FCC and Sinclair resolving the dispute over the sharing arrangements, Sinclair said. “It is vital that there be a prompt resolution of these matters so that antitrust review can be completed,” Sinclair said.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo released style4.5 million in broadband grants Thursday. The Democrat issued a statement emphasizing the significance of high-speed Internet connections. Nine projects will receive money, including Clarity Connect, Slic Network Solutions, MTC Cable and New Visions Communications. “Together, these nine projects will deliver broadband services to 29,117 households, 2,052 businesses, and 236 community anchor institutions, and will provide 614 miles of new fiber,” Cuomo’s office said in a news release (http://bit.ly/1llG3eP). Much of the money will go to support last-mile service, it said.

The Iowa Communications Alliance will be born Wednesday, with the union of the Rural Iowa Independent Telephone Association and the Iowa Telecommunications Association. The groups voted to unify earlier this year, they said in November. Dave Duncan, Iowa Telecommunications Association president, will be the alliance’s CEO. The alliance will be a “single professional association for independent telephone and wired broadband companies in Iowa” and “provides the opportunity to strengthen telecommunications policy efforts with a combined voice to better represent technology in rural areas and synergy for increased organization effectiveness in serving the new association’s members,” the RIITA said in a notice on its website (http://bit.ly/19o2V8j).