April's $34.4 billion of global semiconductor sales was 1.2% lower sequentially, 6.1% higher than April 2019, reported the Semiconductor Industry Association Monday. COVID-19 disruptions “have so far not substantially impacted overall global sales.” The monthly sequential decline was “in line with seasonal trends,” SIA said. Despite the industry’s “early signs of resilience," it said that “significant uncertainty remains."
The Commerce Department's revised commercial remote sensing regulation released last week, with a streamlining of the licensing process, "will help enable continued innovation, decrease regulatory and licensing delays and ensure American leadership in commercial space and satellite remote sensing," the Satellite Industry Association said Friday.
Changes to the FCC orbital debris order, as expected (see 2004170011), netted 5-0 commissioner adoption Thursday at the agency's April meeting. Some commissioners said they approved after several items were moved from the draft order to the accompanying Further NPRM.
House Science Committee leaders and an industry group urged the FCC to pull the orbital debris draft order from April 23's agenda. The agency got increasing resistance to its proposed satellite rules update (see 2004140052), in docket 18-313 Wednesday. A satellite executive told us the agency seemed surprised by the amount of industry criticism.
Global governments need to define semiconductors as an “essential” industry that must be “allowed to continue operations” during COVID-19 lockdowns, blogged Semiconductor Industry Association President John Neuffer Wednesday. Semiconductors “underpin vital sectors of the economy, including health care and medical devices, telecommunications, energy, finance, transportation, agriculture, and manufacturing,” he said. They run information technology systems “that enable remote work and access to essential services across every domain,” he said. “Ensuring the continuity of semiconductor and related supply chains is necessary to support the even greater range of services that will be digitized in the coming weeks and months.”
Global governments need to define semiconductors as an “essential” industry that must be “allowed to continue operations” during COVID-19 lockdowns, blogged Semiconductor Industry Association President John Neuffer Wednesday. Semiconductors “underpin vital sectors of the economy, including health care and medical devices, telecommunications, energy, finance, transportation, agriculture, and manufacturing,” he said. They run information technology systems “that enable remote work and access to essential services across every domain,” he said. “Ensuring the continuity of semiconductor and related supply chains is necessary to support the even greater range of services that will be digitized in the coming weeks and months.”
Global governments need to define semiconductors as an “essential” industry that must be “allowed to continue operations” during COVID-19 lockdowns, blogged Semiconductor Industry Association President John Neuffer Wednesday. Semiconductors “underpin vital sectors of the economy, including health care and medical devices, telecommunications, energy, finance, transportation, agriculture, and manufacturing,” he said. They run information technology systems “that enable remote work and access to essential services across every domain,” he said. “Ensuring the continuity of semiconductor and related supply chains is necessary to support the even greater range of services that will be digitized in the coming weeks and months.”
Continued U.S. restrictions on exports of technology to Chinese companies could have “profound negative repercussions” for the U.S. semiconductor industry, significantly depleting their global competitive standing, according to a March 9 report from the Boston Consulting Group. If current export control trends continue or escalate, leading to a further decoupling between U.S. and China, U.S. semiconductor companies could lose “8 percentage points of global share and 16% of their revenues,” the report said. And if the U.S. bans semiconductor companies from selling to Chinese customers, U.S. companies would lose nearly 40 percent of their revenues, the report said, leading to “severe” cuts in research and development and losses of thousands of jobs.
The 25-year deadline for de-orbiting a satellite after its mission is becoming a central point of contention on how the FCC should incorporate new federal orbital debris mitigation standard practices (ODMSP) into an expected update of its orbital debris rules. Satellite Industry Association Senior Director-Policy Therese Jones said the expectation is the agency will have a draft orbital debris order out in the first half of this year.
Application and regulatory fees each are supposed to cover costs, yet the FCC recovers the cost of application processing twice, burdening every party that pays both fees, Satellite Industry Association representatives told FCC Office of General Counsel and Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau staffers. That's per a docket 19-105 posting Thursday. SIA discussed procedural mitigation approaches. Hughes, Intelsat, SES and Telesat also sent representatives.