The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) continues their attempt to exert control over all airspace, all the time. They conceded, however still holding a stiff rein, when announcing they would allow seven movie companies to fly unmanned aerial systems (UAS), for filming motion pictures and television programming in US airspace.

In a foiled attempt to regulate what goes on in our skies, this spring the FAA lost a decision by an NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) judge in FAA vs. Pirker. The judge decided the FAA had not properly filed regulations to control UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) – also called drones. The FAA was tripped up by trying to say they could control all access to the airspace, no matter what was flying. Their problem was they had never said anything about model airplanes. Today’s private use and commercial use drones are more similar to model airplanes than anything close to passenger carrying aircraft.

In the FAA Modernization Reform Act of 2012, Congress acknowledged the model airplane community has acted in a responsible manner. Therefore, model airplanes are exempt from FAA Flight Regulations because the Congress classified them as recreational – hobby use.

The Congress, as part of a budget bill passed in 2012, mandated the FAA to establish a roadmap for getting UAS integrated into the national airspace. Congress provided four years of funding for the agency work on developing the rules. In 2013, the FAA designated drone test sites in six states — Alaska, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Texas and Virginia. That program will run until 2017. Commercial and military drones are supposed to be granted expanded access by no later than Sept. 30, 2015.

In June, the FAA gave a special exemption for commercial drones in the Arctic to monitor oil pipelines and ocean wildlife. Thursday’s announcement is the first approval for commercial drones inside the continental US. Dozens of commercial applications have poured in to the agency since AeroVironment won approval to fly over land in Alaska to monitor BP (formerly known as British Petroleum) pipeline operations out of Prudhoe Bay.

At Thursday’s FAA’s announcement MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) CEO Chris Dodd said: “Today’s announcement is a victory for audiences everywhere as it gives filmmakers yet another way to push creative boundaries and create the kinds of scenes and shots we could only imagine just a few years ago.”

In spring of this year with assistance by the MPAA, seven Hollywood production companies requested regulatory exemption to allow them to use SUAS (small unmanned aerial systems) for filming. Those companies are Aerial MOB , Astraeus Aerial, Flying-Cam, HeliVideo Productions, Pictorvision, Vortex Aerial, and Snaproll Media.

The companies each said they would film on closed sets with extra safety precautions that will essentially be safer than using conventional aircraft. They plan to fly within sight of the remote pilot, with aircraft traveling no faster than 50 mph and no higher than 400 feet off the ground. The firms said the operators will hold private pilot certificates, keep the SUAS within line of sight at all times and restrict flights to the “sterile area” on the set. In granting the exemption, FAA accepted these safety conditions, adding an inspection of the aircraft before each flight, and prohibiting operations at night. The agency also will issue Certificates of Authorization (COA) that mandate flight rules and timely reports of any accident or incidents.

Previously we reported that Amazon was researching package delivery by drones. In Europe, the delivery company DHL has been testing their package delivery drone along the Rhine River. Today, DHL plans to start sending packages, medicine and other necessities by flying approximately 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) from Norddeich, a village in northern Germany, to the island of Juist, a small island community off the north coast of Germany .

DHL’s parcelcopter prepares to take off

Many commercial drone companies say the FAA is a damper on them making money. Attorney Timothy Ravich, a Florida Board Certified Aviation Lawyer, made this important point at a recent “drone” conference in Los Angeles. He cautioned attendees that it “just takes one unscrupulous or sloppy or truly reckless UAS operator to ruin it for the rest of UAS operators who want to do the right thing and want clear guidance on how to accomplish legitimate business objectives”. Ravich explained that it is illegal to operate a SUAS for any commercial purpose unless there is an FAA Waver or COA. Agricultural use of drones has sometimes bypassed this by affiliating with a university or college agricultural research program.

Many pilots are opposed to SUAS’s because they are disruptive technology that could very well limit their job opportunities. Ravich said that today’s drones are much like the Internet was in the mid-1990s. They present a huge opportunity, for those that properly launch their businesses and do not become entangled in FAA regulations.

The post Strict FAA Stoops to Bless Drone Use for Making Movies appeared first on VR World.

Today is not a good day in Sprint land as according to a report the Wall Street Journal, the company’s board of directors has voted to abandon the acquisition of T-Mobile USA  amid insurmountable regulatory hurdles.

Sprint originally made an offer to buy T-Mobile USA to the tune of $32 billion dollars with the parent company of Sprint, Softbank, leading the negotiations and discussions about where the combined company would move post-merger.

The problem with this deal was that it was met with a lot of regulatory concern from virtually every single governmental agency involved, not to mention tons of public outcry. The Department of Justice (DOJ), Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) all voiced differing levels of opposition towards the deal. Sprint and Softbank clearly did not have the political clout that Comcast did when they acquired NBC/Universal from General Electric (GE) to make such a controversial deal go through. Even so, the reality of the situation was fundamentally difficult to argue against because Sprint would effectively be reducing the mobile carrier market from four to three competitors and removing the most competitive carrier from contention. Softbank’s CEO, Masayoshi Son, contended that the combined company would be evermore competitive than T-Mobile US on its own, however his statements appear not have been enough to convince regulators.

T-Mobile was also recently approached with a second cash-only offer a week ago, which came from French telecom company Iliad, to the tune of $15 billion, not much lower than the valuation that Sprint had given them for the whole company. This deal would also likely encounter much less regulatory scrutiny because Iliad has no presence in the US market and such an acquisition would also allow Deutsche Telecom to almost entirely divest from T-Mobile US while simultaneously still having some investment to potentially generate additional profit.

Now that this deal has officially fallen apart (the second failed acquisition of T-Mobile by another carrier), there is a chance that T-Mobile could be acquired by Iliad, or that they could continue to drive forward and steal more customers. T-Mobile recently announced that it had over fifty million subscribers and that it had gained over 7.6 million new customers in the past five quarters or. The company also reported that its earnings had the greatest revenue growth of any carrier last quarter and that it does not see any signs of stopping. T-Mobile’s overall competitiveness is very likely what made regulators become hesitant of Sprint’s acquisition because of Sprint’s relative weakness against all other carriers.

Now that this deal has fallen apart there is also talk that Sprint’s current CEO, Dan Hesse, is to be put out to pasture. Hesse has been Sprint’s CEO for the past seven years and oversaw potentially one of the worst collapses of a carrier ever with their network coming in as the weakest of all four carriers year after year. While Sprint is certainly not in free fall, it has struggled to be a competitive carrier with AT&T and Verizon almost since its merger with Nextel in 2005. As such, it makes sense that Softbank would want to replace Hesse, especially considering that was supposedly already the plan with the T-Mobile acquisition since T-Mobile’s firebrand CEO John Legere would be expected to replace him.

Based on the news, T-Mobile’s stock dropped sharply by nearly nine percent while Sprint has taken a hammering of over 16%. Obviously, Sprint’s investors are more worried about not having T-Mobile and T-Mobile’s investors are disappointed that they don’t get a buy-out, even though there’s still a very good chance that the Iliad offer could still net them a significant bonus. It will be interesting to see what both companies will do in the wake of this announcement and whether or not Sprint can finally wake up and start being competitive with the others. T-Mobile will very likely continue to push forward as they have and introduce new disruptive programs to shake up the mobile industry.

The post Sprint to Dump T-Mobile Bid and Replace CEO appeared first on VR World.

The German government has announced that they will be switching away from Verizon for internet services as an ISP for the German government. They noted that the reasons for this decision had to do with increased demands on the network and the prevalence of the NSA in Verizon’s business. Based on the translation that was available, it appears as though the German government is merely using this as an opportunity to switch internet services to a company that is German. Sure, the likelihood that their networks will get snooped on by the NSA will probably go down, or at least become more difficult.

However, usually, such moves are usually just being used by the companies not involved to gain an upper hand on their competition, which is in this case Verizon. While the German government hasn’t quite made it clear who they intend to replace Verizon with, it is quite clear that the NSA’s snooping and relationship with Verizon has made doing business in Germany difficult for Verizon. This will likely not be the end of such moves by European governments and I suspect there will be more companies that will lobby their governments to switch to local ISPs or technology companies in order to ‘better protect’ themselves. While simultaneously taking an opportunity of bad PR on the part of American companies to snatch away their business.

According to an AP report, Verizon was unable to keep the contract (which they’ve held since 2010) due to the fact that they weren’t able to meet some core requirements of the German government put on the company, likely as a result of the NSA’s snooping revealed by Edward Snowden and publications like Der Spiegel. As a result of not meeting the German government’s demands on these requirements, Verizon is losing the contract in 2015 to another company, likely one based in Europe or even Germany.

The post German Government Ditches Verizon Amid NSA Fears appeared first on VR World.