Arianespace will launch Azercosmos' and Intelsat's Azerspace-2/Intelsat 38 telecom satellite in 2017 aboard an Ariane 5 rocket, Arianespace said in a news release Wednesday. The satellite will orbit at 45 degrees east and provide direct-to-home services for Azercosmos customers in Europe, Central and South Asia, the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, and continuity of service for Intelsat 12, plus connectivity to Intelsat for corporate network and government applications in Africa, Arianespace said. The satellite is to be designed and built by Space Systems/Loral, the launch company said.
Neither the Liberty companies nor Chairman John Malone has “the incentive or ability” to use any New Charter leverage in any way that represents a conflict of interest, Liberty Broadband, Liberty Interactive and Liberty Media said in filings posted Tuesday in FCC docket 15-149. Numerous conditions have been proposed as the commission reviews Charter Communications' proposed buying of Bright House Networks and Time Warner Cable (see 1511130021). Regulators will likely impose some that attempt to put up a barrier to any Malone leverage, said Andrew Schwartzman, who represents Zoom Telephonics, which is among those suggesting conditions.
The Broadband Conduit Deployment Act continued to rack up co-sponsors throughout last week, despite failure to attach HR-3805 to the highway bill (see 1511040047). The bill now has 38 co-sponsors -- 23 Democrats and 15 Republicans. Six Democrats signed on last week, including Reps. Gene Green of Texas and Jose Serrano of New York. The legislation proposes the dig once policy, meant to consolidate the number of times conduit would need to be accessed for purposes of transportation and broadband construction.
The South Carolina Public Service Commission is poised to decide whether wireless and wireline are in direct competition with each other. The PSC decision also will determine whether wireless companies will be required to pay into the state USF per the state’s 1996 Telecom Act, which is similar to the 1996 federal act of that name.
Space Systems/Loral and Intelsat will partner to provide a communications satellite and satellite services to Azerbaijani satellite operator Azercosmos, SSL said Tuesday. The satellite -- Azercosmos' second -- is to sit at 45 degrees east and provide direct-to-home, government and network service to Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, it said. The satellite -- Azerspace-2/Intelsat 38 -- also will provide continuity of service for Intelsat 12 at 45 degrees east, SSL said. The satellite is scheduled for a 2017 launch, SSL said.
Nearly every small and/or new multichannel video programming distributor has difficulty obtaining reasonably priced video programming, with a large minority of them seeing retransmission consent fees more than doubling in recent years, according to a 2015 video competition survey put out Tuesday by NTCA and Incompas, the recently renamed Comptel (see 1510190061). The survey is from Networks for Competition and Choice -- made up of Incompas, ITTA, NTCA and Public Knowledge -- which are jointly pushing for video rules changes. The groups worked together to oppose now-abandoned Comcast/Time Warner Cable, and now are focusing on the video marketplace, members told us. "It sort of grew out of everyone noticing we're all saying the same thing and experiencing the same difficulties," said Jill Canfield, NTCA vice president-legal and industry.
Dish Network reached a multiyear carriage agreement with Tegna in 38 markets, said both sides in news releases (see here and here) Sunday. The agreement ended a blackout that began Friday, it said. “All TEGNA stations will return to the DISH lineup effective immediately.” Dish said at the start of the blackout that Tegna was seeking “above-market rate increases double the current DISH rate.” Before the blackout ended, Dish said the breakdown in negotiations is an example of why retransmission consent reform is needed. “TEGNA’s decision to cut ties with DISH customers is a prime example of why Washington needs to stand up for consumers and end local channel blackouts,” Dish General Counsel Stanton Dodge said in an earlier release.
As the municipal broadband pre-emption challenge by North Carolina and Tennessee against the FCC moves through A federal court (see 1509290070), other similar networks across the country continue to be built. For three projects we reviewed, status varies from fully deployed to being in the beginning stages of the planning and financing. Experts said that from the very beginning of the process all the way through the end, municipalities can run into roadblocks, including financing, competition from the incumbents and low take-rates. While proponents of government-owned networks (GON) see them as sometimes the only path to broadband access, others see networks owned by municipalities as unfair competition to existing or possible private providers.
An economist and lawyer who has done research on net neutrality and other communications issues resigned from the Brookings Institution after it said he didn't follow its rules on independence, amid criticism related to a different regulated industry. Robert Litan had been a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings, its website said, and has been a special consultant at Economists Inc. according to EI's website. Organizations which Litan and the colleague who co-wrote the controversial paper continue to be affiliated have been involved in communications issues such as net neutrality. But despite this controversy, many times experts write papers without disclosing any more information, said a fan of such disclosure. A colleague who helped with Litan's research said best practices were followed.
Kids app developers are doing a better job of notifying users as to what information is being collected and with whom it is shared, and on telling parents about the apps’ practices, FTC Mobile Technology Unit Chief Kristin Cohen and FTC Paralegal Specialist Christina Yeung wrote in a blog post Thursday. It followed the conclusion of the FTC Office of Technology Research and Investigations’ follow-up survey on kids apps. Surveys from 2012 found many apps shared kids’ information with third parties without notifying parents, and parents had little to no access to information about the apps’ privacy practices, an FTC news release said Thursday announcing a series of blog posts that included the survey’s findings. “The new survey looked at 364 kids’ apps in Google Play and the Apple App Store, and in today’s post the FTC examined what privacy disclosures are available to parents,” the release said. One-hundred sixty-four “of them (45%) had privacy policies that could be viewed from a direct link on the app store page,” Cohen and Yeung said. “An additional 38 include privacy policies in harder-to-find places -- for example, within the app or on the app developer’s webpage,” they said. “We don’t know for certain why there has been an increase in easy-to-locate privacy policies since our last survey, but a few factors may have contributed to this welcome development,” like widening the definition of children’s personal information under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, and an agreement between California and major mobile platform providers to have a privacy policy available, Cohen and Yeung said. “Whatever the reasons for the increase in direct links to kids’ app privacy policies, it’s a step in the right direction,” they wrote. “That said, a significant portion of kids’ apps still leave parents in the dark about the data collected about their children -- so there’s more work to be done.”