A third of sports fans report interest in watching live sports on their mobile devices, up from 20 percent in 2010, said a sports and technology report from CEA. TV remains the top consumption screen for sports, at 90 percent interest, while 40 percent of sports fans have viewed or listened to sports online using a computer, tablet or smartphone within the past 12 months, said the report. Nearly 20 percent of sports fans have consumed sports content on social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, it said. Sports fans are also using CE devices for second-screen viewing, with 23 reporting using a mobile device for sports-related activities while watching TV. Some 21 percent said they’ve used a DVR to pause or rewind portions of a game, and 21 percent have used a recording method to record another game being played simultaneously, said the report. Among fans who watch sports on TV, 62 percent own TVs with a screen size of 40 inches or larger, compared with 38 percent of nonsports fans, it said.
An additional 55,722 census blocks were recategorized from served to unserved after the Connect America Fund Phase II challenge process, the FCC Wireline Bureau said in a public notice Tuesday. Meanwhile, another 38,485 blocks were deemed served, resulting in a net increase of 17,237 unserved census blocks, the notice said. More than 140 parties filed challenges on the classification of 180,000 census blocks, the notice said. A list of the agency’s decisions on all the challenges is here.
Apple and Samsung’s combined dominant share of the tablet market could plummet to 38 percent by 2019 in a “tectonic shift” to lower-priced tablets, a Juniper report said. Evolving form factors and emerging players such as Lenovo with low-cost alternatives are a threat to today’s dominant tablet vendors, said the industry researcher Monday. It expects Lenovo to lead the movement and increase its shipments by 30 million units per year by 2019. Lenovo announced several Android- and Windows-based models at Mobile World Congress, Juniper noted. Android will remain the dominant tablet platform over the forecast period, with Windows-based devices expected to be close to 10 percent of the market by 2019, Juniper said. Hybrid devices such as two-in-ones will find a place in office environments, but tablets will struggle “due to peripheral compatibility requirements,” it said. Phablets also will have a growing impact on tablet sales, Juniper said. More than 400 million phablets will ship globally in 2019, up from 138 million forecast for this year, it said. The iPhone 6 has been a catalyst for bringing the phablet category “further into the limelight,” but budget-priced devices are the key to driving phablets into the mainstream globally, it said. The phablet emerged out of the transition of the smartphone away from communications and toward multimedia use, Juniper said, although in terms of device hardware, a phablet is “virtually identical” to a smartphone except in screen and battery size. A smartphone can perform most computing tasks, which would suggest that other mobile devices can become increasingly like smartphones, Juniper said. At the hardware level, that would involve integrating modem and cellular functionality within the chipset “rather than as add-ons,” it said. The platform-centric approach would require systems on a chip to be scalable for different products and hardware possibilities, it said.
Eight in 10 U.S. households have at least one HDTV set, and 52 percent have multiple HDTVs, according to data from Leichtman Research Group. LRG said the multiple figure is up from 46 percent five years ago. The budding Ultra HD TV market is at 1.6 percent U.S. household penetration, analyst Bruce Leichtman told us. Of the tiny percentage of 4K TV owners, 85 percent reported having an "excellent" experience with the TV and none rated the experience as poor, Leichtman said. Awareness of 4K Ultra HD TV is on the rise at 41 percent, versus 30 percent last year, and 26 percent of those who have seen 4K TV expressed interest in getting one, versus 6 percent who had not seen it, Leichtman said. Of the consumers who bought any TV last year, 38 percent reported having an Internet-connected model. Overall, about 11 percent of all smart TVs in the U.S. are Internet-connected, LRG said. Of the single-HDTV households, 89 percent subscribe to a pay-TV service; but the percentage expands to 91 percent in multi-HDTV homes, LRG said. Roughly a quarter of U.S. households purchased a TV in the past 12 months, mirroring a 20 percent or higher trend in place for the past 11 years, Leichtman said. “While HDTV now seems commonplace in the U.S., much of the growth of HD has come in recent years,” Leichtman said, as more than a third of households have bought their first HDTV in the past five years. The phone survey of 1,231 adults in the continental U.S. was conducted in January and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percent.
The FCC Wireless Bureau granted a waiver request Friday from the PTC-220 group of seven Class I freight railroads, waiving the commission’s Section 90.729(b) power and antenna height limits and Section 90.723(f) coordination limits subject to conditions meant to ensure PTC-220 operations don’t cause harmful interference to other licensees on the 220 MHz band. PTC-220 has been acquiring spectrum on the 220 MHz band and leasing it to the Southern California Regional Rail Authority and other commuter railroads to implement positive train control communications technology. The FCC said it will require PTC-220 to provide a 30-day written notice to licensees about its intent to site a PTC base station that takes advantage of the waived power and antenna height limits, meet a predicted 38 dBu field strength at the license area’s border unless all affected co-channel licensees agree to a higher field strength and meet bright-line frequency and geographic spacing requirements meant to further reduce the risk of interference. The FCC said it is also requiring PTC to provide 30-day written notice to potentially affected Phase II licensees about deployment of a planned waiver-enabled PTC transmitter when the licensee is within 200 kHz and 20 kilometers of the transmitter. The FCC noted opposition to the waiver request from the BEC and DEMCO electric cooperatives, respectively located in South Carolina and Louisiana, but said it disagree with the cooperatives’ “blanket assertion that deployment of waiver-enabled PTC transmitters will harm existing 220 MHz Band stations or limit future expansion by incumbent licensees.”
Time Warner Cable’s Go Green initiative reduced by 38 percent its carbon intensity over the past two years, said a TWC news release Thursday. That exceeded the 15 percent goal it set in 2012, it said. To reach that percentage, TWC increased energy efficiency and improved waste and vehicle management, promoting sustainability within its supply chain, and building employee green teams. TWC had a 15 percent increase from 2012 fuel efficiency within its fleet of 20,000 vehicles by buying more fuel-efficient vehicles, it said.
Intelsat Q4 revenue fell 3.7 percent to $619.1 million from the year-ago quarter, a news release said Wednesday. Network services were 46 percent of revenue at $284.1 million, a 5 percent decrease, it said. Government was 16 percent of revenue at $99.7 million, a 14 percent decrease. Media was 37 percent of revenue at $226 million, a 3 percent increase. Income from operations fell 12 percent to $292.7 million. Intelsat stock fell 9.5 percent to $15.77 in trading Wednesday. It will launch Intelsat 34, a replacement for its 304.5 degrees East video neighborhood, in Q3, it said. Intelsat 31, a second satellite that will offer services for direct-to-home (DTH) provider DirecTV Latin America, will launch in Q1 2016, it said. Meanwhile, Intelsat 29e, an Intelsat EpicNG high-throughput satellite, will launch in Q1 2016, it said. Intelsat and Azercosmos, the national satellite operator of Azerbaijan, partnered to deliver the DTH Azerspace-2/Intelsat 38 satellite at 45 degrees East, Intelsat said in a news release Tuesday. The satellite will offer enhanced capacity, coverage and service offerings for Azerspace-1 and Intelsat 12, it said. Intelsat 38 will provide services for Africa, Asia and Central and Eastern Europe, it said. The satellite will be launched in 2017, it said.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler struck back against “ill-informed” criticisms that his draft net neutrality order would institute a 1930s-level regulatory structure on broadband. He said during NARUC’s winter meeting in Washington Tuesday that his order would use a “modern version” of Communications Act Title II. The FCC is expected to vote 3-2 Feb. 26 for the net neutrality order, which would reclassify broadband as a Title II service. The draft order would forebear from 27 of Title II’s 38 sections, which Wheeler said was almost four times the seven Title II sections that the FCC forbore from when it crafted mobile voice rules under Title II and Telecom Act Section 332 following enactment of the 1996 Telecom Act. CTIA, where Wheeler was president when he backed forbearance of regulatory sections in Title II for wireless carriers, has said it will join other industry groups in suing the FCC over the new net neutrality rules (see 1502130049). CTIA President Meredith Baker is to speak during a Wednesday NARUC session.
It’s “still too early” for the U.K. government to start the countdown toward a hard switchover from analog to digital radio, Ed Vaizey, the U.K. minister for culture and the digital economy, told the annual Drive to Digital conference Friday at BBC headquarters in London. “It might be right in a couple of years,” Vaizey said. “We are making really good progress, and 2017 now looks very likely for a time when whatever government is in power can take stock and set a timetable.” In late 2013, Vaizey laid out his conditions for starting a countdown toward a digital switchover, saying most radio listening in the U.K. needs to be digital, and that digital transmitter coverage has to match that of FM. Digital listening now stands at 38 percent and both the BBC and commercial radio stations are building more transmitters, partly with funding from the government and partly by the broadcasters, Vaizey said. “It’s a difficult and complex process,” Vaizey said of building digital transmitter coverage. The BBC is now at 95 percent coverage and should be at 97 percent by the end of this year, he said. However, the commercial and local networks still offer significantly less coverage, he said. Two-thirds of all new cars in the U.K. now come with a factory-installed digital radio, compared with 4 percent only five years ago, Vaizey said. “So we are now closer to the goal of radio switchover. But converting the existing ‘park’ of analog cars and trucks remains a challenge.” On the thorny issue of continuing to allow the sale of analog-only radios, Vaizey said: “It’s controversial and retailers who know their customers don’t want to push them away from products they want to buy. I want this to be driven by the customers. If radios can get both analogue and digital I want it to seem ridiculous not to buy a radio with digital.”
Viewing video has overtaken playing games as the most popular entertainment activity on tablets, said a Futuresource Consulting report that polled consumers in France, Germany, the U.K. and U.S. Some 57 percent of tablet owners in the four countries watch video on their mobile device -- vs. 53 percent who play games -- and 24 percent pay-to-view video content, Futuresource said. The U.S. leads all markets in watching paid-for video on tablets with 34 percent of users paying for video content, it said. Large tablets appear to encourage more viewing, as 62 percent of large tablet users said they watched video on their devices compared with 53 percent of small tablet owners, it said. The TV continues to gain use as a connected device, said the industry research firm Tuesday. Nearly 80 percent of connected TV owners stream video, and 63 percent access a premium video service at least once a week, it said. Households with children under 12 are 20 percent more likely to subscribe to TV services, said the data. Netflix subscribers are four times more likely to own a digital media adapter than Netflix non-subscribers. Twelve percent of households with kids had an UltraViolet account vs. 4 percent of households with no kids, and households with kids outnumbered those without as packaged media buyers and renters by 38 percent to 18 percent. Deleting premium packages from TV subscriptions, known as cord shaving, reached 17 percent of U.S. consumers in October 2014. That was up from 13 percent in September 2013, led by 19- to 25-year-olds and households with children, said the survey. U.S. pay TV subscribers stood at 65 million last fall versus 10 million streaming VOD customers, while 35 million U.S. viewers fit into both groups, it said. Music streaming is the most popular form of music consumption in the four countries, with 29 percent of respondents reporting they listen to free music services and 42 percent to Internet radio stations. The U.S. skewed higher at 50 percent of respondents who reported listening to any type of music service. Only 5 percent of the total base said it pays for a subscription music service. The survey was conducted during September and October with a nationally representative sample of just more than 1,000 consumers in each country.