Don’t doubt the success of the federal government’s wide-ranging broadband stimulus launched two years ago, program officials said. NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling gathered representatives from four of its 224 Broadband Technology Opportunities Program grantees at the Brookings Institution Wednesday to discuss different projects’ virtues, lessons learned and as Strickling said, “to demonstrate the successes” and “humanize” the $4-billion stimulus investment with “tangible” details of how the different projects work. The message glossed over past concerns, such as overbuilding (CD Sept 27 p6), accountability (CD Nov 15 p15) and, in the past year, partial suspension of eight of the program’s largest infrastructure grantees -- seven in May due to FirstNet compatibility concerns (CD Aug 7 p1) and one in December (CD Dec 10 p6) due to compliance problems. The event coincided with NTIA’s 15th quarterly BTOP update to Congress (http://xrl.us/boa3z2).
Florida’s relay service handled 1.4 million calls in fiscal year 2012, the Florida Public Service Commission said in a new report (http://xrl.us/bn823v). It “shows that 19,287 new deaf, hard of hearing, deaf-blind, and speech impaired individuals were served in Florida, and 38,477 pieces of specialized telecommunications equipment were distributed for FY 2012,” the PSC said, saying Florida has nearly three million residents who are deaf, hard of hearing, deaf-blind or speech impaired. Florida established its relay system in 1991.
Completing the IP transition and adjusting the regulatory regime to take that change into account is one of the key challenges that will face the FCC in 2013, said AT&T Senior Vice President Bob Quinn and other industry officials Thursday at a symposium sponsored by the Phoenix Center.
The Communications Workers of America slammed Cablevision in a report released Thursday, which coincided with a gathering of union leaders and New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and New York City Council Member Letitia James, each of whom offered statements questioning the service of the company. The report accused Cablevision of, as its title says, “leaving Brooklyn behind” in terms of the Internet speeds provided, the facilities and the way the cable company treats the workers who chose to unionize early last year. Cablevision dismissed the report as “phony” and has strongly disputed the union’s claims before, suing the union for defamation in late December.
Britons lead the world in using the latest TV technology, including accessing TV online and owning smart televisions and digital video recorders, the U.K. Office of Communications said Thursday in an international communications market report (http://xrl.us/bn59vp). The report compared the U.K. with France, Germany, Italy, the U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland, Poland, Brazil, Russia, India and China. U.K. consumers are most likely to access TV over the Internet, with 23 percent of Internet users claiming to do it every week, driven by the popularity of catch-up services such as BBC iPlayer and ITV Player, it said. The U.S., where 17 percent of Internet users said they access TV content online, came second. But despite the increase in online TV availability, scheduled linear TV remains popular, with minutes of viewing per person up among most of the countries surveyed, Ofcom said. Italy and the U.S. led the list, with the U.K. third, it said. By the end of 2011, 99 percent of U.K. homes had digital TV, surpassed only by Spain, whose digital switchover is now complete. Satellite TV was the largest platform in the U.K. (44 percent), while terrestrial TV was the main platform in 38 percent of TV homes, it said. Value-added services such as digital video recorders and high definition TV continue to grow, with Britain having the greatest uptake in DVRs in 2011, followed by the U.S. The U.K. also had one of the biggest percentages of TV homes with HDTV, higher than France, Germany and Japan but behind the U.S. The U.K. had the highest rate of digital radio take-up, Ofcom said. The fastest-growing radio markets are India, Brazil, Russia and China, but radio markets in Sweden, the U.S. and Germany generate the most revenue per head of population. Spending on laptop and desktop Internet advertising is highest in Britain, followed by Australia, the regulator said. The U.S. mobile Internet advertising spend grew by 2.5 times, reaching Japan’s level, it said. U.K. Internet users access the Web via laptop more than those in any other country, it said. The most searched for term online, except in Japan, Russia and China, was “facebook,” it said. In the telecom arena, U.K. users consume the most mobile data per connection, with 424 MB of data downloaded per mobile connection in 2011, it said. The U.K. is also a leader in text messaging, with the average person sending 199 SMS messages per month last year, up 17 percent from 2010 numbers. Fixed-voice revenue, however, fell in all countries, and fixed-voice call volumes dropped in all except France. Five percent of U.K. broadband connections were superfast (advertised speeds of 30 Mbps or more) by the end of 2011, it said. Other findings included that total telecom, TV, post and radio sector revenues rose 7.3 percent, reaching $2.1 trillion; and that global advertising expenditure rose nearly 4 percent, to $481 billion, the highest since 2007.
Seattle is partnering with Gigabit Squared and the University of Washington to launch a fiber network throughout 12 neighborhoods. The network will bring fiber to the home as well as to businesses, leveraging the city’s “excess fiber capacity,” and include wireless to expand the reach to other parts of the city, Mayor Mike McGinn said Thursday. Seattle shut down its free municipal wireless network in May (CD May 8 p12) and its fiber network in July.
Columbia Gas Transmission asked for an extension until July 1 to get its systems in compliance with the FCC’s private land mobile radio narrowbanding deadline. Parent NiSource said in a filing it has trouble completing the move to narrowband frequencies in the remote areas where the company operates. “Columbia Gas Transmission utilizes wired and wireless (terrestrial and satellite) infrastructure to support and manage the pipeline and storage systems,” the filing said (http://xrl.us/bn4yai). “The affected licenses are primarily used for critical communications and support numerous applications, including: telemetry and pipeline monitoring, command and control of pipeline infrastructure, and internal corporate emergency communications.” At this point, 38 Columbia Gas Transmission industrial/business pool licenses “still require additional hardware and/or modification to satisfy the FCC’s narrowbanding mandate,” the company said.
NFC and chip provider Inside Secure will buy Authentec-owned Embedded Security Solutions (ESS), which designs, develops and sells encryption-related security hardware and software, Inside Secure said Monday. Inside Secure will pay out $38 million in cash and up to an additional $10 million from post-closing transactions to acquire the company. The transaction is set to close by the end of 2012, Inside Secure said. The purchase will allow Inside Secure to “reinforce its position as a key player in the fast-growing security solutions market,” the company said in a news release. “ESS brings to INSIDE Secure complementary offerings for a complete security architecture, as well as additional solutions for securing both content ... and data exchange.” The deal will also give Inside Secure a wider customer base in the mobile, content provider and network industries. “By leveraging the strong capabilities of INSIDE Secure’s existing Mobile NFC and Digital Security businesses, the combined offer should lead to additional sales in high growth markets,” Inside Secure said (http://xrl.us/bn2jcq).
Rural call termination remains a huge problem, several organizations said, citing October survey data. More than 200 rural carriers from 39 states participated in this three-week survey, a joint venture of the National Exchange Carrier Association, the NTCA, OPASTCO and the Western Telecommunications Alliance, according to an NTCA release Thursday. Respondents reported termination complaints in 38 of the 39 states, with 4,691 complaints reported in March through August, a Thursday NECA ex parte filing said (http://xrl.us/bnzumy). Rural representatives see the problem as a “mounting epidemic,” the ex parte letter said, which described Wednesday meetings with the Wireline as well as Public Safety and Homeland Security bureaus. The survey showed 41 percent of respondents experienced an increase in complaints, 21 percent saw the rate remain steady, 26 percent saw a drop and 12 percent encountered no recent complaints. “It’s clear that regulators need to step in and step up to end such bad practices once and for all,” NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield said in a statement. WTA Executive Vice President Kelly Worthington urged FCC action, citing harm to consumers and businesses in rural areas. There’s “a collaborative test call project among rural carriers and members of the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions” under way, the ex parte notice revealed, noting that, while still not finalized, this “test call project is designed to identify and trouble-shoot call completion problems in real time.”
California redistricting following the 2010 Census proved to be a killer for Republican House Commerce Committee members in the 2012 election. At our deadline, Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., was trailing by more than 4,000 votes in her race against Democratic challenger Paul Ruiz, a physician (http://xrl.us/bnyhyp). Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Calif., was losing his reelection bid to former San Diego Councilman Scott Peters, a Democrat, by more than 600 votes. And Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., was losing to Ami Bera, a well-funded Democratic physician, by a margin of less than 200 votes, according to the California Secretary of State website (http://xrl.us/bnyhv6). House Judiciary Committee member Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., lost his tightly fought battle to Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., who challenged Berman after the two House veterans were re-districted into the same district (CD July 5 p6).