Surfing the Internet from home has continued to increase over the last 5 years, a study by the Cable TV Assn. for Mktg. (CTAM) found. The report said 38% of adults surfed the net from home in 1999, while 54% did so today. PC ownership increased to 62% of all households in 2003 from 53% in 2002. More than 1/3 (38%) of respondents said they had a personal computer and TV in the same room, up from 31% in 2000, 7% said they planned to buy a high-definition TV in the next year and 11% said they planned to get high-speed Internet access. The research was based on a telephone survey conducted by Centris Oct. 16-21. Among the respondents, 65% had cable, 29% with premium packages, and 18% had digital. The survey also included 20% who said they had satellite TV. The study had a 3.5% margin of error.
Journal Bcst. Group bought its 4th and 5th stations in the Springfield, Mo., market. Journal bought KZRQ(FM) Mt. Vernon and KSGF(FM) Ash Grove from Citadel Bcstg. for $5 million, a spokeswoman said. The company now owns 38 radio stations and 6 TV stations in 11 states.
The Utah PSC declined to make specific telecom policy recommendations for the 2004 legislature, but urged the lawmakers to apply certain procompetition criteria to any telecom legislation proposed next year. The PSC said lawmakers should consider whether the proposed legislation would: (1) Promote telecom competition or roll back competition’s progress. (2) Spur industry consolidation or investment. (3) Create unfair advantages for any particular competitor or class of competitors. The PSC said Qwest still had an 80% overall market share. By service, the PSC said the state’s 14 operational CLECs had a 38% share of business lines and an 11% share of residential lines. The PSC said a potential competitive problem was emerging with carriers seeking to set up situational monopolies through exclusive contracts with property developers and owners with the intent of discouraging rivals’ access to the eventual end users.
BellSouth (BS) asked the FCC to allow ILECs to recover the costs to implement wireless local number portability (LNP) through a federal charge on end users. Besides seeking a declaratory ruling, the company in an FCC filing late Fri. asked for a waiver of the recovery limits for end-user LNP charges, which have been in effect for wireline LNP since 1999. With the Nov. 24 deadline for wireless LNP in the top 100 markets a week away, BS estimated it had spent $38 million to enable wireless porting.
The International Bureau’s satellite forum planned for Jan. will look at how satellites are being used in rural areas to reach the rest of the U.S., said IB Chief Donald Abelson. His comments were a part of a briefing the bureau hosted Thurs. The Jan. 28 forum, “Making The Rural Connection,” will look at several services, including public safety, telemedicine, learning, and entertainment services, he said. Abelson spoke briefly about the satellite licensing rules which went into effect in Aug.: “The goal of the process is to be efficient… and to get service to consumers as quickly as we can.” He said software glitches that showed up in the system during the first hours of filing, like missing orbit locations and frequency bands, “have been taken care of.” Abelson said the duplicate EchoStar applications weren’t created by an FCC software glitch: “As I understand it… [they] filed 38 duplicates from 3 different locations around the [U.S.]. Once they realized they were duplicates, they withdrew them.” Responding to a question about the DBS auction item that was removed from last month’s FCC agenda meeting, Abelson said the bureau was still discussing the remaining issues with the 8th floor.
In the latest round of reports to the FCC on Enhanced 911 implementation, wireless carriers outlined progress, but Verizon Wireless said public safety agencies had “much more work to do” to reach a target of 100% deployment of E911 location capability by 2005. Verizon Wireless told the FCC it had rolled out E911 Phase 2 service to 128 additional public safety answering points (PSAPs) and Phase 1 service to another 331 since its last quarterly report, and now provided that location capability to 2,306 PSAPs serving 145 million residents. It also told the FCC it sold 19 GPS-capable handset models that could transmit location information for 911 callers. As of Oct. 15, Verizon Wireless said only 2,700 PSAPs (38% of the total in the U.S.) had requested Phase 1 E911 service and only 1,350 (19%) had sought Phase 2 information. “Verizon Wireless has successfully finished deploying E911 service to 85 percent of those requesting Phase 1 and to 61 percent of those requesting the Phase 2 service thus far,” it said. Separately, Nextel told the FCC it had deployed 353 PSAPs with Phase 2 services in the last 13 months and Phase 1 to 933. It said it had made 2 Assisted-GPS-capable handsets available in the last reporting period for a total of 4. “Nonetheless, the complexities of deploying Phase 2 technology, as well as in some cases PSAP readiness and PSAP ‘one-off’ operational or technical requests, create challenges requiring resources and cooperation among all parties to facilitate efficient deployments,” Nextel said. “Additionally, there continue to be literally thousands of PSAPs from whom Nextel has received neither a Phase 1 nor a Phase 2 valid request. As a result, Nextel’s ability to get E911 service to its customers is sharply curtailed by the readiness of many PSAPs throughout the country.” Among the issues that affect PSAP readiness, Nextel cited inadequate funding at the local, state and federal levels. “And given the status quo, the PSAPs likely will not be ready in the near future,” it said. Cingular said that in line with an Oct. 12 deadline for Phase 2 deployment, it rolled out Phase 2 technology at more than 1,600 cell sites as required by the FCC, “giving priority to fulfilling pending PSAP requests.” Cingular said that as of Oct. 30, it had rolled out Phase 2 technology at more than 2,000 cell sites in advance of a Dec. 12, 2003, FCC milestone. On its TDMA networks, Cingular said it received 479 requests for Phase 2 service, of which 460 were “valid.” It said it had deployed a solution in a service area that covered 393 of those requests: “Unfortunately, of the 393 deployments, 102 PSAPs (26%) still are not ready to accept the Phase 2 data.” Cingular told the Commission that many PSAPs weren’t able to complete end-to-end testing of the Phase 2 solution because of readiness problems, including a lack of upgraded equipment and improper connectivity between the PSAP’s automatic location information database and its equipment.
Cablevision’s Rainbow DBS operation is “just days” away from hitting 1,000 installations of its new Voom satellite service and is working to resolve software glitches in its set-top receiver, Exec. Sales & Mktg. Vp William Casamo told us in an interview Thurs. at the SkyForum conference in N.Y.C.
AT&T revealed Tues. it had overstated profits by $125 million in 2001 and 2002 after several of its employees had hidden accounting errors related to access and connection fees it paid to other companies. Announcing the financial results for the 3rd quarter, the company said it had fired 4 employees, “one lower level and one midlevel” and their immediate supervisors, responsible for the mistakes.
About 9 million households are likely to buy high- definition TV (HDTV) products over the next 18 months and another 30 million consider themselves likely purchasers within the next 3 years, CEA said in its latest consumer survey on the DTV transition. The study, “HDTV Consumer Awareness Update,” was conducted by CEA’s for-profit research arm, eBrain. “More than half of all survey respondents said they view the HDTV transition as a positive. This supports our projections that millions more consumers will purchase an HDTV in the near future,” CEA Pres. Gary Shapiro said. However, he said the survey also revealed a degree of consumer confusion about the transition, the technology and HDTV reception requirements. The survey, based on a random sample of more than 1,000 U.S. consumers, found that they were somewhat confused about the products needed to view HDTV. For instance, 74% didn’t know they often needed a set- top box to watch HDTV shows and 78% didn’t know they needed an HDTV-enabled recorder to record them. The research found 54% weren’t aware they couldn’t watch all TV shows in the HD format because many programs were not yet broadcast in HDTV. Shapiro urged all industries with a stake in the transition to increase efforts toward educating consumers and “delivering what consumers want out of this transition. According to our survey, they want digital cable-ready HDTV and they want movies and sports programming.” The survey found 54% of respondents wanted the ability to plug their cable line directly into an HDTV, saying they would be more likely to buy an HDTV set if that were the case. The research also found that 38% would be most interested in or excited about HDTV movies, followed by 21% for sports coverage. Shapiro urged broadcasters to provide “compelling programming,” something broadcasters say they already are doing. The results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
BellSouth wants cellular set-makers to incorporate Wi-Fi capability into cellphones so the devices can connect to a home Wi-Fi network automatically, BellSouth Chief Technology Officer Bill Smith said in a J.D. Power panel at the USTA convention in Las Vegas. He said that would allow individuals within a household to use their cellphones at home without using cellular minutes, since the Wi-Fi would connect through BellSouth’s DSL service. Motorola already has started making Wi-Fi-capable handsets, he said, and others are looking at them. One concern has been cost -- adding Wi-Fi initially increased the cost of a handset by $20, but Smith said the incremental cost soon might be as little as $5. He said as much as 40% of cell minutes were used within the home already, because of using cells for long distance and because some members of households used them as their primary phones. Partly as a result, he said, counting access lines is becoming less relevant. Smith also said BellSouth expected to respond to higher broadband data rates offered by cable operators such as Comcast by introducing a 3 Mbps DSL, up from 1.5 Mbps, offering by early next year. He said most of BellSouth’s network already was technically capable of 3 Mbps.