Cable ISPs enjoy regulatory fee favoritism from a court decision that the Cable Act preempts states and localities from levying cable regulatory fees on non-cable services provided using cable networks (see 210526003), said localities and allies in a petition for writ of certiorari filed Monday with the Supreme Court. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision is at odds with an Oregon Supreme Court ruling, and that conflict needs resolution, said the petitions, which include Eugene, Oregon; Boston; Fairfax County, Virginia; Maryland's Anne Arundel, Howard and Prince George's counties; Hawaii; and NATOA. They urged SCOTUS to provide clarity on implied preemption. The FCC and NCTA didn't comment. NATOA General Counsel Nancy Werner told us the FCC's cable local franchise authority order and the 6th Circuit's subsequent upholding of much of it complicated LFA renewal negotiations, with parties having to negotiate for different scenarios, depending on what the 6th Circuit might do. She said localities have significant concerns about how the LFA order might affect budgets, but the 6th Circuit's ruling that calculating franchise fees must be based on cable operators' marginal costs instead of market value of what's provided softened the blow. Many local franchise obligations probably have no marginal cost to cable operators, she said.
Matt Daneman
Matt Daneman, Senior Editor, covers pay TV, cable broadband, satellite, and video issues and the Federal Communications Commission for Communications Daily. He joined Warren Communications in 2015 after more than 15 years at the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, where he covered business among other issues. He also was a correspondent for USA Today. You can follow Daneman on Twitter: @mdaneman
Charter Communications will launch a field trial early next year that pairs its Wi-Fi service with citizens broadband radio service (CBRS) band small cells for mobile subscribers, letting it offload wireless traffic that otherwise would be on Verizon's network through the companies' mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) agreement. The test will involve thousands of pole-mounted small cellsites in an unnamed designated market area, CEO Tom Rutledge said Friday as the company announced Q3 results. Charter bought 210 licenses in 106 counties in the 2020 CBRS auction. Rutledge said Wi-Fi with CBRS has "an opportunity to make a significant change" in how much traffic is on Charter's network vs. using the MVNO.
Comcast continued a 20-year run adding at least a million residential broadband subscribers a year, though its Q3 2021 adds were slower than Q3 2019, the company said Thursday announcing quarterly results. It added 281,000 residential broadband customers during the quarter, lower than the 359,000 added in Q3 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. Comcast Cable CEO Dave Watson said growth of lower-income subscribers was slower due to wireless competition drawn by government programs like the emergency broadband benefit and lower churn across broadband providers meaning "less jump balls, where we do well." With Comcast having 1.1 million broadband adds so far this year, it still has a long runway of future connectivity growth, he said. New Street Research's Jonathan Chaplin wrote investors that the softer broadband adds weren't surprising and Wall Street consensus is a further slowdown from the pace of growth in this Q3 is likely. Comcast ended the quarter with 29.4 million residential broadband customers, up 1.6 million year over year, 17.8 million residential video customers, down 1.4 million, and 9.2 million residential voice customers, down 500,000. It has 3.7 million wireless lines, up 1.1 million. Revenue of $30.3 billion was up $4.8 billion. EO Brian Roberts said Comcast sees big potential to gain share in business services with its purchase earlier this month of software-defined networking and cloud platforms company Masergy. It said the 285,000 wireless customers added in Q3 was its best quarter since the 2017 launch of the wireless business. Roberts said the low penetration by its wireless offerings among its broadband customers means its wireless business has room to grow. MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett wrote in a note that Comcast seems to be pointing to a slowdown in broadband growth in Q4.
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline "needs considerably more resources" at its crisis centers to respond to text and chat volume now, and will need more staffing and training when the ability to text to 988 is fully implemented nationwide, Lifeline administrator Vibrant Emotional Health emailed us Thursday. The FCC will vote Nov. 18 on setting a July 16 deadline for carriers to support texting to 988 (see 2110270049). The draft order was released Thursday.
Text providers would need to support texting to 988 when the nationwide suicide prevention hotline goes live on July 16, under proposed rules to be voted on at the FCC's Nov, 18 meeting. Also on the agenda announced Wednesday are an enhanced competition incentive program aimed at making more spectrum available for small carriers and tribal entities, a proposal to let broadcasters verify the patterns for FM directional antennas using computer modeling, and approval of U.S. market access for a French microsatellite constellation. See our bulletin here.
Last year's White House cybersecurity space policy directive (see 2009040042) helped raise awareness of the issue, but public sector and government implementation has been lagging, said George Washington University Space Policy Institute Director Scott Pace on a CompTIA panel Tuesday. CompTIA Senior Director-Public Sector David Logsdon said the National Cybersecurity Center's Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center plans to report in November on perceived gaps in the space policy directive. Pace said he had hoped space agencies would have started talking more explicitly in acquisitions and requests for proposals about cybersecurity expectations. Until such principles start being part of competitive considerations in acquisitions, "it's hard to get companies to start taking that seriously," he said, noting interagency discussions are needed. He said government should be more aggressive in industry outreach with Department of Homeland Security threat briefings, and more active in international engagement via standards bodies. Added Logsdon, “If we don't do it, the Chinese will." The space policy directive deliberately took "a soft approach" instead of a prescriptive one, to get grassroots buy-in, said Lockheed Martin Vice President-Technology Policy and Regulation Jennifer Warren. She said there's more to be done in adoption and implementation, but the directive had some success in raising awareness about the need to think of cybersecurity beyond just satellites to the broader ecosystem including earth stations and supply chains. Timelines for implementation should be aspirational, with voluntary steps companies could take "to get that gold star." A lot of focus has been on technical issues like standards and nomenclature, but more thought should go to nontechnical issues of personnel security and insider threats, Pace said. "Every traitor in prison had a security clearance." Viasat Government Systems Chief Technology Officer Phil Mar urged paying more attention to smaller, emerging space companies, where cybersecurity often is a last-minute concern.
Multiple states likely won't have adopted legislation on rollout of 988 services when the suicide prevention hotline goes live nationwide July 16, mental health policy advocates told us. That could result in impeded service for states that haven't set up funding mechanisms for call centers to handle the increased volume of call traffic expected. Some state legislators that faced opposition this year after carriers raised fee concerns hope to pass bills in 2022.
Smaller players and new entrants in the commercial space sector need to be aware of cybersecurity threats and make cybersecurity a focus when designing their systems, panelists said Friday at an FCBA cybersecurity committee webinar. Space cybersecurity needs to be holistic, looking at systems from ground stations and antennas to spectrum and software, not just the satellites themselves, said Jaisha Wray, an NTIA associate administrator who until last year was National Security Council Cybersecurity Directorate international cyber policy director. Wray said standard cybersecurity practices can secure space systems, but an added complication is that space systems are physically difficult to access once deployed and cybersecurity activities must be done remotely. That's a big reason cybersecurity must be integrated into system design, she said. Panelists were bearish on cybersecurity regulation. "The second you write a prescriptive regulation ... it's already too late," with hackers and malware ready to circumvent rules, said Inmarsat Senior Vice President-Global Regulatory Donna Bethea-Murphy. She said many operators design systems to be encrypted and secure and comply with such standards. Wray said development of the White House's 2020 cybersecurity space policy (see 2009040042) focused on trying to ensure following voluntary principles. The U.S. can "take it on the road," talk to international partners, make suggestions to other governments and collaborate. Wray said the State Department has been carrying this forward. She said international companies joining the Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center is a hopeful sign.
U.S. airlines will likely start offering free in-flight connectivity in the next three to five years, which will help drive the satellite aeronautical connectivity market, said SES CEO Steve Collar Wednesday in a company webinar. Data capacity on SES-17, to launch at week's end, is aimed especially at the North American aviation market, he said. He said SES-17 and O3b's forthcoming mPower low earth orbit constellation will be connected, with customers moving from one to the other seamlessly, and that hybridization is SES' first step toward a global interoperable network. Northern Sky Research analyst Brad Grady said 50% of global satellite data capacity demand will likely be from the Americas by 2030, with demand for mobility capacity expected to grow 17-fold, government capacity demand growing 19-fold, and enterprise capacity demand growing 12-fold. Grady said there were 3 Tbps of geostationary satellite capacity and 0.3 Tbps of non-geotatioanry capacity available worldwide in 2020, and that should grow to 32 Tbps of GEO capacity and 140 Tbps of NGSO capacity by 2030.
Video piracy is worsening, with viewers often not aware they're watching pirated content, and some parts of the streaming ecosystem aren't focusing on the problem, experts said Tuesday at a video piracy symposium. Piracy was already a concern when the COVID-19 pandemic set in, resulting in more video consumption and increased piracy, said Steven Hawley, Piracy Monitor managing director.