SAN FRANCISCO -- Consumer awareness, prohibitive costs and Food and Drug Administration regulations are hurdles to the mainstreaming of the nascent digital health market, said panelists at the “Health and Fitness Tech” session at the 2012 CEA Industry Forum Tuesday. While consumers are beginning to adopt mobile health technology, there are still major barriers to entry, panelists said.
Career FCC staff, trying to finish media ownership rules, are set to release statistics on ownership of all U.S. radio and TV stations to include those results in the forthcoming draft order, agency officials said. They said the Media Bureau may release, as soon as Thursday, aggregate information on what Form 323 biennial ownership reports say about who holds various classes of broadcast licensees. That data from 2009 and 2011 -- to be presented in aggregate form for the first time and after delays releasing it -- would then update the record, agency officials said. Bureau staff appear to be nearing an end to drafting the quadrennial media ownership order that was due to have been finished in 2010, agency officials told us this week.
SAN FRANCISCO -- Consumer awareness, prohibitive costs and Food and Drug Administration regulations are hurdles to the mainstreaming of the nascent digital health market, said panelists at the “Health and Fitness Tech” session at the 2012 CEA Industry Forum Tuesday. While consumers are beginning to adopt mobile health technology, there are still major barriers to entry, panelists said.
Major cable operator and programmer incumbents remain at odds with municipalities and newer entrants over video regulation by the FCC. Also shown in replies to a commission inquiry for the agency’s next multichannel video programming distributor report to Congress, ABC affiliates and Comcast still differ on whether online video distributors (OVDs) should be considered MVPDs by the commission. Commenters generally agreed that OVDs have increased competition for pay TV. Local franchise authorities (LFA) want more competition, as companies including Comcast said there’s never been more rivalry. OVDs including Netflix, in a class of products initial filings agreed complement MVPD service (CD Sept 12 p7), aren’t a substitute for pay TV, Comcast said: They “nonetheless have had a significant impact on MVPD behavior and innovation."
Sirius XM pays a fair royalty rate based on a situation “entirely different” from that of “pure radio” that’s dependent on the SoundExchange performance rights group, Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei said Wednesday at the company’s investor conference in New York.
President Barack Obama signed an executive order (here) authorizing new sanctions against Iran and Syria. The new order prohibits foreign subsidiaries of U.S. entities from knowingly violating the Iranian Transactions Regulations, E.O. 13599, section 5 of E.O. 13622, or Section 12 of the new E.O., and provides for civil penalties on the U.S. parent company for such violations. The Treasury Department issued a FAQ document (here) detailing the impact of the order.
The U.S. government and American companies shouldn’t do business with Huawei and ZTE, a House Intelligence Committee report “strongly” recommended Monday. Rather than those two China-based telecom equipment makers, it said U.S. companies should consider seeking other vendors, because there are long-term security risks associated with doing business with the companies. Huawei and ZTE failed to provide sufficient information during the course of the committee’s 11-month investigation to assuage concerns that the Chinese government could influence the companies to use their equipment to spy or start cyber attacks on U.S. entities, the report said (http://xrl.us/bns9tg). “Based on available classified and unclassified information, Huawei and ZTE cannot be trusted to be free of foreign state influence and thus pose a security threat to the United States and to our systems.” Both companies have said the Chinese government has no influence on their business, and Huawei said the report reached a “pre-determined” conclusion.
The U.S. government and American companies shouldn’t do business with Huawei and ZTE, a House Intelligence Committee report “strongly” recommended Monday. Rather than those two China-based telecom equipment makers, it said U.S. companies should consider seeking other vendors, because there are long-term security risks associated with doing business with the companies. Huawei and ZTE failed to provide sufficient information during the course of the committee’s 11-month investigation to assuage concerns that the Chinese government could influence the companies to use their equipment to spy or start cyber attacks on U.S. entities, the report said (http://xrl.us/bns9tg). “Based on available classified and unclassified information, Huawei and ZTE cannot be trusted to be free of foreign state influence and thus pose a security threat to the United States and to our systems.” Both companies have said the Chinese government has no influence on their business, and Huawei said the report reached a “pre-determined” conclusion.
The FCC released a further notice of proposed rulemaking (http://xrl.us/bnsshn) Friday seeking comment on a series of questions about its program access rules. The notice was part of a broader rulemaking in which the commission let a ban on exclusive contracts between cable operators and the networks they own expire. In its place, the order adopted a case-by-case framework under Section 628(b) of the Communications Act for evaluating whether such arrangements hurt competition, with a rebuttable presumption that exclusive deals involving regional sports networks are considered unfair, industry and FCC officials said.
Judges had questions in the three major areas of Time Warner Cable’s challenge of the FCC’s ability to require continued carriage of an independent channel while an indie’s program carriage complaint is before the agency. The constitutionality, administrative process and statutory authority of the FCC to require standstill carriage were extensively raised in an oral argument Thursday, said communications lawyers in attendance allied with each side in Time Warner Cable v. FCC. Those issues were dwelled on in briefs at the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (CD Oct 4 p3). Onlookers said oral argument was notable for running more than quadruple the amount of time the 2nd Circuit had scheduled.