CenturyLink and Qwest continued to see access line loss and a slowdown in Internet subscribers in Q3. The companies are waiting for approvals from 10 states and federal regulators of their plans to merge.
The wave of incoming freshmen legislators in the House had little early help from the telecom, media and technology industries, an analysis of campaign finance data shows. Among non-incumbent candidates who won seats in the House or Senate, only a handful received more than $5,000 in direct contributions from the large political action committees associated with those industries by October. We looked at contributions made to candidates by PACs including those of USTelecom, NCTA, NAB, CTIA, Verizon, AT&T, CWA, Qwest, Comcast, Disney Employees, Clear Channel, Google and Microsoft, based on Federal Elections Commission data compiled by CQ Moneyline. Contributions made within the final eight weeks of the campaign aren’t yet reflected in the available data.
Republicans won almost all races Tuesday in the eight states with utility commission seats up for grabs. That means Republican majority commissions in many of these states.
A GOP wave claimed longtime telecom heavyweight Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., and other Democrats in rural states, as Republicans seized control of the House Tuesday. The Republicans also won seats in the Senate, but the Democrats maintained power there. The GOP gain is seen as bad news for net neutrality supporters, while the loss of House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Boucher is a setback for rural telcos who supported his efforts to overhaul the Universal Service Fund.
Nexstar and Sinclair TV stations sold a record amount of ads to political candidates, their supporters and issue advertisers in the run up to Tuesday’s elections, their executives told investors Wednesday after reporting Q3 results. Both companies expect their total 2010 political sales to exceed those of 2008 despite the lack of a presidential election this year. “The category is just absolutely explosive,” said Steve Marks, chief operating officer of Sinclair’s TV division.
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Cybersecurity officials from the National Security Agency and ICANN agreed Wednesday that infrastructure measures such as using the DNSSec specifications are the most efficient ways to protect government and other networks. But they disagreed sharply at the Military Communications Conference over the benefits of introducing strong authentication.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski faces tough oversight from the new Congress starting in January, after Republicans picked up as many as 70 seats in the House Tuesday. That was more than the 55-seat swing that gave Republicans control of the House in 1994. But it’s unclear whether Genachowski will face the kind of Commerce Committee investigation Kevin Martin faced when Republicans lost control of the House four years ago (CD Sept 14 p1). The Republican takeover of the House also could have a long-lasting effect on FCC policy, particularly Genachowski proposals on net neutrality and broadband reclassification. Genachowski was an adviser to former Chairman Reed Hundt when Democrats lost control of both the House and Senate in 1994.
Split control of Congress may mean it takes longer for some telecom legislation to pass, but if the past is precedent, bills still will be approved, industry officials said. With Republicans taking over the House and Democrats keeping their majority in the Senate, the initial focus will be on budget issues, they said. House Commerce Committee members initially will try to undo health care and energy legislation championed by the administration and passed in the 111th Congress, some said.
The FCC media ownership review due to Congress in 2010 has been further delayed (CD May 18 p4), and a final order is unlikely until the second half of next year, agency officials said. They said the reasons include a lag in getting from Congress money that the commission needed to pay for outsiders such as professors to study media ownership (CD Aug 9 p6). The FCC’s focus on broadband, the difficulty of completing the quadrennial review on time -- which has never been done before -- and career Media Bureau staffers focusing on reviewing Comcast’s multibillion dollar purchase of control in NBC Universal are other explanations, agency and industry officials said.
The Coalition of Concerned Utilities criticized the pole-attachment provisions of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan, saying the commission’s recommendations were so “one-sided” that they can’t support any FCC actions, “let alone ones that potentially impact the safe and efficient operation of electric utility distribution systems across the country.”