Dish Network gets a step closer to being able to resume importing signals of TV stations outside subscribers’ home markets with the same affiliation as the local broadcaster, in a draft FCC order delivering on part of this year’s Satellite TV Extension and Localism Act, agency officials said. They said the draft would certify the DBS provider as carrier of such distant TV signals because it’s carrying TV stations in all 210 markets. That would let Dish meet another part of STELA so it can resume carrying stations to subscribers who wouldn’t be able to get their local station with an antenna.
Conventional pay-TV operators should use new technologies such as 3D TV and whole-home DVRs to differentiate themselves from coming competition from online video and other sources, Yankee Group analysts said on a webinar Tuesday. They surveyed pay-TV subscribers about what might make them change service providers. Though price is still the main reason subscribers cite, new technologies are starting to emerge as a point of competition, said Vince Vittore. “More and more, these types of applications show up as reasons why people would consider moving their pay-TV subscription,” he said. “You can get some true differentiation among different types of pay-TV providers."
USTelecom is urging the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) to take a slow, careful approach to rules governing loans to extend broadband services in rural America. In a letter Tuesday to RUS Administrator Jonathan Adelstein, USTelecom President Walter McCormick said any rules should be “carefully considered and subjected to review and comment from the public prior to being finalized."
ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Arianespace will rely on a wider range of launch vehicles to give the company stability as the large satellite operators’ launch campaigns approach the tail end of launch cycles, said Clay Mowry, the U.S. president of Arianespace said on a panel at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics conference. While the company’s revenue has suffered in the past from the end of commercial satellite launch cycles, Arianespace is hoping that a bigger variety of launch vehicles to launch different types of satellites will help keep its manifest schedule full, he said. Maintaining a full manifest is the biggest challenge for the company, especially since it has so little effect on demand for launch services, he said.
Tests in Boulder, Colo., are studying questions raised as public safety systems make sure of LTE for the first 700 MHz network deployments, the manager of the National Institute of Standards and Testing’s Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) program said Tuesday in a speech at the FCC. Dereck Orr also said the program will run a second set of tests in Washington to examine a public safety network in a real city. NIST will also consider a permanent “testbed” in Boulder to take up problems as they appear, he said.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is taking flak for not moving as quickly as many had expected to carry out the National Broadband Plan, released in March to much fanfare. The August commission meeting included votes on only two items, concerning wireless backhaul and hearing-aid-compatible phones. The July meeting included votes on three. Even some Democrats have started to question why the FCC isn’t moving faster on the massive broadband plan and whether Genachowski is reluctant to make tough policy calls.
About 66 percent of Iowans had broadband at home in April, said a report put together by a nonprofit state affiliate of Connected Nation with Iowa’s Utilities Board and its Broadband Deployment Governance Board. The report, the first in a series that Connect Iowa plans on the topic, is to be formally released Wednesday. The document is based on data collected for an interactive map at http://connectiowa.org/mapping/interactive_map.php.
ANAHEIM, Calif. - The highly specialized capacity the U.S. government often needs poses a difficult situation for satellite operators and manufacturers, which place more value on generalized capacity, said industry executives during a panel on satellite communications acquisitions. More generalized capacity allows operators to switch among private industry users once a contract is up or business plans change, something far more difficult for satellites made for government use, said Kay Sears, president of Intelsat General, at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics conference. “Once you start to introduce the anti-jamming or military frequencies, then it becomes a risk to sell,” she said. As a result, different types of acquisition models are necessary to make sure the capacity is always there for military needs, she said. One way to improve the process would be to allow long-term contracts for satellite capacity, she said.
Clearwire’s new pay-as-you-go WiMAX mobile broadband service and devices target the 18-to-24-year-old city dwellers, executives told an investor conference Monday. The service, called Rover, doesn’t require contracts and is available in all of Clearwire’s 49 4G markets.
The FCC largely sat out retransmission consent talks between Time Warner Cable and Disney-owned ABC TV stations and cable networks including ESPN that the companies said are close to reaching a successful conclusion, according to commission officials. The ongoing contract negotiations drew widespread attention, with a large number of stations, channels and cable subscribers involved. They didn’t seem to lead to overt worry inside the FCC that a deal wouldn’t be reached, agency officials said.