Redesignating an N11 number for a national suicide prevention and mental health crisis hotline would be unwise considering their heavy use, NCTA said in FCC docket 18-336 Tuesday. It said its three largest members carried 556,879 611 calls during October and November, along with 369,044 211 calls, 363,935 311 calls and 92,196 511 calls. That shows the "complicated challenge" with consumer outreach and education related to some redesignation and the FCC should look instead at a non-N11 number, it said. ATIS opposes repurposing an N11 number (see 1812110033).
Cable manufacturer Chromis is taking orders for DisplayPort 1.4 active optical cables it’s billing as 8K-HDMI-ready. The pre-terminated cables support 8K60 display stream compression, 8K30 and 4K120 video, it said. No power is required, said the company.
Over-the-top services will speed their global expansion over the next five years, with more than 310 million connected households having at least one by 2024, blogged Parks Associates Wednesday. As content companies and service providers look to capture more revenue, Western Europe and other global markets will have more subscriber growth than the U.S., Parks said. Challenges for companies looking to expand globally include device preferences that vary by country and higher rates of mobile high-speed services with no access to fixed services, it said. U.S. households prefer smart TVs or streaming media devices, for instance. Content is the ultimate determination of a service’s success, but “small variations in pricing and user experience can cause significant adoption differences across countries,” said analyst Brett Sappington.
Though Comcast plans to launch its own video streaming service in the first half of 2020 (see 1901140030), it anticipates licensing content to other over-the-top players, depending on what prices it can command, executives said in a Q4 call. CEO Brian Roberts said Comcast's streaming aim is to better monetize online viewership by offering its content online "with a very light ad load." He said it should be scalable, taking it quickly to breakeven. Comcast said as it rolls out the offering internationally in some countries, it will launch subscription VOD only, without advertising, or employ other strategies. Consolidated revenue for the quarter, including Sky, was $27.9 billion, up 26 percent year over year. It's increasing the 2019 dividend by 10 percent to 84 cents a share. The operator ended 2018 with 25.1 million residential broadband customers, up from 23.9 million; 21 million residential video customers, down from 21.3 million; and 10.2 million voice customers, down from 10.3 million. Comcast closed on its Sky takeover in October (see 1810090028). Roberts said Comcast rolled out 1 GB to nearly all 58 million homes and businesses in its footprint in 2018. Many won't need those speeds, a panel heard later Wednesday (see 1901230053).
MPAA said it added a nontraditional studio member: Netflix. It lets the association "more effectively advocate for the global community of creative storytellers,” said MPAA CEO Charles Rivkin Tuesday. Existing members are Disney, Fox, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros. Netflix didn't comment.
Cable ISP Grande Communications and the music labels suing it for vicarious copyright infringements (see 1805070011) are butting heads over what evidence stemming from the Rightscorp copyright infringement detection system can be used as evidence. Grande is making "a desperate attempt" to suppress Rightscorp evidence it knows establishes its liability for contributory copyright infringement, UMG Recordings and the others said in a docket 17-cv-00365 opposition (in Pacer) posted Thursday in U.S. District Court in Austin. Grande's claims that all the evidence needed to show how Rightscorp's system operated has been destroyed are demonstrably false, the labels said. Grande, in its motion (in Pacer) for evidentiary sanctions filed earlier this month, said UMG and the others concluded some materials underlying Rightscorp's copyright infringement notices were irretrievably destroyed, which "fundamentally compromised" Grande's ability to evaluate Rightscorp's infringement allegations.
CBS and Viacom undoubtedly will combine this year, probably after Viacom and DirecTV ink a new distribution agreement, MoffettNathanson wrote investors Thursday. It said key details such as who would run CBS/Viacom are likely still being worked out, but a deal would improve the structural weaknesses of both by giving scale and bringing cost savings. It said those savings could translate into more money for CBS original content spending and for NFL rights fees. CBS and Viacom didn't comment.
Sixteen percent of U.S. broadband households acknowledge sharing passwords for video service accounts, blogged Parks Associates Wednesday. Fewer than a third are willing to use a non-password authentication method such as voice or thumbprint, vs. 54 percent willing or very willing to use the password method once and save it on a device, Parks said. “The password concept is ingrained in consumers' conception of the online video experience," said analyst Billy Nayden. The push to quash sharing is driving initiatives to “grade” interactions based on prior user behavior, using data points such as geography, time and watching behavior, Nayden said. “The authentication process will become virtually invisible to users, except when they attempt to access services outside their normal behavior.” He noted "poor experiences with authentication and personalization technologies will drive consumers back to traditional methods and increase churn for video services.”
Wurl launched AdSpring, a server-based advertising insertion technology for connected TVs that lets video producers plug in mid-roll ads on linear and on-demand programming. Connected TV gets more than half of over-the-top viewing time, and AdSpring is said to give video producers a way to fill ad inventory with targeted messaging. It’s for video producers, priced as pay-as-you-go; producers pay for ads they insert. Video producers schedule location and duration of ad breaks and personally targeted, data-measured ads are stitched into the live video stream, Wurl said. AdSpring is pre-integrated with connected TV platforms in products from Samsung, Roku, Apple TV and others.
The idea that the Competitive Enterprise Institute should have predicted the FCC was considering broadband network overbuild conditions in OK'ing Charter buying Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, and that not doing so means CEI can't petition for reconsideration, is an abuse of discretion and doesn't mean an appellate court can't review the unlawful conditions, the group said Monday in a docket 18-1281 appellant brief (in Pacer). CEI said in October it would appeal those conditions and the agency order rejecting CEI's petition for recon (see 1810090044). It said FCC arguments CEI lacks standing because it didn't suffer injury by the acquisition ignores how it has demonstrated injury, and individual appellants joining in the appeal satisfy those demands since Commissioner Mike O'Rielly's dissent recognized consumers of the combining companies would be hurt by the conditions. One of those individual appellants, Jean-Claude Gruffat, is a CEI board member, it said. The FCC didn't comment Tuesday.