The number of people of color in management jobs in the communications industry is expected to remain steady next year, while the number of women in management is predicted to decline “if current promotion and departure rates continue,” said a news release Tuesday from the National Association for Multi-ethnicity in Communications (NAMIC) and Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT). The diversity predictions are among the results of NAMIC and WICT’s 2013 workforce diversity survey, which gathered data from 25 companies representing 59 percent of the “cable telecommunications industry workforce,” the release said. The study showed increases in the number of full-time employees and entry/mid-level managers who are women and people of color. However, promotion rates for people of color have declined, the release said. “Representation of people of color on boards of directors remains a challenge with little to no growth occurring since the 2011 NAMIC survey,” said the release. The study also said the promotion rates in management and executives levels were lower for women than men, and that the turnover rate “for first level managers is higher for women than their male counterparts,” the release said. “The data indicates that the number of women in management will decline over the next five years because of the promotion and turnover rate disparity between women and men,” said WICT President Maria Brennan. The industry has “much to do” to increase the representation of minorities in management, said Alicin Williamson, interim executive leader of NAMIC.

U.S. Cellular co-owner Telephone and Data Systems said Tuesday it bought MSN Communications for $40 million. The deal “amplifies” TDS’s IT solutions provider capabilities within its TDS Hosted & Managed Services subsidiary, which MSN Communications will become part of. MSN Communications offers products and services related to the planning, engineering, procurement, installation and management of IT infrastructure hardware systems, TDS said.

Nielsen’s address-based sampling is more effective to measure TV ratings than sampling of landline phone-based households, said a Council for Research Excellence study released Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1fgAWxX). In November 2008, Nielsen introduced address-based sampling to get more coverage of TV ratings in the U.S., said Michael Link, Nielsen chief methodologist, at an event hosted by CRE in New York. “If we did not introduce this sampling, half of the households in our ratings would have disappeared,” said Link. The three TV markets included in the study were Dallas-Fort Worth, Albuquerque-Santa Fe, and Paducah, Ky.-Cape Girardeau, Mo.-Harrisburg, Ill. Of the households surveyed, 38.2 percent did not have a landline phone and had at least one cellphone, said the study. The percentage of adult heads-of-households who use only a cellphone has increased from 46 percent in June 2009 to 62 percent in December 2012, said the study. Of 27 households that did not have a TV, 63 percent had a computer with high-speed Internet, 41 percent used the Internet on a cellphone, and 38 percent viewed TV on a computer or tablet, said the study. The random error in local broadcast and cable ratings is falling outside the traditional 10 percent benchmark error range used for advertising negotiations, said CRE in a separate study (http://bit.ly/1b8CHbx). The relative error for total-day in all diary-only household ratings for all TV stations falls in the 10 percent benchmark 11.3 percent of the time with primetime ratings in the benchmark 26 percent of the time, weekday evening (18.1 percent) and late newscasts (20.7 percent). The study encompassed six May “sweeps” periods dating back to 2001, and it includes relative error ranges for all stations, affiliates, households and demographics, homes using TV by daypart and demographics and relative error by daypart, demographics and effective sample size, said the study.

When the public switched telephone network sunsets, the telecom industry can realize billions of kilowatt-hours in power savings per year, said David Walsh, CEO of GenBand. The infrastructure that powers the network carries huge expenses that, unlike the prices of other elements of the telecom industry, have only increased, Walsh told the TIA Conference in National Harbor, Md. For every dollar spent on PSTN networks, it takes at least another dollar to cool them, he said. “While we're seeing optimization in every other area” of the telecom industry, “all we're seeing is the cost of energy going up,” Walsh said. Right now the PSTN consumes 12 billion kilowatt-hours of power each year, Walsh said. A 70 percent reduction in power usage would save 8.4 billion kWh annually. “These are thousands of generators and elimination of the need for lots of new power plants if we could just sunset the PSTN,” Walsh said. That equates to $1.3 billion in savings annually, which is “enough money to completely transform most of the networks that we're living with,” he said. “There’s a huge opportunity now to move from the old legacy networks to a whole completely new infrastructure,” financed by savings from upgrading the infrastructure, he said. “What we're calling this is a sunrise of next-generation networks.”

Several Utah broadcasters and Fox are seeking a preliminary injunction against Internet streaming service Aereo that would bar it from transmitting copyrighted material in most of the U.S., according to filings in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City. “Aereo’s conduct is copyright infringement and should be preliminarily enjoined,” said a motion filed by Community Television of Utah, KUTV and Fox. Aereo launched in Utah six weeks ago, and has been retransmitting broadcasts from Salt Lake City stations KSTU, KUTV and KMYU in St. George, said the filings. Aereo’s service undermines the broadcasters’ ability to conduct retransmission consent negotiations, said the filings. The broadcasters have asked the court to grant an injunction that would apply everywhere in the U.S. except for the jurisdiction of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, where Aereo won its challenge against a previous injunction earlier this year (CD April 2 ). Hearst is also seeking an injunction against Aereo in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts for its Boston service (CD July 17 p6). In addition to Salt Lake City and Boston, Aereo streams broadcast TV in New York, Atlanta, Miami, Houston and Dallas, said a release from Aereo. The injunction sought against Aereo in Utah is similar to one granted against competing service FilmOn X in Washington, D.C., U.S. District Court in September (CD Sept 9 p18). FilmOn -- formerly called Aereokiller -- appealed that injunction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit last month, and is awaiting a decision on another appealed injunction in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in California (CD Aug 29 p5). Aereo is also still in the midst of the case in U.S. District Court in New York that originally spawned the injunction that it successfully challenged in the 2nd Circuit. An Aereo spokeswoman said in an email that Fox had failed in its previous attempts to get an injunction in New York and the broadcaster is “simply not entitled to repeated do-overs on this matter.” Aereo will respond “to this latest attempt at a mulligan in due course,” said the spokeswoman. A New York magistrate judge ruled Monday that Aereo founder Chet Kanojia and Chief Technical Officer Joseph Lipowski will have to submit to an additional hour of deposition from plaintiffs ABC and WNET and will have to answer questions about Aereo’s patents. Aereo had asked Judge Henry Pitman to reconsider the ruling, citing attorney-client privilege and other arguments. However, Pitman denied the request for reconsideration. “It is beyond question that the attorney client privilege protects only communications with counsel, not the underlying facts that are communicated to counsel,” said Pitman.

Smartphone and tablet adoption have had double-digit percentage gains from 2012, said a Frank N. Magid Associates study released Tuesday (http://prn.to/19dOjZs). Seventy-four percent of American mobile consumers now use a smartphone and 52 percent of mobile consumers use a tablet, said the study. Triple-digit gains have also occurred in smartphone and tablet content activities since 2012, said the study. More users are watching TV on their smartphones (44 percent) and tablets (61 percent) regularly, said the study. Video users are now using their smartphones (45 percent) and tablets (71 percent) to watch long-form TV, movie and sports content, said the study. Half of tablet users are also using their tablets to shop online, with an average annual e-commerce spend of $230 per user on tablets, said the study, which was based on a sample of 2,500 cell or smartphone users ages 12-64 collected between Aug. 12-24.

Government needs a united “team cyber,” said National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander, also commander of U.S. Cyber Command, at a Tuesday Politico event on cybersecurity. He was responding to criticisms that there should be more separation between the NSA and the U.S. Cyber Command operations. He said a “dual-hatted” NSA and U.S. Cyber Command leadership is necessary for unity and threat response, and argued against splitting the roles. Alexander also backed a renewed focus on the facts of the surveillance and cybersecurity debate, criticizing former contractor Edward Snowden for hurting the “trust deficit” both within the U.S. and with its allies. “The American people must know the facts. If they knew the facts about the care that NSA goes to to protect our civil liberties and privacy,” said Alexander, they wouldn’t be so worried. NSA officials are doing exactly what they were tasked with doing under the constitutional oath they took, he said, defending the country and its civil liberties and privacy. “We take great pride in that,” he said. Alexander also said ISPs are the “first line of defense” for cyberattack, and commended them for filtering out attacks and other malware.

Getting the right procurement policies for equipment and devices will be critical as FirstNet is built, said Brian Hendricks, Nokia Solutions and Networks technology policy head, on a panel late Monday at the Telecommunications Industry Association conference in National Harbor, Md. Hendricks said last year’s spectrum law, which created FirstNet, made clear how important purchasing policies will be to the success of the network. “The law was very specific about avoiding some of the policy of the past which allowed for proprietary solutions, which puts you on a very, very shallow innovation curve and it’s very costly,” he said. “But the procurement environment itself must be one that encourages robust competition and choice.” For FirstNet to be a success, “you want as many software and equipment players coming to the table to compete for this business as you possibly can get,” he said. It isn’t clear how many carriers will participate in the network, Hendricks said. “The role we have played in our outreach to FirstNet and to government partners has been about how you can keep the cost down and part of that, we believe, fundamentally, is having as many people participating bringing infrastructure to the table as possible.” What exactly “the business model is going to be for FirstNet I think is still forming,” said Jeffrey Marks, Alcatel-Lucent senior counsel. “We want to bring as much to the table as possible, and it may be that one national carrier may not have every geographic area covered. You need utilities. You need rural carriers.” Motorola Solutions is ready to work with public safety on FirstNet, said Catherine Seidel, chief-global spectrum and regulatory policy. “Certainly there is a desire, I think by all of us, to ensure that experiences are leveraged and that public safety has the ability to use this network in a way that meets their requirements.” TIA speakers said minimizing the number of states that opt-out of FirstNet, one option under the law, is also important to success of the first responder network. “There isn’t an official process to get opt in early,” said Marks. “But to the extent that FirstNet can get states excited and motivated and signing on the dotted line to be an active participant is very important.”

The Department of Justice made a second request for information on some of the station transfers associated with Sinclair’s $985 million purchase of Allbritton’s TV stations, said the acquirer and the parent company of the seller, Perpetual, in a news release Monday. It said the DOJ request for information is focused only on Sinclair’s proposed acquisition of stations in Harrisburg, Pa., and Charleston, S.C. DOJ didn’t comment on the request for information. The American Cable Association and public interest groups Free Press and Put People First have filed petitions targeting sharing agreements connected with the deal as violating FCC ownership rules and antitrust laws (CD Sept 17 p7). A second request is “a standard part of the DOJ review process,” said Sinclair and Perpetual. The second request could extend the waiting period to receive DOJ approval of the transaction, said the release. Sinclair and Perpetual said they will “respond promptly” to the second request and expect to complete the deal by Q1 or Q2, “though there can be no assurances.” The transaction is also awaiting FCC approval.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court granted the government’s request for a stay in the proceeding on declassification of Patriot Act Section 215 interpretation documents. The government had identified relevant Section 215 opinions but argued that the government shutdown prevented the Department of Justice from moving forward, particularly with an opinion from February (CD Oct 8 p10). “The government shall promptly conduct a declassification review of that opinion when the necessary appropriations are restored to the agencies involved in such a review,” said the court in an order Tuesday (http://1.usa.gov/18MXSQf). It noted that within seven days of such restoration, “the government shall submit to the Court a proposed timetable for completing the declassification review of the opinion” in question.