Ameritech in Ill. paid $1.8 million penalty for failing to meet state service quality standards plus $1.1 million in credits to CLECs for wholesale service shortfalls. Penalties cover Nov. through Jan. period. Since Ameritech began service improvement program in Sept. as response to regulators’ concern over Ameritech quality collapse last summer, carrier now has paid total of $10.6 million in fines and $2.5 million in credits to CLECs. Company said penalties were larger than actual service shortfalls warranted because of adjustments to service quality report data from previous quarters. Carrier said there might be other adjustments in past data, requiring more back payments of penalties.
Sen. Dorgan (D-S.D.) will be featured speaker tonight (Tues.) at Satellite Communications Assn. (SBCA) and Satellite Industry Assn. (SIA) 5th Annual Satellite Leadership Dinner at Folger Shakespeare Library.
Courts may not enjoin in advance enactment of ordinances by local govts., U.S. Dist. Court, Portland, Me., ruled in rejecting Adelphia’s request to bar Board of Selectmen of town of Naples from adopting proposed cable franchise renewal ordinance in light of failure of informal negotiations. Role of court is to intervene, if at all, only after legislative enactment has been passed, court said pointing out that no proposed ordinance had been submitted. In Oct. 1999, Adelphia acquired cable system from Frontier Vision whose 15-year franchise agreement expired in March 2000. Negotiations for renewal of franchise were based on proposal submitted by Frontier Vision, and Adelphia sought injunctive relief requiring town to accept 1999 proposal as Adelphia’s renewal franchise or, in alternative, permit company to file new formal proposal. Court said town’s failure to comply with 4-month deadline for issuance of franchise renewal or assessment that franchise shouldn’t be renewed constituted “harmless error.” Adelphia serves 900 customers in town.
If XFL football ratings don’t show marked improvement in April 14-15 playoffs and championship game week later, network will pull out of 2nd year of its commitment, according to NBC Sports Pres. Dick Ebersol as quoted in Washington Post. That partly confirms our earlier report that NBC wouldn’t continue XFL telecasts next year (CD March 15 p7). Last Sat. night game on NBC had 2.1 national rating, and viewers have decreased weekly from high 9.5 rating for opening game in Feb. Ratings last 2 weeks are reported to be lowest-ever national audience for any Big 4 network prime-time program. XFL rating is meager 1.6 when combined with Sun. XFL games on Viacom’s UPN and TNN.
Research firm Stratecast Partners reported that Alcatel had turned itself around and emerged “in the same class” as Lucent or Nortel. Traditionally viewed like Ericsson and Siemens as large Western European network equipment vendor, Alcatel now rates with rival Tier 1 telecom vendors, Stratecast said in report Assessment of Alcatel’s Convergence Strategy. However it faces “significant IP challenges,” Stratecast said, because it’s one year behind Lucent and Nortel in attempts to crack IP market and in packet voice migration -- Stratecast Partners, 530-893-1134.
Major cable programmer urged industry to start monthly subscription-on-demand (SoD) services first because of Hollywood’s reluctance to make first-run movies available for video-on-demand (VoD) on transactional basis. Speaking at CTAM conference in New Orleans Fri., Que Spaulding, pres. of distribution for Starz Encore Group, argued that SoD would prove to be much stronger and more lucrative business model than VoD because consumers were far more used to paying flat monthly fees for cable, cell phone, ISP, other services. He also said SoD, which Starz Encore already offers, would provide more stable revenue to cable operators than VoD and help educate consumers about benefits of VoD.
Shine Entertainment has been formed in London by Elizabeth Murdoch (daughter of News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch), who resigned last summer as BSkyB executive. She will own 80% of venture, which will produce TV programs and movies, and BSkyB will own 5%, with rest owned by Waheed Alli, former head of Carlton Productions. Its first project is TV series Single Girls, to be produced for BSkyB. Murdoch said Shine planned U.S. presence, probably in partnership with Hollywood production company.
FCC is seeking comments on request last month by WorldNet Telecommunications that agency reopen Bell Atlantic-GTE merger conditions to examine certain questions. In Feb. 12 letter, WorldNet asked Commission to reopen merger docket to: (1) Determine, in response to recent U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., ruling in Assn. of Communications Enterprises (ASCENT) v. FCC that separate advanced services affiliates of Verizon were subject to all obligations of Sec. 251(c) of Communications Act. (2) Expand applicability of merger conditions “so that they are applicable to Puerto Rico Telephone Co.,” which is controlled by Verizon and ILEC in P.R. Comments are due April 25, replies May 10. In Jan. decision (CD Jan 10 p1), D.C. Circuit rejected SBC’s advanced services subsidiary, essentially overturning trade-off FCC had made with SBC in which agency had allowed company to provide advanced services free of interconnection requirements if it formed separate affiliate to provide those services. In SBC case, court held that FCC didn’t have authority to forgo interconnection requirements of Sec. 251(c) just because SBC was offering advanced, not basic, services and using separate subsidiary. Questions raised by ruling at that time included potential impact on Verizon (CD Jan 11 p1).
BSkyB will get ServicePower’s Internet scheduling software as part of deal latter announced Mon. Move comes as demand for digital TV is projected to increase BSkyB’s workload to 50,000 installations per week in peak periods.
PanAmSat opposes Boeing application to FCC to operate up to 800 Ku-band transmit and receive mobile stations aboard aircraft in U.S. and its coastal waters. In March 23 filing, PanAmSat said Boeing system was dependent upon complex network control protocol and such systems were extremely sensitive to minor hardware and equipment defects, software errors, other operational anomalies. Result will be harmful interference to fixed satellite service operations, PanAmSat argued. It said Commission shouldn’t grant application unless and until FSS operators were satisfied that Boeing would have systems in place that could reliably track and monitor transmissions from in-flight aircraft.