RCN provided the “best streaming service” for the greater Boston area in a Regional Netflix ISP Speed Index Snapshot, said both companies in a news release Saturday (http://prn.to/17K0a4J). Based on data from Q2, RCN averaged 2.42 Mbps, followed by Charter Communications at 2.19 Mbps and Verizon FiOS at 2.15 Mbps. Average speeds for Netflix streams on the RCN network in Boston “outperformed other Internet Service Providers by as much as 70 percent,” said the companies.

Verizon Wireless is collaborating with the Georgia Emergency Management Agency for a campaign this month to educate customers about how to prepare themselves for emergencies, said Verizon Wireless and the Ready Georgia campaign in a news release Tuesday (http://yhoo.it/17oFNUA). Georgians can get a digital coupon from Verizon Wireless to get 25 percent off an accessory to be used in severe weather emergencies, such as a phone charger or battery, by texting “ReadyGeorgia” to 22699, said Verizon and the campaign. On Sept. 7 and 8, customer service representatives will help customers set up their smartphones for severe weather emergencies at select Verizon Wireless stores, said the joint release.

CoverageCo selected FairPoint Communications as the lead carrier in making cell service available along more than 200 miles of roadway in Orange and Lamoille counties in rural Vermont, said FairPoint in a news release Tuesday (http://yhoo.it/19f7Yst). CoverageCo received a $500,000 grant from the Vermont Telecommunications Authority for a 90-mile project and the company expects to extend the project an additional 125 miles through its own investment, said the companies. CoverageCo’s IP-based network architecture relies on small cells placed a mile apart on telephone poles, steeples and other street level structures, said the companies. “CoverageCo chose FairPoint because it has the network, products, people and flexibility to meet the demand for mobile bandwidth and wireless coverage,” said CoverageCo CEO Richard Biby. “FairPoint already offers extensive backhaul coverage for wireless carriers in northern New England, so it was natural for us to utilize their small cell backhaul capabilities to meet our growing need."

Windstream spoke with FCC Wireline Bureau officials Wednesday about the type of evidence needed to contest census block elections by price cap carriers as part of the 2013 round of Connect America Fund Phase I (http://bit.ly/1a3volA). The telco also discussed its challenge to the status of more than 7,000 census blocks identified as served by a wireline broadband provider on the National Broadband Map. Those challenges are “based solely on an internal analysis of whether [Windstream] received requests from customers within the census blocks to port a telephone number and lacked any specific, or direct, evidence that contradicts the status of those areas as served with broadband,” the telco said. Windstream also discussed the type of evidence another company would need to show to successfully challenge Windstream’s porting analysis.

Sky laid claim to broadcasting the U.K.’s first-ever live event in Ultra HD when it beamed 4K coverage by satellite of Saturday’s soccer match between West Ham and Stoke City. The contest telecast was produced and directed live by Sky’s in-house football production and broadcast operations teams using four Sony F55 Ultra HD cameras and two Ultra HD servers for replays and graphics, Sky said. The production was done from a “purpose-built” location truck “in line with current live HD broadcast techniques,” it said. The coverage was beamed to a Sony 84-inch Ultra HD TV set up at Sky’s headquarters in Isleworth, about 11 miles southwest of central London, it said. “This was not a product launch, purely an early demonstration as part of Sky’s on-going tests to develop the broadcast requirements to meet any future demand for Ultra HD,” it said. “Sky is currently working with others in the wider TV industry, including TV manufacturers and studios, to assess the potential for Ultra HD."

FCC rules for marketing, labeling, registration and default equipment-setting requirement for Internet Protocol Captioned Telephone Service take effect Sept. 30, said a notice in Friday’s Federal Register (http://1.usa.gov/1coz1TU). The agency’s order ended referrals-for-reward programs for registering customers, and said providers can’t get compensation from the Telecommunications Relay Service Fund if the consumer received an IP CTS device for less than $75 (CD Aug 28 p6).

FCC acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn Friday named Mark Stephens acting managing director and David Bray chief information officer. Stephens has been at the FCC since 1991 and was most recently chief financial officer. Bray has been with the federal government since 1993 but is new to the FCC. Clyburn also appointed David Valdez, formerly at Verizon and the Computing Technology Industry Association, as special counsel to her office, where he will oversee regulatory reform and help manage the various FCC advisory committees.

USTelecom submitted a proposal for a state- and county-based approach to reverse auctions for Connect America Fund Phase II support (http://bit.ly/14eAx5N). Reverse auctions will come into play where ILECs decline FCC funding in exchange for a five-year state-level commitment. The concept is “complicated” here by the commission’s need to support affordable broadband for as many consumers as possible, while staying with fixed budgetary constraints, USTelecom said. A dearth of bidders in some areas, “combined with the potential for strategic behavior,” could lead to bids that are far above the forward-looking costs of service in those areas, the association said. The commission should set an overall cap on funding for some geographic regions, and use an “optimization algorithm” to decide which combination of bids would produce the greatest number of locations served within the budget established, USTelecom said. The association suggested the commission use state-boundaries to define the geographic areas. Another set of issues is how bids within each state should be structured, USTelecom said, encouraging a system to place bids for all eligible census blocks within specific counties. “Counties are large enough to enable a winning county-wide bidder to realize many of the scale economies that bidders could otherwise capture only through package bidding if census tracts were the geographic bidding unit,” it said. Each bidder would specify the support amount it requires for each county, along with the number of eligible locations it commits to serve within the county. A “statewide algorithm” would select a combination of bids that would lead to the largest number of new served locations within the state’s budget, USTelecom said. “This approach will simultaneously maximize bidding competition within a state, reduce the exposure problem for bidders, and do so without creating the computational challenges of user defined package bidding,” it said.

Bright House Networks petitioned to be excluded from municipal rate-setting for basic-video and some other prices for six communities in Florida and 10 communities in Alabama, said filings posted in FCC docket 12-1. The petitions cited video competition from DirecTV and Dish Network. The proposed deregulation would affect just under 35,000 households in Florida, including the communities of Washington County, Walton County and DeFuniak Springs (http://bit.ly/18qKVZh). In Alabama, the proposed deregulation would affect around 30,000 households, including the communities of Coosada, Geneva and Tallapoosa County (http://bit.ly/1foAfOM).

An Aug. 6 FCC Wireline Bureau public notice that eligible telecom carriers must file their 2013 annual reports no later than Oct. 15 leaves many questions unresolved, U.S. Cellular said in a letter to the FCC. Among them, the carrier said there are open questions on reporting requirements on tribal engagement and on broadband deployment. The FCC “should make it clear that ETCs are not required to demonstrate their compliance with Tribal government statutes and regulations, but instead are required only to engage with Tribal governments regarding issues related to the ETCs’ compliance with Tribal government laws and regulations, and to submit a report to the Commission describing this engagement,” U.S. Cellular said (http://bit.ly/19TjmLz).