Recent broadband speed increases combined with price cuts should cause investors to “rethink how comfortable they are” with the future outlook for cable broadband, said BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield in a report to investors Thursday. Cablevision announced faster broadband and price drops this week, Greenfield said. “The magnitude of the cuts is concerning,” and shows that Cablevision is “under increased stress to attract and retain broadband customers,” Greenfield said. “Will cable operators over the next five years be forced to significantly raise speeds, while maintaining or even lowering prices, diminishing the margin leverage we currently see in their broadband product?” asked Greenfield. He said Cablevision’s price changes and speed increases are intended to compete with Verizon FiOS, but they could still indicate a trend. “We wonder how Google Fiber’s continued rollout will impact cable broadband [average rate per user], if MSO’s feel the pressure to raise speeds while lowering prices,” said Greenfield. However, he also said faster, cheaper broadband could be a good thing for high bandwidth services such as Hulu and Netflix. Cablevision’s speed increases are on the uplink side, Greenfield said, and that “bodes well for video conferencing, video sharing and piracy.”

The Missouri Public Service Commission opened a case to hear from stakeholders about the commission staff investigation of the state’s Lifeline program. In a Wednesday order it noted the docket is intended “to serve as a repository for additional documents, and to facilitate Staff’s communication with stakeholders regarding its continuing investigation,” according to the order (http://on.mo.gov/12YbZNo). “Staff indicates its intent to gather additional information about the Lifeline Program and to evaluate the purposes and goals of the Missouri Universal Service Fund.” It flagged the order in a press release Thursday, inviting comment on the program. The order does not give any specific comment deadlines.

The New York State Public Service Commission plans public hearings on 315 area code relief in early August, it said in a notice Thursday (http://bit.ly/13R2Nkj). The code covers 18 counties in northern and central New York, it added. “The Commission’s goal is to develop a plan that minimizes disruption to customers while ensuring availability of telephone numbers beyond 2015 in that region,” it said.

West Virginia may have expanded broadband access, but still struggles with adoption, a Wednesday editorial in The Herald-Dispatch said (http://bit.ly/17nUeuy). “The issue arises from a recent federal report showing that 35.4 percent of West Virginia households don’t own a computer, the second-highest rate in the nation behind Mississippi,” it said, citing NTIA data. “That proportion of homes without computers also largely explains why only about 59 percent of the state’s households subscribe to high-speed Internet service.” It pointed favorably to the efforts of Frontier in meeting West Virginia Public Service Commission service goals. “But if a large portion of households don’t have computers, more broadband access won’t necessarily boost the state’s digital connectivity by much,” said, the paper, urging government officials to retain traditional means of informing constituents.

Correction: What GAO recommended of the FCC was that it study the advantages and disadvantages of different reporting frequencies for the annual cable price survey and video competition reports. (CD July 18 p1).

Nexstar will likely be involved in $100 million worth of smaller mergers and acquisitions, and has the capacity to spend $500 million on M&A, said Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker in an email to investors. Nexstar’s capacity for M&A adds “upside” to Nexstar, according to Wells Fargo’s evaluation of the company. Positives for Nexstar include its “capital returns, core ad growth, net retrans, and the balance sheet,” Wells Fargo said. Even if the company doesn’t engage in much M&A, “capital returns should grow,” Ryvicker said. An announcement of a federal plan to spend $500 million on broadcast announcements about the Affordable Care Act could indicate a boost for Nexstar in Q4, she said. “Since [Nexstar] captures around 2 percent of all political broadcast revenue, we believe NXST could get up to 2 percent of this [$500 million].”

Comments on whether incumbent satellite operators are inhibiting competition in the market for satellite services are due 30 days from publication of an FCC notice of inquiry Friday in the Federal Register. Replies are due 60 days later, the FCC said in the Federal Register notice to appear Friday. The commission seeks comment on whether fixed satellite service operators “are warehousing satellite orbital locations and frequency assignments and preventing competitors from purchasing capacity on incumbent-owned satellites,” it said. The NOI stemmed from allegations from satellite companies against Intelsat (CD May 9 p3).

The number of fiber broadband subscriptions grew nearly 13 percent in 2012, said the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in statistics (http://bit.ly/13QOvQQ) released Thursday. As of December, OECD members Japan and Korea led in fiber broadband penetration, with over 60 percent of fixed broadband lines based on fiber technology, it said. They were followed by Sweden, Estonia and the Slovak Republic, with the U.S. ranked 15th. Luxembourg, Austria, Turkey and Switzerland had the strongest annual growth in fiber penetration, said OECD. Broadband providers are investing in fiber networks to differentiate themselves from rivals, it said, and consumers and businesses benefit from faster and more reliable networks for advanced applications such as video on demand. Switzerland had the highest fixed broadband penetration per 100 inhabitants, followed by the Netherlands and Denmark, with the U.S. again 15th, it said. The U.S., however, led in total number of broadband subscriptions, followed by Japan and Germany, it said. As of December, the five largest wired broadband markets were the U.S. (32 percent); the rest of the OECD (30 percent); Japan (12 percent); Germany (10 percent); and the U.K. and France (8 percent), the organization said.

The FCC Wireline Bureau will relegate Puerto Ricans to “second-class digital citizenship” if it reduces support to Puerto Rico Telephone Co. (PRT) in Phase II of the Connect America Fund, the telco said in a letter to commissioners Wednesday (http://bit.ly/15puMDB). “Common sense” dictates that the bureau should allocate a “meaningful portion” of the $1.8 billion fund to Puerto Ricans, but “recent bureau actions” indicate the bureau might “slash” PRT’s support by close to 90 percent, the company said. PRT submitted a white paper to “respectfully remind the Bureau of the Commission’s directive to accommodate the ‘unique circumstances’ of insular areas, which include significantly higher costs as well as significant lower ’take rates.'” That precludes the insular providers from recovering the costs of broadband over a high percentage of households, PRT said. Reducing support by such a great amount would be “flawed” both legally and as a matter of broadband policy, PRT said.

Sprint petitioned the FCC for a temporary waiver of its “speed-of-answer” requirements governing the provision of IP Relay (http://bit.ly/15ptecK). The waiver is necessary to ensure Sprint can continue providing the service to consumers “as it assimilates the customers previously served by Sorenson,” Sprint said. It said it will need the waiver through “at least November 7” to allow it to accommodate “the new call volumes created by Sorenson’s abrupt exit” from the IP Relay market. Sorenson announced its decision to exit the IP Relay business a week after the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau reduced the per-minute compensation rate for IP Relay.