Netflix’s monthly rankings of ISPs changed little in June, it said in a Monday blog post (http://nflx.it/184rs6v). Cablevision’s Optimum provided the best speeds for the sixth consecutive month, it said, and Time Warner Cable moved up to eighth, following a drop in speeds from Mediacom and AT&T U-verse. ISPs in the U.K. and Ireland delivered improved speeds in June, with no change in rankings. The speed index reflects average performance of all Netflix streams on each ISP’s network.

Media General’s pending merger with Young Broadcasting led to improved ratings from Moody’s Investors Service, Moody’s said in a press release Monday. Moody’s improved Media General’s “Corporate Family Rating” to B1 from Caa1 because the merger (CD June 7 p20) will mean “expanded coverage of US households as well as favorable geographic and network diversification,” said the release. Moody’s also assigned Ba1 to the company’s proposed $60 million “1st lien super priority revolver” and B1 to the proposed $900 million “1st lien senior secured term loan,” it said. Media General’s “Probability of Default Rating” was upgraded to B2-PD from Caa1-PD because of the merger’s “proposed all bank debt structure” and the “Speculative Grade Liquidity Rating” was upgraded “to SGL -- 2 from SGL - 3,” it said. Moody’s said the ratings are supported by Media General’s high revenue rankings and markets that “benefit from traditionally strong political advertising demand, good local news programs, and continued increases in non-cyclical cash flow which benefit from retransmission agreements.” Media General will be successful in “realizing planned synergies” totaling close to $30 million based on eliminating redundant costs, reducing interest expenses and an uplift in retransmission consent fees, Moody’s said.

Eighty-two percent of Clearwire’s minority shareholders voted to approve Sprint Nextel’s bid to buy the company at $5 per share, Clearwire said Monday. Including Sprint and SoftBank-affiliated shareholders, shareholders holding 95 percent of all Clearwire stock voted in favor of the deal (http://bit.ly/1biXWZB). Sprint’s successful Clearwire buyout followed a bidding war with Dish Network, which had also been in a bidding war with SoftBank to buy majority control of Sprint. Dish withdrew its $4.40-per-share offer for Clearwire in late June, clearing the way for Sprint’s offer to move forward (CD June 27 p18). Sprint, which already held majority ownership of the company, will close its purchase of Clearwire Tuesday. Sprint said its own deal to sell 78 percent ownership to SoftBank for $21.6 billion will be complete after the close of business Wednesday (http://bit.ly/18ISbFf). Both purchases can now proceed because the FCC voted unanimously last week to approve them (CD July 8 p1).

NewSat completed its financing documents for the $611 million funding of the Jabiru-1 satellite. Progress payments to the manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, have reached $72 million, NewSat said in a press release (http://bit.ly/12dAd6r). The program is now in the critical design phase and construction of the satellite is on target for launch by Arianespace in 2015, it said.

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Quality standards for TV closed captions could remedy a lack of competition in closed captioning, said captioning company Media Captioning Services (MCS) in an ex parte filing released Monday (http://bit.ly/12yPlLl). “Quality standards are a necessary -- though not a sufficient -- remedy for the anticompetitive behavior and sourcing practices of [Video Programmers] which are designed to debase, commoditize, and lower the value of real-time captioning services,” said MCS Executive Vice President Richard Pettinato in the filing. Large programmers are sourcing all their captioning needs from just a few large companies, Pettinato said, squeezing the smaller companies out. He said stricter standards for captions would give smaller captioning companies a point of competition with the larger ones: quality. “If quality is not a factor in the RFP process, [small companies] will not remain in the business, nor will they have the ability to hire new captioners at wages they will find minimally acceptable,” said Pettinato. The FCC should consider monitoring and imposing restrictions into how programmers distribute their captioning needs, Pettinato said. “We would hope the FCC would require [video programmers] to use smaller, mid-size companies for a percentage of their captioning business, and if they do not use smaller, woman and/or minority-owned businesses for closed captioning, to weight this heavily in renewing licenses of their owned and operated companies,” said the ex parte filing.

Workers using their own mobile devices for work are fearful of their employers accessing their personal information, said a global study from Aruba Networks released Monday (http://bit.ly/12yOVVf). In a survey of over 3,000 employees around the world, the report found 45 percent of Europeans, 40 percent of Middle Easterners and 66 percent of American respondents fear the loss of their personal data. In addition, 34 percent of Europeans, 35 percent of Middle Easterners and 51 percent of Americans said their information technology department takes no steps to ensure the security of corporate files and applications on their personal devices, said the study. Negative perceptions of corporate IT departments showed that 13 percent of Europeans, 26 percent of Middle Easterners and 11 percent of Americans would not report that their personal device had been compromised, said the study. “The research from both sides of the Atlantic shows that employees and IT departments are gambling with data security, but chance isn’t the only factor,” said Ben Gibson, Aruba Networks chief marketing officer. “In short, employees resent the power their employers now wield over their personal data, but are equally unconcerned about keeping company data safe."

FCC program access rules on distributors forming buying groups “contravene the clear intent of Congress,” said the American Cable Association in an ex parte filing Friday (http://bit.ly/13wWsdK) requesting increased liability protection for the National Cable Television Cooperative, the buying group some ACA members want to work with. The ACA filing came on the heels of a filing from NBCUniversal asking the commission to take the opposite tack and leave program access rules alone (CD July 8 p13). ACA repeated its request for the commission to create a “safe harbor” subscriber level, “such that an MVPD with no more than the safe harbor number of subscribers, that is a member of a buying group, is presumptively entitled to participate in master agreements between the buying group and cable-affiliated programmers,” the ex parte said. ACA wants the safe harbor set “so that all MVPDs who currently purchase a substantial share of their programming through a buying group are covered,” said the ex parte.

Communications company Lattice brought its technology to jails in two new states. The company installed its Nexus system in Marion County Jail in Jefferson, Texas, as well as in the Mayes County Jail in Pryor, Okla., Lattice said Monday (http://yhoo.it/12RQaxT). Lattice said state budget crunches are one reason jails are turning to its cost-effective system.

O3b Networks partnered with RCS-Communication in South Sudan to provide high-speed, low latency capacity in and around its capital, Juba. Under the deal, customers will have improved capacity and the service will benefit corporate customers, non-governmental organizations and other customers, O3b said in a press release (http://bit.ly/155RkJ8). O3b launched its first satellites to offer capacity last month (CD June 27 p22).