NEW ORLEANS -- The expected spectrum crunch was a hot topic at CTIA’s annual meeting, which ended Thursday. Numerous carrier officials told us spectrum remains a major concern, especially in light of the recent NTIA report on the 1755-1850 MHz band, which said clearing the band would cost $18 billion. Many questions remain about the pending FCC voluntary incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum and the extent to which there will be broadcaster buy-in, especially in major markets.
Netflix made a rare visit to the FCC to lobby against three top ISPs’ exclusion of some video transmitted by Internet Protocol from broadband data caps. The company said the exclusion is a net neutrality issue and doesn’t necessarily fall under statutory exemptions on preferential treatment of cable programming. The online video streamer took aim at AT&T, Comcast and Time Warner Cable, during executives’ first visit to lobby the FCC in two years.
Acquiring more shares of Sirius XM could help Liberty Media make a better case to the FCC for its intent and refile a new application seeking a de facto transfer of control, attorneys and analysts told us. Liberty Media acquired about 60.3 million shares of stock in Sirius XM as it tries to obtain de facto control. Liberty bought the stock Tuesday and Wednesday, according to an SEC filing (http://xrl.us/bm64cp). The purchase follows Liberty CEO Greg Maffei saying Tuesday that the company will seek a review of the FCC’s dismissal of its application for de facto control over Sirius (CD May 9 p6).
NEW ORLEANS -- The U.S. needs to move quickly to adopt a next-generation 911 system, panelists said Wednesday at the CTIA annual meeting. David Furth, acting chief of the FCC Public Safety Bureau, said a recent Verizon Wireless announcement that it would introduce a feature enabling users to send texts to 911 (CD May 4 p11) is a potentially important breakthrough.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski was prodded by Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., about the agency’s role on protecting consumer privacy, at a budget hearing Wednesday. Genachowski said the FTC has the “lead” on privacy issues and held his cards close on the FCC’s position on News Corp. allegations of journalists hacking U.K. cellphones.
A potential T-Mobile USA/MetroPCS combination would face few regulatory hurdles, but a deal might not solve either company’s problems, analysts said. Deutsche Telekom was reportedly discussing a merger of its U.S. unit with the prepaid carrier in a stock-swap transaction Wednesday. The potential deal would give the German company control over the combined entity, which would be publicly listed, reports said. The companies were also reportedly in talks with other entities.
A working group is drafting legislative language incorporating the Obama administration’s privacy “blueprint,” Cameron Kerry, general counsel at the Department of Commerce, told the Senate Commerce Committee. “We stand ready to work with the committee and other members of Congress to put baseline privacy legislation into law,” he told a committee hearing Wednesday on the need for privacy protections.
FCC staff took action on a second program carriage case in as many weeks. The Media Bureau on Wednesday sent the Game Show Network’s complaint against Cablevision to a hearing before an FCC administrative law judge. Seven days earlier the Office of General Counsel put on hold the same ALJ’s order that Comcast begin carrying the Tennis Channel as widely as other sports networks that the cable operator owns (CD May 4 p3). GSN made a case on its face that Cablevision favored its own affiliated networks over the independent channel in moving the complainant from an expanded-basic tier bought by most of the operator’s subscribers to a less-popular sports tier, the bureau said.
NEW ORLEANS -- CEO Dan Mead defended Verizon Wireless’s deals to buy AWS licenses from SpectrumCo and Cox, during the annual CEO roundtable at CTIA’s annual meeting. CTIA brought back Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s Mad Money, to ask questions. This year’s session was far tamer than last year’s roundtable, held right after the announcement AT&T planned to buy T-Mobile, where Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse essentially began his company’s campaign against the deal, which ultimately was scotched.
Cable operators are looking to bring greater bandwidth and faster data transmission speeds to cable’s broadband pipes without resorting to costly all-fiber network buildouts. A team of cable technologists is promoting the idea of delivering Ethernet passive optical network (EPON) signals over the industry’s hybrid fiber-coax (HFC) networks in the near future, executives said in interviews and told a recent industry conference. The team of senior engineers from major cable operators and vendors is looking to win approval for their project from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) this summer.