Faced with competing scenarios of what happens to consumers and the video market if AT&T and Time Warner combine, the judge overseeing U.S. v. AT&T and TW is likely trying to see which set of predictions best lines up with the facts, experts told us. How U.S. District Judge Richard Leon of Washington weighs DOJ and AT&T/TW economic expert predictions is "the $64,000 question," emailed Konkurrenz Group founder Allen Grunes. DOJ expert economist Carl Shapiro (see 1804110025) and companies' expert economist Dennis Carlton (see 1804120023) testified last week.
FBI agents arrested the ex-chair of the FCC Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee for an alleged multimillion-dollar investment fraud scheme, DOJ announced. Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman alleged former Quintillion CEO Elizabeth Pierce engaged in wire fraud, allegedly using forged guaranteed revenue contracts to fraudulently induce investors to invest more than $250 million in an Alaskan fiber cable network. Pierce surrendered Thursday in New York City, DOJ said that day. Pierce was BDAC chair from April 2017 to September.
House and Senate Commerce leaders told us they aim to continue work on telecom infrastructure legislation and tackle a raft of other communications policy issues, after their success just before the recess in enacting a range of telecom policy provisions as part of the $1.3 trillion FY 2018 omnibus spending bill (see 1803210041, 1803210068, 1803220048 and 1803230038). How the committees will prioritize those issues remained unclear last week, though the lawmakers and lobbyists acknowledged that follow-up on last week’s twin hearings with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on the Cambridge Analytica data privacy controversy (see 1804100054 and 1804110065) could be a lingering factor. It’s beginning to look increasingly less likely that Capitol Hill will be able to produce any communications legislation of the same scope as what lawmakers accomplished in the omnibus, in part because of the dwindling legislative timeline before the November midterm elections, lobbyists said.
Worldwide spending on video, games and music is expected to reach $439 billion this year, up 17 percent from 2017, Futuresource reported Thursday. Subscription VoD from services including Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and Netflix are “rapidly dominating” the home entertainment sector, accounting for nearly half of last year’s $42 billion spent on DVD, Blu-ray, electronic sell-through, VoD and SVoD video, it said. That's up from 13 percent of home video spending in 2013. The growth trend will continue, Futuresource said, with SVoD expected to be 70 percent of home video spending by 2021, driven by households adopting multiple services.
LAS VEGAS -- Radio broadcasters have invested in data and connected with listeners through Facebook, and should be concerned about the current backlash against consumer data collection, radio executives said on a panel at the NAB Show. Broadcasters need to “keep a close eye” on consumers' reaction to data collection, because radio broadcasters already have a great deal of “sunk cost” at stake in consumer data, Cox Media Group Executive Vice President Bill Hendrich said. “We have all benefited from Facebook,” said broadcast consultant Fred Jacobs, president of Jacobs Media Strategies.
States should be able to shift to connections-based USF contribution to stabilize funds, said the state chair of the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service Thursday after CTIA filed its second lawsuit against states making that change. CTIA sued the Utah Public Service Commission Tuesday for its Jan. 1 shift to connections-based contribution, arguing the 36-cent fee violates federal Lifeline requirements and illegally discriminates against prepaid wireless services. CTIA urged the U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City to decide federal law pre-empts the Utah rule and to stop the state commission from enforcing it.
Actual empirical evidence from past vertical mergers and splits shows consumer pricing ultimately goes down, the exact opposite of the harm DOJ is projecting in the proposed AT&T buy of Time Warner, the companies' economic expert testified Thursday. DOJ hasn't rested, but U.S. District Judge Richard Leon of Washington said he was letting University of Chicago economics professor Dennis Carlton testify out of order so his testimony comes a day after that of Justice's own economics expert, University of California, Berkeley economist Carl Shapiro (see 1804110025).
School and library groups asked the FCC to ensure E-rate requests aren't denied due to inadvertent errors caused by application wording changes they say the Universal Service Administrative Co. mishandled. They said parties that made "good-faith" efforts to fill out FCC Form 470 seeking competitive bids in funding year 2018 (starting this July 1) should be "held harmless" because USAC made "confusing" dropdown menu changes to service categorizations, particularly for bundled internet and fiber transport, after the filing window opened. They also want the FCC to ensure the menu is fixed before the FY19 window opens. "We are reviewing the requests," said an FCC spokesman.
The FCC’s Technological Advisory Council is zeroing in on antenna issues this year with a new working group chaired by Marty Cooper of Dyna, a cellphone pioneer. One likely recommendation will address the aesthetics of antennas, Cooper said. TAC is also digging into the spectrum needs of drones. A third working group will look at 5G and how and why it's poised to take off. The meeting was TAC’s first of 2018 and officials reported the working groups are just starting work on their assignments from the FCC.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai quickly rejected Thursday a push by Sens. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., Tom Udall, D-N.M., and 10 other Democratic members for the agency to review Sinclair's fitness to maintain its existing broadcast licenses and the public interest implications of its proposed buy of Tribune. The senators wrote Pai citing their “grave concerns” about Sinclair's requirement that anchors throughout the country read on-air the same "must-runs" about "fake news" (see 1804020056). Sinclair's action drew widespread criticism and scrutiny from Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who also sought an explanation (see 1804030054 and 1804050051).