California Assemblymember Jim Wood (D) wondered if environmental review hurdles to building the state’s middle-mile network might warrant legislative attention. At a California Middle-Mile Advisory Committee virtual meeting Friday, Wood said he doesn’t understand why placing conduit along a highway would require California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and other reviews. “Highway projects already are massively invasive on the environment and there have to have been cultural studies in these highway projects at some point in the past as well,” he said. “Why do we have to repeat things? How much more of an environmental impact could the trenching or the placement of conduit have than building the original highways?” A presentation by California Department of Transportation Division Chief-Design Janice Benton estimated 30 months for permitting, including a 17-month CEQA review. Wood worries about the state finishing projects before it must return federal funding, he said. “If there’s something we need to do more as a legislature to give you more tools to move this thing along, please tell us.” Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva (D) agreed with the need for urgency. “The frustration … or fear is that we’re going to run out of time.” Earlier at the meeting, Quirk-Silva praised progress made and a California budget signed June 30 that included another $550 million for the middle-mile project over the next two fiscal years. It brings total funding to $3.8 billion, “which will be vital in helping the state address the cost increases for the project,” said Mark Monroe, California Technology Department Broadband Middle-Mile Initiative deputy director. The California Public Utilities Commission will start taking applications Aug. 1 for the state’s new $50 million local and tribal technical assistance fund, CPUC program manager Jonathan Lakritz told the committee. On July 1, the CPUC received 99 project applications seeking about $28.6 million total for broadband adoption and digital equity grants, plus 19 applications seeking about $1.4 million in grants for public housing and low-income community projects, he said.
U.S. consumers spent $1.7 trillion online during two years of the COVID-19 pandemic (March 2020-February 2022), $609 billion more than in the two preceding years combined, reported Adobe Tuesday. Demand remained strong in 2021 with $885 billion in online spend, up 8.9% year over year, it said: “As the digital economy shifts to more personalized customer experiences, Adobe expects the annual online spend in the U.S. to surpass $1 trillion for the first time in 2022.” Of the $1.7 trillion spent by consumers, $32 billion was due to higher prices, said Adobe. Online inflation, first observed in June 2020, has persisted for 21 consecutive months, it said. “The impact was most notable in 2021, where $22 billion of e-commerce growth was driven by higher prices compared to just $4.7 billion in 2020.” In the first two months of 2022, $3.8 billion in e-commerce growth was driven by higher prices, said Adobe. But inflation didn't deter demand, it said. Online spending in January and February topped $138 billion, up 13.8% from the first two months of 2021, it said: “Adobe expects consumers could pay as much as $27 billion more online for the same amount of goods due to inflation.”
The FCC committed an additional nearly $603 million in Emergency Connectivity Fund support, bringing the total to more than $3.8 billion so far, said a news release Monday. The new funding will support 1,651 schools, 85 libraries and 14 consortiums. “Today’s announcement will help an additional million children get the internet access and technology needed for success in today’s virtual and hybrid classrooms,” said Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel.
Four companies will pay $6.3 million in penalties for 911 outages last year, the FCC announced Friday. Some said they had made procedural changes to avoid a repeat. Lumen will pay $3.8 million, Intrado $1.75 million, AT&T $460,000 and Verizon $274,000. Both Lumen and AT&T said their blackouts involved work by vendor Intrado. See our news bulletin here.
Qualcomm wants to outbid Magna International and buy Veoneer for $37 a share in an all-cash $4.6 billion transaction that would bring a “competitive and open” combined advanced driver assistance systems platform to automakers and tier 1 suppliers “at scale,” said Qualcomm Thursday. Magna and Veoneer announced a definitive agreement July 22 for Magna to buy Veoneer for $31.25 a share in a $3.8 billion cash deal. Qualcomm “continues to see traction in automotive, with a revenue-design win pipeline of approximately $10 billion,” it said now. Qualcomm’s board unanimously ratified the Veoneer offer, but Qualcomm shareholder approval won’t be required, it said. Veoneer and Magna didn’t respond to queries Thursday.
Paid subscriptions, at $3.8 billion, were 67% of total music industry revenue, and 79% of total streaming revenue, in the first half, reported RIAA Thursday. Paid subscription growth of 14% outpaced overall streaming music revenue growth of 12%. Streaming revenue was 85% of revenue in the half, physical sales 7%, digital downloads 6% and synch 2%. Average subscriptions were 72 million, up 24% vs. the year-ago half, with more than a million net subscriptions added monthly. Ad-supported on-demand streaming music revenue slowed to 3% at $421 million because due to COVID-19. Services' Q2 ad revenue had double-digit declines. Store closures due to the coronavirus led to a 23% falloff in physical products to $376 million. Vinyl album sales grew in Q1 but reversed in Q2, resulting in a first-half net increase of 4%. At 62% of total physical revenue, vinyl outpaced CD sales for the first time since the 1980s. Vinyl generated 4% of overall industry revenue. Digital and customized radio services receipts grew 6% to $583 million. Digital downloads’ share declined from 8% to 6% at $351 million.
Space startups attracted $5.7 billion in financing in 2019, smashing the $3.5 billion record set in 2018, though it's still a handful of companies attracting the vast bulk of the funding, Bryce Space and Technology said Monday. SpaceX, Blue Origin, OneWeb and Virgin Galactic combined had more than $3.8 billion of that financing, it said. Bryce said 135 space startups received investment in 2019, up 34% from the 2018 previous record. Besides the big four, startup investments totaled $1.8 billion, down slightly from the $1.9 billion in investment excluding those companies the previous year, it said. But 2019 had a big increase in the number of rounds with undisclosed investments -- 38, compared with 15 in 2018 -- pointing to the actual total for the year topping $1.8 billion, it said. Seventy-nine non-U.S. startups got financing in 2019, up from 47 in 2018, while the number of U.S. firms leveled off, with 56 seeing financing, versus 53 in 2018, it said.
The Department of Agriculture will invest $3.8 million to support broadband deployment in rural Virginia as part of its first round of ReConnect pilot programs, it said Monday (see 1812130064). Recipient Mecklenburg Electric Cooperative will use the funds to deliver fiber to more than 1,250 homes, plus schools and volunteer departments.
Sinclair will buy 21 regional sports networks and Fox College Sports from Disney, which acquired them when it bought most of the assets of 21st Century Fox (see 1901140039), said the companies Friday. The deal has a “total enterprise value” to the RSNs worth $10.6 billion, including the $9.6 billion purchase price, they said. The deal requires DOJ approval, they said. The RSNs changing hands excludes the YES Network, but is “the largest collection of RSNs in the marketplace today, with an extensive footprint that includes exclusive local rights to 42 professional teams” in baseball, basketball and hockey, they said. The RSNs collectively had $3.8 billion revenue and 74 million subscribers in 2018. Sinclair will buy them through a new Diamond Sports Group subsidiary, they said. “While consumer viewing habits have shifted, the tradition of watching live sports and news remains ingrained in our culture,” said Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley. “We are ideally positioned to transfer our skills to deliver and expand our focus on greater premium sports programming.” Antitrust regulators should reject the proposed deal, said America's Communication Association CEO Matt Polka. “Big 4 broadcast network programming and RSN programming are both critical for ACA Connects members,” Polka said. “By jointly negotiating these assets when they serve the same market, Sinclair can raise prices to cable operators for both offerings.”
Uber’s “continued success will come from stellar execution and the strength of the platform we have worked so hard to build,” said CEO Dara Khosrowshahi in an initial-public-offering SEC filing Thursday to raise $1 billion. Uber’s engineering and product teams “are solving some of the most difficult problems at the intersection of the physical and digital worlds,” he said. Uber’s 2018 revenue jumped 42 percent from 2017 to $11.27 billion and was 193 percent higher than 2016's $3.8 billion, said the filing. It had a $3.03 billion operating loss in 2018, 26 percent lower than in 2017, it said. Ex-Facebook executive Matt Cohler, general partner in venture capital firm Benchmark, is Uber's largest individual shareholder with 11 percent of the stock, it said.