China Mobile added 68.1 million customers in 2007, making 360 million total. The company reported net income of 27.2 billion yuan -- $3.8 billion -- up from 19.9 billion yuan the previous year.
The FCC announced Tuesday that bidders have surpassed the reserve price for one block of 700 MHz licenses offered -
The communications industry spent about $122 million on federal lobbying the first half of 2007, about 30 percent less than its $174.5 million outlay a year earlier, according to reports filed with the Secretary of the Senate and CQ’s Political Moneyline. The 2007 numbers aren’t final. The secretary’s office still is compiling reports, which were due Aug. 14, a Senate staffer said Wed. The interim tally shows telecom companies falling to third place, behind finance and health care, in spending.
WorldSpace lost more than 1,300 customers during the second quarter, ending the quarter with more than 190,000 subscribers, it said in an earnings release. WorldSpace has stopped selling its service in South Africa and Europe while it prepares to launch its service, complete with terrestrial repeaters, in Italy, it said. It recently signed an original equipment manufacturer agreement with Fiat for factory installation of WorldSpace satellite radios as optional equipment on Fiats beginning in late 2009, one year after its expected Italian launch. The agreement “provides us with the means to reach Italian consumers in their automobiles,” said WorldSpace CEO Noah Samara. WorldSpace has developed an “EU-compliant terrestrial repeater technology and a receiver reference design with Fraunhofer IIS,” Samara said. WorldSpace’s Q2 revenue was $3.6 million compared to $3.8 million last year. WorldSpace had a Q2 net loss of $51.2 million compared to $36.7 million last year, it said. It reduced its subscriber acquisition costs from $33 in Q1 to $21 in Q2, WorldSpace said.
Arbitron Q2 sales rose 6.6 percent from a year earlier to $79 million, as its new electronic radio audience measurement system continues to roll out. That helped push costs up 17 percent to $78.7 million, halving profits to $3.8 million.
The cable industry nearly doubled its lobbying outlay last year. Much of that went to fight the telecom franchising bill -- a cause it won indirectly when the bill withered due to lack of political interest. NCTA spent $14 million on lobbying in 2006, compared with just over $7 million in 2004, according to documents filed with the Secy. of the Senate. AT&T was the big communications industry spender in 2006.
CBS sales came in a bit better than expected last quarter, aided by record political ad outlays, Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif Cohen wrote. The company announced a $1.5 billion stock buyback. That amounts to 6% of its current market capitalization, Cohen said. It also raised its quarterly dividend 10% to 22 cents. Q4 sales rose 2.4% from a year earlier to $3.8 billion. TV sales increased 3% to $2.56 billion. The company’s net swung to a $335 million profit from a $9.1 billion loss a year earlier, reflecting its split from Viacom, it said. CBS’s guidance that 2007 results will be similar to 2006’s is consistent with forecasts, said Bank of America analyst Jonathan Jacoby.
The U.K.’s Mobile Telecom & Health Research program soon will announce a $3.8 million grant to study radiation from cellphone and links to cancer and other diseases, The Times of London reported. The effort will track about 200,000 people for at least 5 years. “You find absolutely nothing for 10 years and then after that it starts to grow dramatically,” The Times quoted cellphone radiation expert Lawrie Challis, the program’s chmn., as saying: “It goes up 10 times. You look at what happened after the atomic bombs at Nagasaki, Hiroshima. You find again a long delay, nothing for 10 years. The same for asbestos.” Adults in the U.K. use 50 million mobile phones, and the number used by children 5-9 is 6 times as high as in 2000.
“High-cost” rural telecom companies got 58.7% of $6.5 billion disbursed by the Universal Service Fund in 2005, the FCC said. High cost support totaled $3.8 billion, compared with about $3.5 billion in 2004 -- a rise the report traced to growth in support for competitive carriers from $0.3 billion in 2004 to $0.6 billion in 2005. The E-rate program for schools and libraries accounted for 28.6% of the USF, about $2 billion. Support for low-income consumers accounted for 12.4% or about $804 million, up from 2004’s $763 million. The rural health care program drew about 0.4% or $25 million, the report said. In a snapshot of telecom industry revenue, the report showed the USF funded by charges levied on $234 billion, up from 2004’s $233 billion. Bell company access lines declined from about 136 million in 2004 to 127 million in 2005.
Nurturing online revenue is a priority at TV companies for the rest of 2006 and for 2007, executives at TV stations and cable networks told investors last week. Though the percentage of total sales that online revenue represents today is still small at traditional TV companies, in some cases immeasurably so, executives said they expect to see more money coming from online efforts next year. “Digital revenue is somewhere between 1 and 2% of our total revenue,” LIN TV CEO Vincent Sadusky said: “Our goal over the next 2 yearss is to get that number up significantly.” LIN TV shares rose 4% Thurs. after the company said Q3 revenue increased 27% from a year earlier $115.8 million on some station acquisitions, and profit rose 1.7% to $3.8 million.