Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said she won’t run for reelection this year. Snowe was in line to replace retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, as the lead Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee. Senate Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Jim DeMint, R-S.C., is next in line of seniority for the top GOP job. Snowe announced the news on her campaign’s Facebook page, saying she did not think another term would be productive given high partisanship in Congress.
The FCC Public Safety Bureau Tuesday asked for nominations for the new Technical Advisory Board for First Responder Interoperability (http://xrl.us/bmwdav). One provision of the spectrum legislation signed into law last week requires the commission to appoint the 14-member board by March 23. It’s charged with “develop[ing] recommended minimum technical requirements to ensure a nationwide level of interoperability for the nationwide public safety broadband network.” The legislation dictates appointment of four members representing “wireless providers,” three representing equipment makers, three state and local governments and four “public safety entities.” Nominations are due by March 7.
MobiTV said it will work with Texas Instruments on providing better, secure HD content delivery to multiple devices using TI’s OMAP processing platform.
Small businesses are poised to spend more than a quarter of their marketing budgets on digital media this year, BIA/Kelsey said. The consulting group has been tracking small-business advertising in a 15-year study. “We continue to see a powerful pattern in usage of digital/online media according to the age of the business,” said Steve Marshall, a research director at BIA/Kelsey. “Younger businesses spend much more of their ad budgets on digital/online media than older counterparts that spend more on traditional media."
The FCC needs to reimpose a spectrum cap, the Rural Telecommunications Group said in a filing. “A lower spectrum screen and a spectrum aggregation limit (of 110 megahertz of spectrum below 2.3 GHz in any individual county) are inextricably tied and would be vital Commission tools to keep the wireless industry competitive,” RTG said (http://xrl.us/bmwc9d). “It has been almost four full years since the conclusion of Auction 73, the last significant auction of spectrum intended for commercial mobile wireless services. The lack of new spectrum available in the primary marketplace necessitates immediate reinstatement of a spectrum cap."
Cablevision shares fell 9.7 percent Tuesday after the company reported Q4 earnings, signaled it won’t soon name a new chief operating officer and said it will spend significantly this year on some projects. It was the first earnings report and earnings teleconference since the departure of COO Tom Rutledge, who now runs Charter. With Rutledge gone, Cablevision CEO James Dolan appears to be holding the reins of Cablevision for the foreseeable future, BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield wrote: “This should end speculation that the company is actively recruiting replacements for either Rutledge” or John Bickham, another recently-departed Cablevision executive. Dolan indicated the company would be spending significantly on projects such as remote-storage DVR and Wi-Fi this year, meaning investor estimates about free cash flow might be too high, Greenfield wrote. Cablevision’s Q4 results were surprisingly good, but guidance for 2012 was surprisingly bad, Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett wrote investors. “Taken together they illustrate neatly the bind that the company faces,” he said: “Their market is saturated, their penetration levels … are all the highest in the industry (by far). And they face higher overlap with Verizon’s FiOS than any other cable peer.” The steep dip in Cablevision’s share price may make it a good investment now, Miller Tabak analyst David Joyce wrote investors, upgrading his rating on the stock to “Buy” from “Neutral.” Q4 sales gained 7.3 percent from a year earlier to $1.69 billion, the company said. The company lost 14,000 video customers during the quarter, but gained 20,000 broadband and 31,000 voice customers, it said. It ended the quarter with 3.25 million video, 2.96 million broadband and 2.36 million phone customers. Profit fell 46 percent to $60.6 million related to $40 million in income from discontinued operations the company recorded in the year-earlier period.
Clearwire will see continuing demand for spectrum it owns even as the FCC looks at bringing more online, after Congress enacted spectrum legislation that was signed into law last week, said Chief Financial Office Hope Cochran. “I think the government would like to get more spectrum available,” she said Tuesday at the Deutsche Bank conference. “They're trying to be helpful, which is good. But the problem is that all of those spectrum bands that they could maybe bring to market are cluttered. It just takes a long time, while the capacity crunch is happening a lot faster.” Discussions about additional spectrum deals have heated up since AT&T cancelled its proposed buy of T-Mobile last year, Cochran said. “People wanted to see where the AT&T divestitures would go,” she said. “There weren’t a lot of discussions going on. I think the discussions have really opened up since then.”
The Interactive Advertising Bureau will form an Advertising Technology Council, the bureau said Tuesday at the close of its annual leadership meeting. The council will consolidate the “advertising technology sector toward the goal of developing technical standards and operating best practices.” The council will include IAB member companies focused on advertising technology and will work with the IAB Ad Operations Council to develop operating standards and best practices for the digital ad industry.
Mobile payment technologies processed over $10 billion in 2011 in North America, said a Parks Associates white paper released Tuesday. More than half of U.S. broadband households want to be able to scan barcodes for price and promotional information with their next mobile phone, and 37 percent of U.S. cellphone owners “find the mobile wallet concept appealing,” the firm said. “The mobile phone is the main device people use to organize their lives, and mobile payment solutions offer significant conveniences, including organizing receipts and eliminating the need to carry cash,” said Director Harry Wang.
Globecast will use multiple SES transponders at 28.2 degrees east under a new contract, said SES. It said Globecast will use the capacity to provide content to broadcasters in the U.K and Ireland.