Time Warner Cable wants out of rate regulation in three communities in New York and Pennsylvania, because it faces effective competition there from the two major U.S. DBS companies, and more than 15 percent of video customers in the communities buy video from TWC rivals. The petition for special relief which included Greece, N.Y., was posted Thursday to docket 12-43 (http://xrl.us/bmskfx).
USTelecom filed a petition for forbearance from “a variety of monopoly-era voice regulations that have lost meaning in a marketplace where consumers can choose from a plethora of wireline, wireless, cable and IP voice offerings,” said USTelecom Vice President-Policy Glenn Reynolds Thursday. The petition (http://xrl.us/bmshus) addresses various FCC accounting rules that were designed for “a purpose that no longer exists,” and rules that “introduce delay when companies upgrade their services and networks,” Reynolds said. According to the petition, many of the rules it requests the FCC eliminate were already identified as unnecessary in the commission’s Biennial Review report released two months ago.
Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif., said she'll propose legislation to establish a seat on the USF joint-board for a representative of Indian tribes. According to her proposed bill, the tribal representative would be nominated by the FCC’s Office of Native Affairs and Policy.
AT&T can’t keep a shareholder’s net neutrality proposal off its 2012 proxy statement, according to an SEC letter dated Feb. 10. The SEC rejected the request by AT&T to exclude the proposal, which asks that the company “publicly commit to operate its wireless broadband network consistent with network neutrality principles -- i.e., operate a neutral network with neutral routing along the company’s wireless infrastructure such that the company does not privilege, degrade or prioritize any packet transmitted over its wireless infrastructure based on its source, ownership or destination.” AT&T asked the agency for guidance on whether it could exclude the proposal, arguing it was inherently vague and indefinite, and that it didn’t deal with a matter “relating to the company’s ordinary business operations.” The SEC Office of Chief Counsel disagreed, saying it was “unable to concur” with AT&T’s positions. “In view of the sustained public debate over the last several years concerning net neutrality and the Internet and the increasing recognition that the issue raises significant policy considerations, we do not believe that AT&T may omit the proposal from its proxy materials,” the counsel wrote. “Net neutrality is the free speech issue of our time and today’s decision by the SEC was a big win in the fight to maintain a free and open Internet,” said Senator Al Franken, D-Minn. Franken had co-written a Jan. 31 letter to SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro with four other senators, urging the commission to deny the company’s exclusion requests.
Frontier Communication Q4 profits fell 8.2 percent from a year earlier to $42.2 million, the company said Thursday. The telco had 3,103,800 residential customers, 309,900 business customers, 1,764,200 broadband customers and 557,500 video customers at the end of 2011. Net addition of 1,000 video customers during Q4 includes 6,900 net additions of satellite-TV customers and a loss of 5,900 Verizon FiOS video customers. Frontier has finished a four state conversion of the Verizon lines it acquired in 2010, CEO Maggie Wilderotter said. It’s started the prep work for the additional nine states to convert in March, she said.
Q4 sales at Discovery Communications increased 11 percent from a year earlier to $1.12 billion, the company said. Quarterly net income from continuing operations nearly doubled from a year earlier to $336 million on stronger operating performance and one-time foreign tax credits. That boost came despite a $20 million write down on its commerce operations.
Online access to the NCAA men’s basketball championship tournament will be limited to authenticated subscribers of Turner’s pay-TV networks for many games this year, Turner Sports and CBS Sports said. In previous years, all games were available free online. Games that air on CBS’s broadcast network will be available free on CBSSports.com. But games on Turner’s TBS, TNT and truTV networks will be available only to authenticated subscribers, they said. “Authenticating this year’s tournament across the Turner Networks is an extension of the company’s TV Everywhere initiative,” the company said. Additionally, access to all the games on multiple platforms including Android and iOS devices can be had for a $4 purchase, they said . “While this is a step in the right direction, we still do not like that CBS is streaming their games for free,” said BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield. “We believe they should have followed an authentication model like Turner as they are trying to drive retrans,” he said. The companies should also charge more for access to the games on multiple platforms, he said. “Turner/CBS should want to enhance the value perception of a multichannel video subscription in consumers’ minds and at the same time put extreme pressure on MVPDs … who are not yet authenticating,” he said.
Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport opened its first cellphone waiting lot Thursday. The lot is for drivers waiting to make a pickup and is intended to limit curbside congestion, said officials of the airport (http://xrl.us/bmshpx).
Cordillera shot back at Time Warner Cable’s arguments in their ongoing retransmission consent dispute over carriage of KRIS-TV Corpus Christi. Time Warner Cable’s opposition (CD Feb 6 p9) to Cordillera’s petition contained “more groundless charges designed solely to consume the Commission’s and Cordillera’s resources, punish Cordillera for refusing to accept a retransmission consent agreement that is inconsistent with marketplace conditions and bludgeon Cordillera into accepting substantially discounted terms,” the broadcaster said in a reply filing (http://xrl.us/bmshka). “TWC essentially argues that it satisfies the rules” requiring good-faith retrans negotiations “simply by going through the motions of negotiating, regardless of whether its negotiating practices or substantive positions reflect a good-faith desire to reach an agreement,” Cordillera said. Though TWC claims that no genuine market for retransmission consent rights exists and that those rights themselves are artificial, “TWC’s disagreements with its unequivocal legal obligations does not absolve TWC from its duty to negotiate agreements that reflect the marketplace,” Cordillera said. TWC’s “wild claim that Cordillera has assumed control over KZTV-TV Corpus Christi is meritless and shows just how far TWC will go in its bad-faith efforts to force Cordillera to accept its retransmission consent terms,” it said. Cordillera operates KZTV under a shared services agreement. Despite TWC’s arguments, the fact that both stations aired local news segments about the dispute isn’t evidence of bad faith or collusion, Cordillera said. KRIS’s general manager contacted KZTV-TV owner SagamoreHill Broadcasting’s CEO Louis Wall requesting to run the segment, Cordillera said. “The coverage aired on KZTV(TV) only after Mr. Wall exercised independent judgment and approval,” it said. “That news judgment had been confirmed by every major news outlet in the market, so it can hardly be evidence of bad faith.” TWC is wrong to suggest KZTV hasn’t capitalized on the dispute through increased ad sales, the broadcaster said. It said ad sales for January were tracking 45 percent ahead of a year earlier at the station, while KRIS’s sales looked to be down 39 percent.
The FCC Wireless Bureau sought comment on a NextG Networks of California petition asking the agency to clarify that the service NextG provides using distributed antenna systems and other small-cell solutions is not CMRS, as defined by the Communications Act. NextG is in a dispute with Scottsdale, Ariz., on how its facilities should be classified. Comments are due April 2, replies May 2, in docket 12-37 (http://xrl.us/bmshoh).