Viacom will provide hundreds of TV shows to users of Amazon’s Prime Instant Video, the companies announced Tuesday in a press release (http://bit.ly/17WGNFQ). The companies said the deal is part of an “expanded multi-year, multi-national digital video licensing agreement” recently finalized between the two companies. They said the deal will provide customers with exclusive content not available on other streaming digital video services. “Prime members will now have unlimited instant streaming access to popular kids programming such as Bubble Guppies, The Backyardigans, Team Umizoomi, Blue’s Clues and Victorious, along with top-rated shows from MTV and Comedy Central like Awkward, Tosh.0 and Workaholics,” said the release. “Kids shows are one of the most watched TV genres on Prime Instant Video,” said Amazon Vice President-Digital Video and Music Bill Carr, who said Amazon will now offer the largest subscription selection of Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. TV shows online. The deal will also provide content form Nickelodeon to Kindle users over Amazon’s Kindle FreeTime Unlimited Service. “This innovative agreement will provide Prime members with access to even more of our best programming from our major television brands,” said Viacom CEO Philip Dauman in the release.
Sinclair will buy four TTBG TV stations for $115.35 million, the buyer said in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/14e5r0O). The stations are Fox affiliates KPTH Sioux City, Iowa; KPTM Omaha, Neb.; and California’s KMPH Fresno, along with CW affiliate KFRE Fresno. Sinclair will also take over TTBG agreements to provide sales and other services to KXVO Omaha and KMEG Sioux City. Sinclair CEO David Smith said the acquisition will “complement the California properties we are acquiring from Fisher, as well as add to our Iowa presence and give us our first stations in Nebraska.” Sinclair said the transaction will close late in Q3 or in Q4. The company earlier this year agreed to buy Fisher Communications in a $373.3 million deal (CD April 12 p14).
Nevada now limits state regulation of VoIP and other Internet Protocol-enabled services. Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) signed Assembly Bill 486 this week. The bill, with certain exceptions, “prohibits any state agency or political subdivision of the State from regulating any Internet Protocol-enabled service or Voice over Internet Protocol service,” according to the bill text. Some surcharges and assessments may apply to the providers. It easily passed the Nevada Assembly and Senate since its March introduction and follows a regulatory trend in more than half of all U.S. states now.
Verizon Senior Vice President Tom Maguire took to the telco’s official blog to defend its Voice Link service from recent attacks, notably from Public Knowledge officials. PK Senior Vice President Harold Feld criticized the fixed wireless service, which Verizon will replace its damaged copper with on Fire Island, N.Y. (CD May 17 p8), both on the group’s website and on his blog, most recently Monday when calling for the FCC’s involvement. “Unless the FCC wants line staff to continue to make policy based on their best guess, the FCC needs to step up on Voice Link,” Feld argued (http://bit.ly/12qYEmo). “More importantly, the FCC needs to figure out how it intends to deal with situations like Sandy, where a disaster destroys a major chunk of copper infrastructure that the provider does not plan to replace. Nature abhors a vacuum, and telcos will gladly fill the policy vacuum left by agency inaction with whatever policy suits themselves.” Maguire defended the quality of the service, Verizon’s intentions, its stakeholder outreach and its relationships with customers and the FCC. “We have been working with the FCC for some time on filing the appropriate discontinuance filings and other notices for the affected services,” he said in the post (http://vz.to/14s9Sl5), which linked to Feld’s argument and responded to its “opining.” Maguire explained the service and how Verizon approached the problem of its damaged copper in the wake of last year’s Superstorm Sandy.
SES and Oi, a Brazilian telecom company, signed an agreement to provide direct-to-home services in Brazil on the SES-6 satellite. The satellite was launched Monday from Baikonur Cosmodrome on an International Launch Services Proton Breeze M launch vehicle, SES said in a press release (http://bit.ly/1b0bqGC). It’s to replace NSS-806 at the prime orbital position of 40.5 degrees west, “providing continuity of service and expansion capacity in the C band for video neighborhoods in Latin America and the Caribbean,” it said.
Arlington v. FCC did not hold that an agency is always entitled to deference in its interpretation of the statutes it relies on, Verizon told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in a filing Monday. Verizon was responding to an FCC argument that Arlington bolstered its arguments in the court challenge to the net neutrality rules (CD May 24 p1). The Arlington decision, Verizon said, simply held that under the established Chevron framework, deference only applies when it resolves “'a statutory ambiguity’ that constitutes an implicit delegation to gap-fill.” And according to D.C. Circuit precedent, whether ambiguity exists is not a question that agencies get deference on, Verizon said. Congress declined to grant specific authority over the Internet, instead creating a distinct regulatory scheme for information services and expressly directing that the Internet remain “unfettered” by regulation, Verizon said, quoting Section 230 of the Telecom Act. “There is no gap to fill."
The number of smartphone subscriptions worldwide will rise to 4.5 billion by the end of 2018 -- up from 1.2 billion in 2012, Ericsson said Monday. That growth will result in a 12-fold increase in data traffic by 2018 as smartphone users increase their mobile video use. Video is already the largest driver of network data traffic, and is set to grow 60 percent annually through the end of 2018, Ericsson said. LTE subscriptions will surpass 1 billion by 2018, while LTE services will be available to 60 percent of the world’s population by that time. Growth in LTE will continue to be driven by the demand for more data-intensive services, Ericsson said (http://bit.ly/11QJdT8).
CTIA raised questions about a declaratory ruling on how carriers safeguard Customer Proprietary Network Information stored on wireless devices, which was circulated by then-FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski May 17, just before he left office. None of the members of the FCC have voted for the ruling since it was circulated by Genachowski, agency officials said Monday. The ruling holds in part that if data on a mobile device meets the statutory definition of CPNI, it must be considered CPNI, officials said. The ruling grew out of a public notice the commission released last year on privacy practices and Carrier IQ (http://bit.ly/LAIH1m). The FCC should not impose rules on wireless carriers to protect privacy and security of CPNI on mobile devices, carriers and CTIA said in response (CD Aug 1 p10). Seven public interest groups said without rules the FCC has to rely on “opacity and blind faith in voluntary behavior to protect privacy.” CTIA Assistant Vice President Krista Witanowski met with Louis Peraertz, aide to acting Chairman Mignon Clyburn, and spoke with Jennifer Tatel of the Office of General Counsel, said an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/11zQjp5). “The FCC did acknowledge the value of using diagnostic applications such as Carrier IQ and collecting such information to improve network performance and that the FCC had no intention of restricting carriers from continuing to do so.”
The FCC shouldn’t regulate signal quality for digital cable systems, Verizon officials told Media Bureau staff in a meeting Friday, according to an ex parte letter filed with the FCC (http://bit.ly/18DzYbz). “While the FCC’s current analog technical rules are outdated, there is no reason to adopt new regulations for digital cable systems such as FiOS TV,” said Verizon. The company argued that because of its high-quality network and capacity to check its own errors, it doesn’t need further oversight. “For such a network, proof-of-performance mandates, such as semi-annual testing, would impose costs on Verizon’s system but would not improve the quality of the customer’s experience. It is unlikely that such testing would alert our technicians to any problem not already detected through our own stringent and continuous internal monitoring,” said Verizon. The company urged the FCC officials to allow the invisible hand of the market to ensure customers receive high signal quality. “Robust competition in the video market creates strong incentives for video providers to deliver high quality services, particularly a service as fundamental as a good picture,” said Verizon. “If a video provider is not offering the highest quality service, its customers can and will switch to a competitor."
New audit reports question the spending of EAGLE-Net Alliance, which received $100.6 million through NTIA’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program. The Colorado Office of the State Auditor received two audits of EAGLE-Net last week, one focused on the intergovernmental entity’s financial statements and the other on its use of federal funds. The first audit, conducted by Holscher, Mayberry & Co., looked through the project’s financial statements up through last year. That audit cites EAGLE-Net’s search for a provider to take over operations and provided additional needed money, which EAGLE-Net formally launched shortly after NTIA lifted its five-month suspension this spring, as beginning half a year ago: “Beginning in December 2012, EAGLE-Net engaged in meetings with potential network operators to explore partnership opportunities.” EAGLE-Net’s long-term debt is tied up in a revolving loan with UMB Bank Colorado, but now “there are no funds available for grant matching purposes and the line has been fully drawn,” said Holscher Mayberry. It said there was an amended agreement with the bank this April. The project started making monthly interest payments this May, it said. The second report was done by the same auditors and pointed to accounting problems from last year. “We identified certain deficiencies in internal control over compliance that we consider to be material weaknesses and significant deficiencies,” the auditors said. “EAGLE-Net Alliance did not have adequate procedures in place to properly separate grant expenditures from non-grant expenditures within their accounting system on a contemporaneous basis. While EAGLE-Net was already in the process of taking corrective action, they were not able to track this activity through their accounting system for the 2012 fiscal year until after hiring replacement finance personnel with adequate knowledge to properly utilize the system and recreate the transaction activity. In addition, due to the amount of time required to recreate the accounting records, certain key transactions were not fully analyzed and adjusted until subsequent to year end.” The auditors said the project “needs to institute more consistent internal controls over grant and other disbursements to properly allocate costs among the various operations as they occur,” and that it “continue to maintain the transaction based spreadsheet as a reconciliation tool to be used in insure proper general ledger coding.” A problematic accounting structure caused EAGLE-Net to draw more federal funds than it needed last year, the report said. It recommended the federal government limit the window of time from when it releases funds to when they will be spent. The auditors also identified stronger needs to monitor income generated and where that money goes: “EAGLE-Net may be generating net program income that should be applied to the grant activities rather than being used to offset other operating costs.” EAGLE-Net concurred with all identified issues as well as the auditors’ recommendations, according to an EAGLE-Net corrective action plan submitted along with the auditors’ findings. The project said many of the accounting issues have been dealt with and practices changed. Its responses pointed to February 2012 as a turning point for many of those problems. “Management recognized the shortcomings of the previous system and ensured that changes were made to both correct prior entries and to properly post entries going forward,” said EAGLE-Net. That report said EAGLE-Net “complied, in all material respects, with the types of compliance requirements … that could have a direct and material effect on each of its major federal programs."