CiG Wireless said it agreed to buy 290 tower sites from Liberty Towers for more than $33.2 million in cash and CiG shares. The deal -- anticipated to close on June 30 -- would give CiG Wireless 38 tower sites that are already built and generating revenue, as well as 252 work-in-progress sites. The purchase will “significantly expand our tower footprint as well as provide us with excellent future development opportunities,” said CiG CEO Paul McGinn in a news release Monday (http://bit.ly/ZBGA1W). CiG currently owns 81 tower sites in the continental U.S., including 29 in the Mid-Atlantic, 24 in California and 16 in the Southeast (http://bit.ly/12bP55N). Liberty Towers’ sites are in Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and West Virginia (http://bit.ly/10ewkf6).
AT&T wants to set the record straight on why a 700 MHz interoperability mandate poses a real interference risk for companies like AT&T that own lower-band 700 MHz spectrum, Senior Vice President Bob Quinn said in a Monday blog post. “AT&T did not bid on A Block spectrum at auction specifically because of the interference issues posed by Channel 51 broadcasters and others,” Quinn wrote (http://bit.ly/ZAVIwJ). “AT&T has conducted rigorous testing and engineering analyses, and those tests and analyses make very clear that at typical real-world power levels, Channel 51 transmissions would substantially degrade our LTE service -- creating LTE ‘no call’ zones -- if AT&T were required to use chipsets that enabled A Block reception. In other words, we have spent billions of capital dollars deploying the best LTE network in the world, which would be significantly degraded and less efficient if ‘interoperability’ were mandated by the FCC without addressing these interference issues first.” Quinn said that as a result of the incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum, the FCC will soon have the capacity to address Channel 51 interference issues. “To be clear, there would still be other interference issues that would need to be resolved -- in particular, those related to the approved power levels with respect to the E Block spectrum,” he said. “But the FCC has the power to harmonize those power transmission levels to resolve those additional interference issues. So, we are relatively close in time to a real solution to this problem.” Competitive Carriers Association President Steve Berry fired back at AT&T. “AT&T’s repetition of the same false and long-settled theoretical allegations of harmful interference in the Lower 700 MHz band adds nothing new to the discussion nor provides any new valid technical evidence or economic proof for its anticompetitive policy position,” Berry said in an emailed statement. “Lower 700 MHz interoperability will not negatively impact AT&T’s customers’ LTE experience, but will allow millions of Americans to benefit from the additional deployment of 4G LTE mobile broadband, competition from rural and regional carriers, and economic investment to utilize nearly $2 billion worth of spectrum. Real solutions to restore interoperability in the Lower 700 MHz band are available today through FCC action, and should not be pushed to the horizon as suggested by AT&T."
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Crime announced witnesses for its Wednesday cybersecurity hearing, in a news release Monday. Scheduled to testify are: Jenny Durkan, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington; Joseph Demarest, assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division; Kevin Mandia, CEO of Mandiant; Stewart Baker, a partner at Steptoe & Johnson; and Cheri McGuire, vice president-global government affairs and cybersecurity policy at Symantec. The hearing will be at 9 a.m. in 226 Dirksen.
The Outdoor Channel Holdings board decided the Friday proposal from InterMedia Outdoors to buy the Outdoor Channel is a superior proposal. InterMedia offered to buy the distributor at $9.75 per share, Outdoor Channel said in a press release on Monday (http://bit.ly/16bqx0r). Last week, Kroenke Sports and Entertainment increased its offer for Outdoor Channel from $8.75 a share to $9.35 a share (CD May 6 p14). Outdoor Channel notified Kroenke of its intention to terminate the agreement, subject to Kroenke’s right to make an offer within four days that would “cause the InterMedia proposal to no longer constitute a superior proposal,” it said.
Verizon wants permission from regulators to offer wireless-only service in parts of New York that Superstorm Sandy devastated last year. In a Friday filing before the New York State Public Service Commission (http://bit.ly/13d2hd5), the telco asked for permission to make wireless its sole offering in the western portion of Fire Island and for changes to the tariff language to set up circumstances where discontinuing wireline service is possible. On Fire Island, “Verizon’s outside plant facilities shared in the [Sandy] damage, particularly in the western part of the Island, where about 40% of the access lines were found to be defective after the storm,” Manuel Sampedro, a regional president for Verizon New York, told the PSC. “Five of the six cables that run between Fire Island and the mainland -- the five that serve the western portion of the Island -- were also badly damaged by the storm.” In the western part of the island, much of the copper was “damaged beyond repair,” causing Verizon to offer Verizon Voice Link as its principal service, it said. “The use of a wireless service as the primary service option on western Fire Island makes sense,” Sampedro said. “The cost of replacing facilities is very high, and if hurricanes or other severe storms occur in the future, there is a significant risk that the newly installed outside plant would again be damaged or destroyed.” He called wireless “already the predominant mode of voice communication on the Island.” Verizon will enhance its wireless service on the island, with each home to receive a Voice Link transmitter/receiver to boost service, he said. The Verizon filing detailed how it would help provide battery power for this wireless offering, which runs on electricity, as well as its pricing, which it said will be comparable to landline service for those customers that would have to make the switch. Customers won’t have to change their phone numbers. Verizon will repair copper “on an as-needed basis” for the servicing of such buildings as “firehouses, police stations, and other municipal buildings,” it added.
Congress needs to amend the Patent Act to protect U.S. businesses against harms posed by patent assertion entities (PAEs), Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2Coalition) Chair Christian Dawson said Friday in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. The current version of the act does not protect small and medium-sized businesses against PAEs’ “victimization and frivolous lawsuits,” Dawson said in the letter, released Monday. Small and medium-sized businesses comprised 90 percent of the defendants in PAE-initiated lawsuits between 2005 and 2011, with such lawsuits costing all defendants and licensees $29 billion in 2011, Dawson said. “This is particularly troubling to our industry and to our membership because we are often the target of these frivolous lawsuits which can cost a single company millions of dollars to litigate,” he said. “The broader effect is to hamper innovation, which is exactly the opposite of what the patent system was designed to encourage.” Any amendment to the Patent Act should be narrowly focused on protecting true end users, and should include protections for end users against patent infringement claims, because PAEs have been known to sue end users, which further drives up the cost of settling lawsuits, Dawson said. An amendment to the Patent Act should also clearly define an “end user item” as any product that is sold publicly and used as intended, he said. End users shouldn’t “be required to pay for damages for using this kind of product or risk being enjoined from using the product,” Dawson said (http://bit.ly/YAieuj).
AT&T reached a settlement with the Texas Public Utility Commission on the telco’s service quality shortcomings, said a document and proposed order the PUC released Friday (http://bit.ly/ZBq7Ll). “In the quality of service report for the first quarter of 2012, AT&T Texas self-reported 227 instances in which it failed to meet the service objective in P.U.C. SUBST. R. 26.54,” the agreement said, referring to Texas code on service quality benchmarks. “One hundred and seventy five instances related to P.U.C. SUBST. R. 26.54(c)(6)(D), which establishes a benchmark of at least 90% of out-of-service trouble reports cleared within eight working hours.” AT&T cooperated with the PUC staff investigation, said the agreement, which was signed by the telco’s general attorney, Katherine Swaller. AT&T has worked up a corrective action plan to avoid future problems but will need several months to enact it, the agreement said. AT&T promises it will “substantially improve” its performance by the benchmarks date of Dec. 31 of this year, it said. Due to the violations, AT&T will pay the PUC what the agreement calls an “administrative penalty” of $227,000.
Onex Corp. will buy Nielsen Holdings’ trade show arm, Nielsen Expositions, for $950 million cash, the equity firm said in a release Monday (http://bit.ly/10htA6l). The sale is expected to be completed in Q2, it said. Last year, Nielsen Expositions generated revenue of about $183 million, said the release. Nielsen Holdings said the divestiture will allow the company to concentrate on its television ratings and marketing data businesses.
The Association of Public Television Stations reiterated the importance of universal service as embodied in the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 and offered the FCC recommendations for the design of the spectrum incentive auction and repacking process. The recommendations include measures to “protect universal public TV service,” minimize disruption to the public’s TV service “caused by the repacking process and ensure that stations are made whole in that process” and to provide flexibility and clarity to stations in the design and implementation of the incentive auction, APTS said in a letter in docket 12-268 (http://bit.ly/YqbFIE). APTS also urged the FCC to allow UHF licensees to limit a bid to the VHF band with contingent effective radiated power and height limit waivers, and to provide clear, tailored anti-collusion rules “that account for the unique circumstances of the incentive auction,” it said.
The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium’s telehealth network, the Alaska Federal Health Care Access Network, will receive video and collaboration services from Vidyo, the company said Monday (http://bit.ly/10efop4). “By integrating Vidyo’s Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) with AFHCAN’s existing tConsult software-based system, thousands of Alaska healthcare practitioners will have the ability to conduct real-time, high-definition video consultations and examinations with hundreds of thousands of patients in more than 200 locations,” Vidyo said.