Google Fiber reached agreement with another Kansas municipality Thursday. The city council of Shawnee, with about 60,000 residents outside the Kansas City area, voted to approve an agreement with the search-engine company. The deal “will enhance the quality of life for people in Shawnee by providing faster access to essential digital resources” and “grow and strengthen Shawnee’s competitive advantage in the years to come,” said Mayor Jeff Meyers in a statement (http://bit.ly/Ysajzi). Google Fiber confirmed the agreement on its blog and praised Shawnee’s recent overhaul of its website (http://bit.ly/ZEPjUs). “We still have a lot of planning and engineering work to do before we're ready to bring Fiber to Shawnee, so we don’t have an estimate for when service will be available yet,” wrote Rachel Hack, Google Fiber community manager.
By the 2015 school year, every school should have access to 100 Mbps Internet per 1,000 students, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel planned to tell participants at a Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition conference Thursday evening, according to her prepared remarks. By the end of the decade, that number should increase to 1 Gbps per 1,000 students, she said. “E-Rate 2.0” will better position U.S. students to compete with those abroad, who are currently delivering faster speeds to students who are getting more math and science in their curricula, Rosenworcel planned to say. Roughly half of E-rate schools access the Internet at speeds of 3 Mbps or less, she was to say. We fail our students if we expect digital age learning to take place at near dial-up speeds.” To reach her speed goals, the commission will need more data collection, according to her prepared remarks, adding future E-rate applications should collect more information about existing capacity and projected needs. But applicants should also face a “simpler process” to get funding, she said. Multi-year and consortia applications could reduce paperwork and administrative expense, she said. To find the money for all this, the FCC needs to do more to combat waste and abuse in its other USF programs, she wrote. Lifeline needs “more mending” to free up funds to put into E-rate, she said. “We have a choice,” Rosenworcel said. “We can wait and see where the status quo takes us and let other nations lead the way. Or we can choose a future where all American students have the opportunity to gain the skills they need to compete, no matter who they are, where they live, or where they go to school."
The Senate Communications Subcommittee plans hearings on the state of the video and wireless marketplaces, it said Thursday. The video marketplace hearing is scheduled for May 14 at 10:30 a.m. in 253 Russell. NAB President Gordon Smith and NCTA President Michael Powell will testify, their spokesmen confirmed. The subcommittee also plans a hearing on the state of wireless communications on June 4 at 2:30 p.m. in 253 Russell. Witnesses for the wireless marketplace hearing, which was postponed last month, have not yet been announced.
British Sky Broadcasting is focusing on offering more content and new capabilities to distribute content, said CEO Jeremy Darroch. BSkyB had a 6 percent revenue increase to $8.3 billion in the nine months ending March 31, and about 715,000 subscribers were added, he said Thursday during a webcast. There has been growth across all product lines and it highlights the opportunity for future growth, “which has been transformed by our shift to a multi-product strategy,” he said. “We don’t just sell satellite TV and the breadth of our offer continues to grow,” he said. BSkyB will mainly focus on overall product sales instead of only TV customer net additions, Darroch said. It also will emphasize broadening products in its strategy, he said. BSkyB continued to attract more customers with direct-to-home service, “stand-alone home communications” and its over-the-top service, Now TV, he said. BSkyB plans to participate more broadly in the marketplace, which includes broadening distribution with over-the-top services and on mobile platforms, Darroch said. BSkyB also is extending its content window with on-demand services to compete more effectively in the DVD release window and it’s building its library content, he said. Different payment types will be available to meet different customer needs, he added. The opportunity for growth in pay-TV revenue and subs remains healthy, Darroch said. “We're seeing the market broaden out in the U.K. and more distribution opportunities to monetize our service,” he said. New services, like Sky Go Extra, are starting to land and provide additional revenue for the company, he said. The company connected 600,000 set-top boxes to reach 2.3 million homes by the end of the quarter, he said. There were about 4.5 million weekly downloads of on-demand content in Q3, “which is more than five times the level from a year ago.” Churn was higher at 10.8 percent, reflecting the pressure on some household budgets, he said. Darroch said Liberty Global’s $23 billion proposal to buy Virgin Media so far isn’t informing BSkyB’s strategy. It “doesn’t affect our strategic thinking or direction,” he said. “We'd hope to have a competitive but also productive relationship with them.”
The MPAA applauded a new report from the National Research Council (http://bit.ly/162ugPG) that acknowledges “that copyright enforcement is a major area that warrants research due to, amongst other things, the lack of enforcement mechanisms outside of the United States.” A release said the report points to concerns about “Bittorrent file-sharing platforms and ad-supported cyberlockers” and “the illegal distribution of movies while still in theaters.” MPAA Senior Executive Vice President-Global Policy and External Affairs Michael O'Leary said in a statement that the MPAA appreciates the report. “A major challenge to all of us is to identify potential avenues of solution, including the creative content and technology industries working more closely together to help ensure an Internet that works for everyone,” he said.
The Minority Media and Telecommunications Council media ownership study will be submitted to the FCC on or around May 29, said an ex parte letter filed Thursday (http://bit.ly/16uVK0k). The letter said MMTC officials had four separate meetings Wednesday on issues related to the 2010 quadrennial ownership review with commissioners Ajit Pai, Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel, and staff from the Media Bureau and Office of Communications Business Opportunities. According to the letter, interviews for the MMTC study will be completed May 17, and it will then be reviewed by three academics before being presented to the commission. The letter said that along with the media ownership study update, MMTC officials also endorsed proposals to relax foreign ownership restrictions (CD May 2 p5), which it said “would enhance access to capital for minority broadcasters.” The letter said the MMTC also discussed “reviving AM radio” with the FCC officials, and the council’s Radio Rescue Taskforce will meet with commissioners and staff on May 16. Outgoing FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski paused a vote on a draft bureau media ownership order so that MMTC could study the effect of cross ownership on minority-owned broadcasters (CD Feb 27 p1).
U.S. wireless carriers increased their annual network investments to $30.1 billion in 2012, up 19 percent from 2011, CTIA said Thursday in a report on the results of its semi-annual survey of carriers. It’s the most the sector has spent on networks since CTIA began its survey in 1985. It represents about a quarter of global wireless capital expenditures during 2012, although the U.S. only had about 5 percent of the world’s wireless users, CTIA said. U.S. carriers spent $94 on network investments per customer, while the average for the rest of the world was $16, CTIA said. U.S. wireless carriers have invested more than $296 billion in their networks since 2000, CTIA said. The survey’s results “clearly prove our members are key drivers of the U.S. economy, which will be enhanced by making more spectrum available for commercial use,” said CTIA President Steve Largent in a news release (http://bit.ly/16sdqJO).
The FCC is asking the states to review and update their Emergency Alert System plans to make sure they comply with the agency’s rules, said a public notice from the commission’s Public Safety Bureau Thursday (http://bit.ly/ZYhmhc). The notice to the State Emergency Communication Committees (SECCs) is in response to one of the recommendations that came out of a report on the FCC and Federal Emergency Management Agency’s first-ever nationwide EAS test in 2011 (CD April 16 p5). The new notice said all state EAS plans must be up to date, filed with the FCC, and must include a “computer readable” data table showing monitoring assignments and “the specific primary and backup path” for emergency messages, “from the Primary Entry Point (PEP) to each station in the plan.” The agency also requires states that can initiate messages using the Common Alerting Protocol to include monitoring and distribution specifics for those messages in their EAS plans. In a separate order Thursday (http://bit.ly/163m81q), the bureau also allowed 15 stations that had previously filed requests for waivers of the commission’s CAP requirements to withdraw them. “These fifteen petitioners all state that they are now either in compliance with [the CAP requirement] or are no longer in operation,” said the order.
Legacy network monitoring solutions are “dead” and not equipped to handle today’s network demands, which creates “bottlenecks,” said Rony Kay, CEO of network intelligence company cPacket, in a news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/10ZzV8d). Kay suggested replacing the traditional monitoring solution -- collecting and then analyzing all traffic to identify potential problems -- with a system of “pervasive network intelligence,” or inspecting traffic in real time and analyzing only the potential problems.
Railroads are making good progress in deploying positive train control systems, said PTC-220, which represents railroads deploying systems in the 220 MHz band, in a report filed at the FCC. The group submitted state-by-state data for the participating railroads, noting that to date 504 base stations have been installed and 1,684 sites are being prepared for installation (http://bit.ly/YpG5Na). But questions remain, especially because of the difficulty of complying with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHCP), which requires a review of any installations in historically significant properties. “These rules require an extensive environmental evaluation to determine if a proposed new tower is likely to have ‘a significant effect upon the quality of the human environment,’ and thus require further environmental processing by the FCC,” PTC-220 said. “The number of new wayside antenna sites required for PTC has the potential to overwhelm any current processing capabilities of the FCC, Native American tribes, and state historic preservation offices, resulting in delays to PTC site construction.” The group said it’s working with the FCC and the Federal Railroad Administration on an expedited review process. “For example, PTC-220 representatives have met with FCC staff to provide information about its nationwide PTC deployment requirement and to discuss the challenges occasioned by its scale. That has led to follow-up conversations and mutual efforts to streamline the process.”