The California Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee voted in favor of a bill intended to foster broadband deployment throughout the state. Senate Bill 740 received a favorable vote Tuesday, with several organizations providing support and some companies expressing concerns. The bill would change how the California Public Utilities Commission gives out money to foster broadband, increasing the cap associated with the hundreds of millions in funding for advanced services. “We're not quite there yet,” said bill author Sen. Alex Padilla (D), speaking at the hearing about connecting the state’s residents. AT&T lobbyist Bill Devine told the committee that the telco doesn’t object to the bill but its language is “raising a number of concerns.” “We have a principal concern around the issue of overbuilding in California.” He said the bill text may need “greater clarity” to specify that money shouldn’t be given in ways that would build infrastructure where private companies have already built.
Windstream has struggled with outages for multiple days this week throughout several states. The telco restored service to all but “a handful of customers” by early Monday evening, a spokesman said. Windstream can’t yet provide the total number of customers affected or their locations, he said. On Tuesday morning, Windstream updated its customers on its website and referred to Monday’s call problems as a “long distance outage.” It said heavy call volume may be creating delays on customer support lines, and on Twitter, referred to efforts to resolve any “remaining voice issues.” By Tuesday afternoon, the telco described voice services “restored in previously impacted Pennsylvania markets” and said “all intermittent voice mail services have also been restored,” with ongoing “limited voice outages in South Florida,” according to a Web update. The company said Tuesday afternoon that no other markets were then affected. Windstream provided a more detailed update Monday on its Facebook page: “Windstream’s network operations and engineering teams are working a widespread outage affecting long-distance and toll free call processing,” the company said, identifying the time of outage as 11:30 a.m. EDT. “This has also affected inbound calling to our support centers,” the company said, saying it’s working with a manufacturer but has no estimated time of repair. Windstream’s Facebook page received dozens of complaints from various different states throughout Windstream territory in recent days, including from Florida, Louisiana, Georgia and Missouri.
FCC commissioners approved a rulemaking notice that examines alternatives to cell signal jamming for prisons to deploy to prevent smuggling of contraband cellphones into cellblocks. Four of the agency’s five members voted to approve the NPRM, officials said. Commissioner Robert McDowell, who is leaving the agency, didn’t participate in the order, and has not been voting on other recent items. The NPRM hadn’t been released by our deadline. Fighting contraband cellphones without the use of jamming equipment has long been an administration focus. NTIA released a report in late 2010 finding that managed access technologies “hold promise as a solution.” Cellphone detection also may offer a solution, the report said (CD Dec 30/10 p1).
Morality in Media praised the efforts of U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron to keep public Wi-Fi free of pornography. “It is good to see that the UK is addressing the harms of pornography -- which feeds into violence, sex trafficking, addiction and abuse,” said Morality in Media President Patrick Trueman in a statement Tuesday. He’s the former Justice Department chief of the child exploitation and obscenity section.
If Verizon Wireless and AT&T are barred from bidding in the incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum, auction revenue is likely to be 40 percent lower than if they were allowed to bid, driving down proceeds as much as $12 billion for 102 MHz of spectrum, said a paper released Tuesday by the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy. Lower revenue could mean fewer broadcasters sell their licenses and less spectrum is converted to wireless broadband, the paper said. “It has been estimated that a robust auction for the entire 120 MHz of broadcast spectrum (which translates into only 102 MHz actually available for use by wireless providers) could generate $31 billion in proceeds,” the paper concludes (http://bit.ly/11A46h6). “Removing the two largest providers from the auction could reduce auction revenues from $31 billion to $19 billion, of which $7B would be directed to FirstNet and $2 billion to expenses such as repacking, leaving only $10 billion available to compensate broadcasters. If $10 billion is less than what broadcasters’ want in exchange for the full 120 MHz, fewer frequencies would be transferred, further reducing revenues.” The FCC is examining whether to limit bidding by the nation’s largest carriers in some markets as it develops rules for the auction. The authors are Robert Shapiro, chairman of Sonecon, which has advised AT&T, Google and other companies, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, and Coleman Bazelon of the Brattle Group, who has consulted for CEA and CTIA on spectrum.
Nielsen will start a pilot this month to measure online audiences for TV content, the broadcast-TV ratings company said in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/ZReOTH). It said Nielsen Digital Program Ratings has as participants A&E, ABC, AOL, CBS, the CW broadcast-TV network, Discovery Communications, Fox, NBC and Univision. The test, to run through July, uses the same methods as the company’s ratings for “overnight metrics” for online ad campaigns, Nielsen said. It said the test will provide, for TV shows seen online, unique audience, stream counts and reach by age and gender.
Intelsat requested an extension for 60 days of an existing special temporary authority concerning Intelsat 8. Intelsat wants to drift Intelsat 8 from 166 degrees east to 169 degrees east, it said in its application to the FCC International Bureau (http://bit.ly/10qfTw1). Intelsat also requested modification of its authorization for its Hagerstown, Md., earth station E030101, it said in a separate application (http://bit.ly/1010ymO).
NordNet, a France-based satellite broadband ISP, deployed Gilat’s Aries very small aperture terminals. The commercial deployment of the solution supports the rollout of SES’s Broadband Services, Gilat said in a press release (http://bit.ly/16iCfrv). With Aries, French households without high-quality DSL services “will be able to benefit from considerably faster Internet speeds, allowing them to take full advantage of all triple-play services,” it said.
The FCC is processing 17 applications for low-power and translator TV construction permits that don’t technically conflict with each other, said a public notice Tuesday (http://bit.ly/16j0khZ). It said oppositions to the requests are due in 30 days. Applicants include Towson University for Towson, Md.; Local Media for Philadelphia; MD Broadcasting for Montgomery, Ala., and Regal Media for Redding, Calif.; Savannah, Ga.; Decatur, Ill.; Medford, Ore., and Casper, Wyo.
As automakers move rapidly toward embedding Internet connectivity in vehicles, the field for providing the platform is “wide open,” with Sirius XM banking on its satellite and Internet Protocol technologies providing an edge, CEO James Meyer said on an earnings call. The dual offering will likely include a 50-channel on-demand service that’s expected to further expand this year, analysts said Tuesday. The on-demand service is part of My Sirius XM, which started in April and allows subscribers to customize channels in more than 100 different variations. My Sirius XM is available to Sirius XM’s Internet streaming desktop PC subscribers, who pay a $3.50 fee on top of the $14.99 monthly charge for the in-car service. “Having satellite connectivity and IP in vehicles will prove to be a durable advantage versus IP only as we move into the connected car world,” Meyer said. “You will see automakers move to embedded connectivity that will be LTE-based that will give them lots of options for what they want to do for their customers and their vehicles.” As a result of the changes under way in the auto industry, Sirius XM is “moving and reprioritizing” development efforts and commercial programming toward building connected-car technology, Meyer said. “I don’t see right now one single emerging competitor in the connected car space,” Meyer said. “The connected car is more of a strategy right now, and I think everybody is looking for a chair at the table and it’s really important that Sirius XM occupy one of those.” The IP embedded and “tethered” markets will co-exist for a “long, long time” with the latter getting content through non-LTE means, Meyer said. With Sirius XM having had discussions with automakers on the 2017 and 2018 models, “as I look at many of the applications down the road, it seems that embedded architecture works best and I would be surprised if all automakers don’t eventually do both,” Meyer said. Sirius XM stock closed up 5.9 percent to $3.25 Tuesday. The company’s Q1 net income improved to $123.6 million from $107.7 million in the year-ago quarter, as revenue rose to $897.3 million from $804.7 million. Self-pay net subscriber additions grew by 443,000 last quarter to end Q1 with 24.4 million, up from 23.9 million in December. Subscription sales jumped to $783.3 million in Q1 from $700.2 million in the year-ago period, while ad revenue rose to $20.2 million from $18.6 million. Total operating expenses increased to $650.4 million from $605.4 million, including a jump in revenue share and royalties to $148.5 million from $132.1 million. Sirius XM started paying slightly higher music royalties under a Copyright Royalty Board decision in December. The CRB decision called for Sirius to start paying this year 9 percent of annual gross revenue as a royalty to SoundExchange, which represents music companies and musicians (CD Dec 18 p8). Sirius, which had been paying 8 percent, will see steady increases in 2014 (9.5 percent), 2015 (10 percent), 2016 (10.5 percent) and 2017 (11 percent). Sirius XM’s penetration in new cars remained flat in Q1 with the previous quarter at 67 percent, but the number of registered cars containing the service grew to 52 million from 50 million, and up from 42 million a year earlier, the company said. Satellite radios are in 22 percent of U.S. registered vehicles, Meyer said. The number of satellite radio-equipped vehicles is forecast to grow to 100 million by 2017 and 150 million in 2023, he said. Sirius XM added about 1 million subscribers from used cars in 2012 and is forecasting bringing in another 1.5 million this year. Sirius XM is adding Comedy Central and Entertainment Weekly channels in June.